Profiles in Research: Daniel Belasco on Irene Peslikis

June 12, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

Post contributed by Daniel Belasco. Belasco is an art historian, the Executive Director of the Al Held Foundation, and the author of numerous essays and reviews on women artists and feminism, including the book Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions (Reaktion, 2024). Belasco received a 2025-2026 Mary Lily Research Travel Grant from the Sallie Bingham Center.

Artist, educator, and feminist organizer Irene Peslikis (1943 – 2002) is probably best known as the Marxist Girl depicted in Alice Neel’s 1972 oil painting of the same title. One arm raised, revealing her unshaved armpit, Peslikis sprawls on a purple upholstered chair, a moment of repose in her swirl of activity. Fortunately, the Rubenstein Library had the foresight and wherewithal to appreciate her significant, if largely unsung, contributions at the intersections of art and feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s.

I was keen to travel to Duke to delve deeply in her papers, chock full of notebooks, correspondence, ephemera, and documentation of her paintings, prints, and drawings, to support my research for my book on the emergence of the feminist art movement in the 1960s. I was especially eager to study manuscript versions of some of her political cartoons about abortion rights. What blew me away was a trove of other drawings and cartoons satirizing the intersections of culture, militarism, and masculinity. While most of these targeted the American war in Vietnam, one sketch caught my eye, and has stayed with me as a profound statement of the distortion of history and aesthetics to serve political opportunism and profiteering.

Geometric patterns in black ink on grid paper. There are four numbered patterns, with the fourth taking the shape of the swastika — Irene Peslikis Papers, Box 32, folder “drawings pencil and pen”

The drawing begins on the left side as a basic geometric meander, much like the interlocking forms one sees on a classical Greek frieze or border décor. Then, in three steps, Peslikis subtly twists the lines and manipulates the angles so that the decorative beauty wraps around itself to form a swastika. As the daughter of Greek immigrants to the U.S., Peslikis read and wrote Greek and felt outrage at her homeland’s slippage into fascism after the military junta of 1967. The drawing is signed but not titled. Elsewhere in her archive, I found a slide of a more polished version of the drawing on plain, unlined paper. The title, “A Brief History of Modern Greece,” drives home the point, transforming the original sketched idea into an effective political cartoon. Though I am not aware of her publishing or otherwise circulating this image, it exemplifies the power of pictures that artists like Peslikis harnessed to advocate for women’s and worker’s rights in a public arena.

The same set of four geometric patterns as in the previous image, but on plain paper and labelled "A Brief History of Modern Greece" — Irene Peslikis Papers, box 36, folder: slides 4

Peslikis, as a fervent participant in the women’s liberation movement, rejected the traditional values of her upbringing to embrace the bold new future of sex and race equality, abortion rights, and the elimination of male supremacy. The elegance and concision of her drawing reveals, to me, a clear mind freed from old habits and internalized oppression. Her use of graph paper, and numbered iterations of the image lends the work a didactic, instructional quality. Ultimately, Peslikis’s incisive drawing introduced me to her fascinating process of unlearning, as much a statement of political critique, an insight I only was able to make after spending time in her archive.

Art historian Daniel Belasco is the Executive Director of the Al Held Foundation and the author of numerous essays and reviews on women artists and feminism, including the book Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions (Reaktion, 2024). Belasco received a 2025-2026 Mary Lily Research Travel Grant from the Sallie Bingham Center.

Featured, From Our Collections, Hartman Center

A History of French Marketing with Draeger Frères

June 4, 2026 Leah Tams Leave a comment

Post contributed by Brandee Newkirk, Processing Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

During my time as an intern for the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, I had the opportunity to process the Draeger Frères printing collection. While at first glance this collection seemed distant from my dissertation research that focuses on diet and fitness culture among Black women between the 1920s and the 2000s, I was pleasantly surprised by the collection’s breadth and depth. The collection includes hundreds of items that reflect an almost century-long span of French’s marketing history, and it touches upon so many research interests that even some of its items contributed to my own research.

