Doris Duke—the only daughter of Duke University benefactor James Buchanan Duke and noted philanthropist and patron of the arts—painted this lovely scene in 1924 at the age of eleven. It is part of the Doris Duke Papers, donated to the Rubenstein Library in 2009 by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and now open for public research.
Further details about the extraordinary collection may be found in the official press release, or by reviewing the collection’s finding aid.
Date: October 26, 2011-January 22, 2012
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Valerie Gillispie, 919-684-8929 or valerie.gillispie(at)duke.edu
You can learn more about all these things (and even more!) by visiting “From Campus to Cockpit: Duke during World War II,” currently on display in the hallway cases outside the Rare Book Room.
The exhibit documents the academic, military, and humanitarian accomplishments of the Duke University community during World War II. Photographs, papers, artifacts, and archival film footage tell the story of the university’s spirited efforts to support the nation during a turbulent time of war—including hosting the 1942 Rose Bowl, expanding the possibilities for women in the academic realm, and cooperating with the city of Durham to host fundraising events.
Highlights of the exhibition include images of the first women engineering students at Duke, an original 1942 Rose Bowl ticket, a Red Cross bandage, memorabilia from “Rose Bowl Week” in Durham, and a variety of 1940’s-era military patches and insignia.
If you can’t stop by the display, you can also see many of the artifacts—along with Rose Bowl game footage, bonus materials and research resources—in our online exhibition.
Post contributed by exhibit curators Rosemary K. J. Davis, Isobel Craven Drill Intern, and Jessica Wood, William E. King Reference Intern.
Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu
Kathryn Sikkink, recipient of this year’s Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)-Duke University Human Rights Book Award, will read from and discuss her award-winning book, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics during tomorrow’s award presentation. A reception and book signing will follow.
Sikkink’s book examines what she calls “the justice cascade,” a very new development in world politics. “Only 30 years ago, it was virtually unheard of, almost unimaginable, for a national or international tribunal to hold state officials criminally accountable for human rights violations,” Sikkink notes.
Now, around the world, former government and security force officials accused of human rights crimes are facing prosecutions in unprecedented numbers. In Chile, for example, the number of court cases has sharply increased and now involve the highest ranks of the security forces. Prosecutions have also expanded beyond deaths and disappearances to torture and forced exile.
This year’s panel of judges called The Justice Cascade “compelling” and “eye-opening,” recognizing it for its important contribution to the field of human rights, Latin American studies and accountability.
For further information about the book and the award, visit the related Devil’s Tale blog post or the WOLA press release.
Sikkink is a Regents Professor and the McKnight Presidential Chair in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Her publications include Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America; Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (co-authored with Margaret Keck and awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order and the ISA Chadwick Alger Award for Best Book in the area of International Organizations); and The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp).
Duke sponsors for the event include the Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Archive, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Studies, and the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.
Scary, but true: the Rubenstein’s Hinton Collection of Plays contains what’s believed to be the first published image of Frankenstein’s Creature (or “Monster,” if you’re feeling pejorative). Are you ready to face the horror?
Now that you’ve recovered from the shock, you’ll be interested to know that this image is of the actor Richard John O. Smith portraying the Creature in an 1826 stage adaptation of Shelley’s novel by Henry Milner. The Hinton Collection also contains a prompt book for Milner’s play as produced at the Theatre Royal in Birmingham, England, probably in the 1830s. The image below shows the page of the prompt book for the Creature’s awakening, with the inserted dialogue “He lives / He lives”:
This echoes the line “It lives! It lives!” from the first stage adaptation of Frankenstein, R. B. Peake’s wildly successful 1823 play Presumption (you can find an edition of this in the Hinton Collection, as well), and prefigures perhaps the most famous scene in horror cinema.
Adaptations and reimaginings of the story of Frankenstein continue to proliferate today. See these and many more chilling items, including an issue of Frankenstein Comics from the 1940s, at the Haunted Library Screamfest from 11am-1pm today!
Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.
Guess what’s coming on Monday…….
The book in front? Der Vampir by Władysław Stanisław Reymont, c. 1914.
Date: Halloween, Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu
Have you ever wandered around a library’s stacks in the dark? Or wondered what might go bump in an archival box?
Stop by the Rubenstein Library’s Rare Book Room for a special Halloween “eeeks”-ibit and open house. We’ll be dragging out some of the creepiest and most macabre items from the shadowy depths of the library’s vaults—including the thirteen unlucky items below.
This event is free and open to the living and the dead. There will be candy. Lots and lots of candy.
1. A travel diary written by John Buck, a young American who found himself face-to-face with Bram Stoker (before he wrote Dracula)
2. Letters to Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory describing the 1949 poltergeist case that became the basis for The Exorcist
3. Opera Omnia Anatomico-Medico-Chirurgica by 18th century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, featuring illustrations of fetal skeletons playing instruments among “trees” made of veins and arteries and “rocks and stones” that are actually organs, gallstones, and kidney stones
4. An entire box of glass eyeballs (49, to be exact)
5. “Jack the Ripper” and “Cthulhu by Gaslight,” two board games from the Edwin and Terry Murray Role Playing Game Collection
6. Artists’ books Mountain Dream Tarot by Bea Nettles and Femmes Fatales by Maureen Cummins. Tarot cards and pictures of medieval torture devices!