Draeger Frères was one of the leading, high-end publishing companies in France for close to 100 years. Founded in 1866 by Charles Draeger as Draeger & Lesieur, the company began expanding its clientele through participation in the 1889 International Exposition, which featured several of its specialty self-promotional color catalogs.[1] After the death of Charles Draeger in 1899, Draeger’s wife, Amélie Bagdassard Draeger, took over the company with their sons Georges, Maurice, and Robert, keeping Draeger Frères a family business.[2] By the interwar era, Draeger Frères had reached its peak and was known as one of the pioneers of marketing and advertising in France. This success led many companies to work with Draeger Frères; among them are Coty, Hermès, Renault, Printemps, and Ford.[3] This success also drew many artists to begin their careers with Draeger Frères, including René Vincent, Charles Martin, Man Ray, and R. Ernst, among countless others.[4]

Draeger Frères achieved success through its innovative color printing techniques, established by Charles Draeger’s early work. The printing company became known for its half-color and two-color printing processes and, by the 1930s, invented Procédé 301 (Process 301), which combined methods of three-shot color photography, color correction, and photogravure printing to create bright, colorful photographs and illustrations in its printed catalogs.[5] This patented technique quickly propelled the printing company, as many companies desired brochures and catalogs that best captured their products. Printing for the Draeger Frères company ended in the 1970s, as large-scale print advertising began to dwindle, yet the Draeger brand remains active in France today.[6]

The collection of industries, companies, artists, and governments, including the Vichy regime, featured in Draeger Frères’ printed brochures, catalogs, and art books displays the topical reach of advertising and marketing. For my own research, which focuses on diet and weight culture among Black women in the early 20th century, Draeger Frères’ extensive work producing catalogs for many fashion stores and clothing companies in France gave me deeper insights into French beauty and clothing trends. Many elite Black figures began to travel to France in the 1920s due to the country’s more accommodating attitudes toward Black Americans, including artists such as Laura Wheeler Waring and W.E.B. Du Bois, and French beauty ideals regarding a woman’s figure began influencing Black culture. Draeger Frères’s collection of catalogs for the High Life Tailor company, a large-scale French clothing store, became a primary resource for my research.

The Draeger Frères printing collection at the Hartman Center demonstrates the vast intellectual range found in advertising and marketing materials. From fascist regimes to 20th-century automobile marketing, researchers can use this collection and pull at the historical threads that linger within the oeuvre of Draeger Frères’ printed works, which present a distinctive narrative to French and even global consumer histories. This collection is already available to researchers at the Rubenstein Library.

Footnotes:

[1] Kim Timby, “Draeger Frères: Tradition and Innovation in the Printing of Art and Advertising,” in Factory Photobooks. The Self-Representation of the Factory in Photographic Publications, ed. Bart Sorgedrager (nai010, 2023), https://hal.science/hal-04308687. Background information on Draeger Frères can also be found on their company website: https://fr.checkout.draegerparis.com/pages/notre-histoire.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Draeger Frѐres printing collection, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See Box 14, Item # 4, For a more detailed description and finding aid see: https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/draegerfreres

[6] See boxes 7,8,9, and 12, Item #s 170-213

From Our Collections

Palatable Poisons: The Dark History of Patent Medicine

May 13, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

Post contributed by Jennifer Dai, Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern 2025-2026

Patent Medicines, also known as proprietary medicines, nostrums, cure-alls, or snake oils, were popular medications that took advantage of the lack of federal regulations in the 1800s and early 1900s. The name, originating from the “Royal Letters Patent” in England, is a misnomer in modern American language, as no patent was given to these medicines. Instead, they were proprietary, meaning their ingredients were kept secret. The creators of these medicines were not doctors or pharmacists, but businessmen with often no medical training.

The perfect storm of a lack of regulation, low income, and the high cost to see physicians led to patent medicine’s rise during the second half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. A large quantity of the Rubenstein Library’s examples of patent medicine materials sits around the turn of the century, specifically before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was created and the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906. Prior to these regulations (don’t worry we will talk about them shortly), a hallmark of these medications is that they often had outrageous claims, for example we have Dr. Sibly’s Re-Animating Solar Tincture which claimed to cure death. Some other claims were to cure cancer, consumption (tuberculosis), epilepsy, and ever the popular “cure-all”.

Seven different "Hazeltine's Pocket Book Almanac" from varioys years in the 1880s and 1890s, all with colorful illustrated covers — Piso’s Cure for Consumption: Hazeltine’s Pocket Almanacs

Another unfortunate hallmark was dangerous ingredients. The lack of regulation around narcotics lead to Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a syrup meant to soothe babies, containing morphine and alcohol. Other examples of these dangers include Coca-Cola, which was originally advertised as a brain tonic and contained cocaine and Piso’s Cure for Consumption which contained chloroform, cannabis, opium, and alcohol

Cover of Dr. John Bull's Illustrated Annual for the year 1883 — Dr. John Bull’s Almanac

(although they did dispute the cannabis claim). This unregulated and unlabeled use of narcotics was especially dangerous for children. Around the turn of the century, 2 children died after drinking bottles of Dr. Bull’s Cough Syrup that was left within their reach.

With the publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in 1905, numerous deaths, and consistent articles shedding light on the dangers of patent medicine in Collier’s Weekly by Samuel Hopkins Adams, it was clear that changes needed to be made. In 1906 the FDA was created, and the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed. This did not regulate ingredients but required that medicines be accurately labeled and show accurate therapeutic claims.

Although it was a great start, the act was an imperfect solution to a complex problem. This became glaringly apparent in 1937 when around 107 people died after using Elixir of Sulfanilamide, a medication that contained diethylene glycol (used today as an industrial solvent). Because of this, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1938 which tightened restrictions and increased oversight. Some notable additions in this act were that drugs had to prove they were safe before advertising could begin, and the FDA had more power to prosecute manufacturers for wrongdoing.

Book opening with an illustration using bottles to compare the amount of alcohol in liquors and in patent medicines. — The Great American Fraud by Samuel Hopkins Adams

These regulations, resulting from the dark history of patent medicine, are what allow us to have safe prescription and over the counter medications today. I urge everyone to consider the past when looking to the future; we must learn from our mistakes, or we are doomed to repeat them.

Come see the exhibit:
May 5, 2026 – October 2026
Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room
Duke University Libraries
Durham, North Carolina

Further Reading:

Weill Cornell Samuel J. Wood Library

“Nervine” and Knavery: The Life and Times of Dr. Miles Medical Company by Rudolph J.R. Peritz

The Great American Fraud: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery by Samuel Hopkins Adams

The New York Historical

John Hooper’s Female Pills

Native American Imagery Reinforcing Colonial Stereotypes

Featured, From Our Collections, New Finding Aids

Marginalized, but Not Marginal: Accounting for Enslaved Lives in the Ledgers of a New Orleans Merchant

May 6, 2026 Leah Tams Leave a comment

Post contributed by Reina Henderson, PhD, Eleanor Jantz Processing and Cataloging Intern

At first glance, the accounting books of E.L. Bernard look like any other set of nineteenth-century commercial records. The pages are filled with the looping script of professional clerks and the endless columns of numbers that drove the economy of antebellum New Orleans. They list shipments of French wine and invoices for mahogany furniture. They track the price of cotton and the arrival of ships from Bordeaux. It is a picture of sophisticated international trade. However, if you look closer at the columns of debits and credits, a much darker reality begins to emerge. These books do not just record the movement of goods. They record the systematic commodification of human beings.

Account books like these have long carried an aura of authority. Ledgers are presented as neutral instruments of fact where emotion falls away, and truth is reduced to figures that can be verified and balanced. We’re inclined to trust them precisely because they appear unadorned. Numbers seem to tell us what happened without interpretation. However, this promise of neutrality is itself fiction. Ledgers do not simply record economic life. In a place like New Orleans, one of the most profitable ports of the nineteenth century, they actively shaped it. They organized human activity into categories of value and loss. What they choose to name, how they name it, and what they render interchangeable all reveal the moral architecture of the world they helped sustain.

Accounting for Human Lives

The most chilling aspect of the Bernard ledgers is how mundane the entries are. In a General Ledger dating from 1815 to 1826, the merchant tracks his financial assets. On one page he lists his shares in the State Bank. On the very same spread, he lists an account titled “Nègres de Compte à 1/3.”

This was a joint-venture investment account. E.L. Bernard was not just buying enslaved people for his own use. He was speculating on them and trading them. The ledger shows that he held a one-third financial interest in a partnership designed to buy and sell human beings for profit. The debits represent the purchase price of men and women. The credits represent their sale. To the merchant and his accountant, these individuals were indistinguishable from the bales of cotton or barrels of sugar listed on the subsequent pages. They were simply inventory.

“Armantine, Her Child”

While the earlier ledgers show the cold mathematics of the slave trade, the later volumes reveal the daily reality of labor and control. In an account book from the 1850s, we find the name Armantine. She was an enslaved woman hired by Bernard from her owner for temporary work. The entry is brief but devastating. It records a payment for “Armantine, son enfant,” or Armantine and her child.