7. Brochures and advertisements for coffins and other funeral-related paraphernalia from the Advertising Ephemera Collection
8.Two copies of Henry Milner’s 1826 melodramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the very first illustration of (the actor portraying) “the Monster”
9. Bela Lugosi’s signature
10. Maps and photographs of the Rigsbee Graveyard (yes, the graveyard in the Blue Zone)
11. Comics Review #1, 1965, which includes Stephen King’s first published story, “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber,” from the Edwin and Terry Murray Fanzine Collection
12. Halloween postcards (complete with spooky messages . . . or invitations to Halloween parties) from our Postcard Collection
13. Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Whispering Witch by Kathryn Kenny, 1980
Which one will give you nightmares come the witching hour?
It’s North Carolina Archives Week, a weeklong celebration of North Carolina’s cultural heritage repositories and the wonderful researchers that use them—that’s you!
Stop in, meet your friendly neighborhood special collections librarians, and request some archival collections and rare books—we think you’ll find that the Rubenstein Library has something for everyone! Or check out the North Carolina Archives Week’s website to find more ways to celebrate with cultural history repositories throughout the state.
Need some inspiration? We’ve gathered together a few previously-published blog posts written by our researchers:
We’ll see you in the reading room!
Monday was the annual Anatomy Day visit to the History of Medicine Collections. This is one of my favorite times of the year!
In the fall, all of the first year medical students here at Duke—about one hundred of them—visit the History of Medicine Collections to view historical anatomical atlases. This is a chance for them to see how anatomy has been represented over hundreds of years, and also provides stimulating and interesting texts that they can compare to what they are seeing in the dissection lab.
Faculty and staff contribute to Anatomy Day by engaging with students and asking questions about the texts on display. This year, participants included the main coordinator of the event, Dr. Jeff Baker, along with Dr. Ara Tourian, Dr. Rick Madden, Professor Valeria Finucci, Professor Shannon Withycombe, and Rubenstein Library staff members Laura Micham, Kate Collins, Andy Armacost, and Jessica Janecki. Materials on display ranged from a 17th century copy of a 14th century illuminated Islamic medical manuscript to the controversial Pernkopf atlases from the mid-twentieth century.
The comments I heard this year were “awesome,” “I love anatomy so I loved everything,” and “overall, this experience was great and I liked to see the progression of anatomical representations.” I overheard students have serious ethical discussions about dissection and talk about the variety of ways they learn about the human body. I also talked to a student who told me that the greatest tool out of all the tools a student could have in the anatomy lab is the hand.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s Anatomy Day and talking with students about the array of anatomical texts here at the History of Medicine Collections!
For more photos, visit the “Anatomy Day 2011” set on our Flickr photostream!
Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, Curator for the History of Medicine Collections.
This has been the most terrific days battle since commincement. The enemy made a terrible charge over our Breastworks with re-inforcementz & succeeded in charging some of our men out of them, capturing many of our Division. All our Regiment that were left from the first days fight were captured.
—from the Henry Beverige Diary, Thursday, May 12, 1864.
Beverige, a soldier and hospital steward with the 25th Virginia Regiment of the Confederate States of America, describes one of the many terrifying, bloody days of the American Civil War. His diary is one of the numerous first person accounts available in the Rubenstein Library. Other perspectives on life during the conflict are offered by fiery teenager Alice Williamson; Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow, African Americans such as Edgar Dinsmore, and the many others who experienced the loneliness, losses, and deprivations—and occasional triumphs—of the conflict.
To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Rubenstein Library staff have collaborated on a guide to Civil War resources that provides highlights of our rich collections. Special sections describe manuscript and print material related to military history, medicine, women, African Americans, literature, and music in the Rubenstein Library, as well as other library guides and relevant databases and websites.
We anticipate that this guide will be helpful for scholars, genealogists, and anyone with a personal interest in Civil War history. Please contact us if you have questions or comments about our collections.
Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian.
Just a few more days to see hair on display!
The current Perkins Gallery exhibit, “The Life of Memorials: Manifestations of Memory at the Intersection of Public and Private,” explores the tradition of commemorating events and remembering people. Memorials can be large-scale statues and museums but can also include more personal items, such as mementos and souvenirs.
One very common practice has been to retain the hair of our loved ones—and some of these locks, from the Rubenstein Library’s collections, are on display as part of this exhibit through October 16. (Or, visit the online exhibit!)
Many of our collections contain locks of hair—some are the typical parental memory of youth, like the young blonde curls of Sallie Bingham; some are the desire to connect to our literary heroes, like a nice lock of the poet William Cullen Bryant or a few strands tied together from Walt Whitman; and some are from other kinds of heroes, like envelopes full of hair from Jefferson Davis (the envelope reads: ” . . . hair from Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe. . . “).
Our collection also contains “one strand” of hair, with certification, from Abraham Lincoln; a few very small hairs allegedly from John Wesley; and some hair from our own Reynolds Price. Come by and visit the hair on display through October 16 in the Perkins Gallery, or come by the Rubenstein Library’s reading room and ask to see the hair in person!
Tomorrow, in conjunction with their exhibit, Team Kenan will be presenting a a moderated panel discussion that will examine the ways people live with traumatic experiences in different political and cultural contexts.
Living with Memory: A Moderated Panel Discussion of Memorials
Date: Thursday, October 6th
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Panelists Jehanne Gheith, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, and Stephanie Seiburth, Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies will take part in a student-moderated discussion and offer multimedia presentations on their work on collective memory in Russia and Spain.
For more information, visit http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/team-kenan-curates-memorials-exhibit/.
Post contributed by Meg Brown, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Exhibits Librarian and Conservator for Special Collections.