This single line item exposes the total dehumanization of the system. Bernard paid for the pair as a single unit. The child is listed not as a person but as an appendage to their mother. The age of Armantine’s child is impossible to determine from the record. Like so many children born into slavery, the child appears only fleetingly in the archive, visible only insofar as their dependency affected the price of their mother’s labor. The line does, however, imply the child was too young to be separated from her and so the business simply absorbed the cost of the child’s presence as a necessary expense attached to Armantine. Other entries show Bernard paying for “robes and souliers” or dresses and shoes for Armantine. These were not gifts. They were maintenance costs for a rented asset. In other words, supplies.

The Hidden Labor of the Port

The ledgers also challenge our image of slavery as a purely agricultural institution. E.L. Bernard was a city merchant and his books show that urban slavery was the engine of the New Orleans port. We see payments for enslaved men named Hilaire and Edouard. They were hired for “armement” or the outfitting of ships. These men were the ones loading the cargo and repairing the rigging and preparing the vessels that connected New Orleans to New York and France. They were skilled laborers whose time was rented out by the day or week.

When we read the manifests of the ships Mohawk or Neptune in the 1830s journals, we see lists of “Colonial Goods” like coffee and indigo arriving from the Caribbean and bales of cotton leaving for New York. It is easy to see these merely as commodities, but the names in the ledger remind us that every pound of sugar and every bale of cotton was the product of enslaved labor. The “Maison de Noir” or slave quarters mentioned in the expense accounts was just as essential to Bernard’s business as his warehouse or his counting house.

Recovering the Names

Documents like Bernard’s ledgers are difficult to read. They reduce complex human lives to prices and dates. However, they are also vital. They provide proof of the individuals who built the wealth of the Atlantic world. Armantine and her child. Marthe. Hilaire. Edouard. Nicaise. The names of enslaved people often appear in spaces such as these, in the margins of a white merchant’s account book. Whole lives, thoughts, and actions caught in a line or two of text from which entire stories can and should be brought into view. Recovering such names from documents like these is an act that insists that accounting records be read not only for what they quantify but for whom they erase. The ledgers of merchants like Bernard remind us that modern systems of finance and record keeping were built alongside and through human commodification, a legacy that continues to shape how institutions measure value, responsibility, and loss today. By studying these ledgers and telling the stories of the people trapped within their columns, we can begin to acknowledge the human cost buried in the archives of western economies.

Featured, History of Medicine, Students and Interns

Meet Jennifer Dai!

April 24, 2026 ebg17@duke.edu Leave a comment

Every year, we enjoy hearing more from our graduate student interns who work in the Rubenstein Library. We are thrilled to have Jennifer Dai, the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern, share more below about her experience. Thank you, Jen, for your enthusiasm and contributions over the past year!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a second-year graduate student at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science. I am working toward my Master’s of Science in Library Science and will be graduating in May. As with everything in my life, I went for the eclectic approach in my studies giving me a varied understanding of library science. Outside of the library I volunteer at Raleigh Little Theatre where I work backstage as a dresser. I am also training with my friends to complete a triathlon in the fall.

What do you find interesting about working in libraries, especially with the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Collections?

I was drawn to libraries because of the eclectic nature of the work. I could never decide what exactly I wanted to learn in school or do as a career, but the joy of libraries is that you never really have to make that decision. One minute I’m working with a fringe medical device that does sleep affirmations (the beautiful Psychophone) and the next I’m looking at parapsychology records or anatomical flap books to answer a reference question or prepare for a class. I never feel like I’m stuck in a rut because I am always learning about new topics and interacting with new and interesting materials. I was drawn to the Trent History of Medicine Collections specifically because of my background in science and veterinary medicine. Prior to starting graduate school, I worked as a veterinary assistant for 6 years and learned a lot about medicine in general through that experience. This collection combines my interest in history and science in such an exciting way! I can see how knowledge has grown and changed over time in the Trent History of Medicine Collections, and I can learn about different cultures, people, and events through this lens.

What is a memorable experience from your internship?

Anatomy Day was such a great learning experience for me. Getting to see over 100 first year medical students look at the collection was so rewarding. They were all so excited and wanted to learn so much about everything we had set out for them. I learned a ton about what kinds of questions people have, how to interact with students, how to manage crowds, and what it takes to create and implement an outreach program. It was such a fantastic experience and I’m so glad I was able to take part in it!

Do you have a favorite item you’d like to share?

Of course, I’m a big fan of the Psychophone and how that weird fringe medical device from the 1920s can still be poignant today. The care and artistry that went into making this device that is not readily known today is both beautiful and tragic to me. I also really like A Collection of the yearly bills of mortality, from 1657 to 1758 inclusive because it’s so interesting to see the trends and changes in mortality data throughout the years in London. I made a few information visualizations from this book just for the fun of it. It showed me so much about how disease and mortality changed during that time, how the naming of diseases affected these trends, and how people lived and died during the 17^th and 18^th centuries in London.

Bingham Center, Featured, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Human Rights Archive, Travel Grants

Announcing our 2026-2027 Travel Grant Recipients

April 22, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

The Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026-2027 travel grants. Our research centers annually award travel grants to students, scholars, and independent researchers through a competitive application process. We extend a warm congratulations to this year’s awardees. We look forward to meeting and working with you!

Doris Duke Archives

Stephanie Opperman, Faculty, Georgia College and State University, “Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith and the Legacy of Jazz Clubs in 1940s Mexico City”

Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Collections

Elon Clark History of Medicine Travel Grants
Sarah Ahmed, Graduate Student, McGill University, “Madness and Methodism: Weslyan Sick Societies and the Treatment of Madness in the British Atlantic World, 1741-1818”

Lea Eisenstein, Graduate Student, Princeton University, “Coming Out: The Private and Public History of Hysterectomy in America”

Olivia Maddox, Graduate Student, University of California, San Diego, “Maternal Revolutions: A Cultural History of Motherhood in Modern China”

John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture

Jennifer Blaylock, Faculty, Rowan University, “Ghanavision: Ayi Kwei Armaha’s Work in Television in the 1960s”

Peyton White, Graduate Student, University of Texas, “Rastafari, Sovereignty, and Black Religious Nationalism in 20^th Century Jamaica”

Halima Haruna, Graduate Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of African American Women’s Disability Politics, 1900s–1920”

Christina Thomas, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of South Carolina, “Digitizing Freedom Summer: An Interactive Map”

Corbin Covington, Graduate Student, Northwestern University, “Black Historiography and Psychoanalytic Theory”

Mickell Carter, Graduate Student, Brown University, “Black Men’s Style During the Black Power Movement”

Sydney Smith, Graduate Student, Rutgers University, “Reading for the Revolution: Black Bookstores and the Radical Tradition of Self-Education”

Harry H. Harkins, Jr. T’73 Travel Grants

Cassandra Gillig, Graduate Student, Northwestern University, “Learning Lesbian Sex”

Connall MacLennan, Graduate Student, University College London, “The Church and the Formation of Queer Identity, Community, and Politics in the State of Georgia, 1945-2015”

Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

John Furr Fellowship for JWT Research
Henry Jacob, Graduate Student, Yale University, “Tourism in Flight: JWT, Pan-Am, and the Making of U.S. Power in the Americas”

Mario Uolla, Graduate Student, Northwestern University, “JWT’s T-Plan and the Origins of Consumer Centricity”

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants
Jennifer Scanlon, Faculty, Bowdoin College, “We Try Harder: Paula Green, Inc.”

Francesca Polletta, Faculty, University of California, Irvine, “Advertising to the New Woman, 1970-1975”

Ijeoma Kola, Faculty, University of Notre Dame, “Kitchen Chemists: Black Women, Medical Neglect, and the Science of the Natural Hair Movement”

Jonathan Marrow, Graduate Student, Cambridge University, “The Development of American Holocaust Tourism, 1945-2000”

Stephen Sonnenfeld, independent Researcher, “The Meaning Makers: A History of the American Advertising Agency”

Human Rights Archive

Jessica Day-Lucore, Graduate Student, Indiana University Bloomington, “The Human Rights Violators Club: The Uruguayan Dictatorship, the United States, and the Regulatory Regimes of the Late Cold War, 1973-1985”

Vivian Hernandez, Graduate Student, University of California Los Angeles, “’Nos interasa a todas’: Voluntary Motherhood and the Reproductive Rights Movement in Late Twentieth-Century to Early Twenty-First Century Mexico”

Ian Glazmer-Schillinger, Graduate Student, Syracuse University, “Web of Hate: White Power Goes Online, 1983-1999”

Eva Baylin, Graduate Student, Vanderbilt University, “Gender and the Radical Right: A Cultural History from the Margins to the Center of American Politics, 1965–2014”

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Mary Lily Research Travel Grants
Amaluana Brock, Graduate Student, Auburn University, “1990s Young Women Zines as Feminist Identity Building”

Hsiao-Yun Chu, Faculty, San Francisco State University, “Exquisite Boredom: Ladies Fancy Workbooks and the Birth of Leisure Crafts, 1850–1910″

Maddy Coy, Faculty, University of Florida, “Feminist Knowledge, Violence Against Women, and Public Policy”

Hannah Dudley-Shotwell, Faculty, Longwood University, and Justina Licata, Faculty, Indiana University East, “A History of Abortion Funds in the U.S., 1960s–Present”

Halina Haruma, Graduate Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of African American Women’s Disability Politics, 1900s–1920″

Ijeoma Kola, Faculty, University of Notre Dame, “Kitchen Chemists: Black Women, Medical Neglect, and the Science of the Natural Hair Movement”

Felicity Palma, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University, “Eurydice in the Underworld”

Hope Tucker, Faculty, University of Iowa, “Feminist Bookstores in the South: A Film”

Lisa Walters, Faculty, University of Queensland, “Forgotten Histories: Renaissance Women and the Science of Atomism”

Jessie Wilkerson, Faculty, University of Tennessee – Knoxville, “In Sisterhood, In Struggle: A History of Feminist Possibilites in the American South”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Research Travel Grants
Rachel Haines, Graduate Student, University of Virginia, “Close Reading as Queer Reading: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ‘kind of formalism’”

Jennifer Hamilton, Faculty, University of New England, Australia, “Exploring the Relationship Between Queer Theory, Buddhism, and Textile Art in Sedgwick’s Body of Work”

Samuel Rutherford, Faculty, University of Glasgow, “Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Transmasculinity and the History of Queer Ideas”

Suzanne Scanlon, Faculty, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “In Time, a novel”

Featured, Students and Interns, University Archives

Distaff: The Undergraduate Publications Board and the Woman’s College

April 15, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

Post contributed by Meredith Mobley, University Archives Intern for Student Engagement

In the early months of 1931, the students of Duke’s East Campus, at the time the home of the Woman’s College, decided they would begin publishing their own literary magazine. It would be called “Distaff,” a nod to their understanding of the creative, traditional work of women. The literal definition of distaff is “a staff for holding the flax, tow, or wool in spinning,” (Merriam-Webster) but more colloquially refers to domestic, “women’s” work. The new magazine was announced in the Chronicle on January 14th, 1931. The first issue of the bi-monthly literary magazine would be released in March 1931, but not without pushback. The student publications board, which at the time consisted of members from the three student publications (the Archive, the Chanticleer, and the Chronicle), in addition to faculty members and two representatives from the woman’s student government, sought out an explanation. Backed by Dean Wannamaker, the board was charged with regulating the publishing activities of the student body, requiring each potential publication to obtain permission from them to gain legitimacy and the “go-ahead” to put their work into print.

Despite support from faculty in the Woman’s College, Distaff did not gain the proper permissions from the publication board prior to announcing their first issue. Distaff’s goal as a publication was to give editorial experience to women, at a time when the field was almost entirely male dominated. In the editorial note of the March 1931 issue, Distaff’s editorial team stated “It has been customary in all organizations in which both the men and women have a part for the men to hold the responsible positions[…] This has been especially true in the line of publications where the positions which women have been allowed to hold have been designated. These positions have always been minor and lacking in responsibility. It is the purpose of this magazine not only to create a medium through which the women students of the University may express themselves more freely than a publication edited by the men, but also that they may learn something of the responsibility of editing” (11). Prior to the founding of Distaff, there was also a push by the Woman’s Student Government Association (WSGA) to obtain more representation on the Undergraduate Publications Board, and effort which was successful (Alice Mary Baldwin Papers Box 12).

Although the publications board claimed to be in support of Distaff, they expressed their concerns in a way that subtly cast doubt on the capabilities of the women to run their own publication and make sound business decisions. Despite these hurdles, Distaff began its publishing tenure in 1931, and made sure to address the concerns of the publishing board in their editorial note, saying, “The present may seem an unwise time to some to begin such an undertaking as the bringing out of a magazine; yet, it seems to us that the best policy is to fill a need at the present while there is need plus enthusiasm, rather than to divert the enthusiasm into other channels until business conditions are better” (11-12). This run continued until 1934, when the magazine reached a stopping point, due to lack of interest from contributors and advertisers (WSGA Records, Box 1). For 70 years, Distaff did not release a new edition, but in 1991, Distaff started up again. This revival, however, only lasted until 1993, when the magazine again went dormant. On the second run of Distaff, the goal of the editorial team was slightly altered. Instead of focusing exclusively on the creative outputs of women students, they also wanted Distaff to be a space for anyone whose voice was suppressed and not being adequately platformed elsewhere (Vol. 5, No. 1, pg. 2).

Women’s literary publications have been a popular source of student and cultural engagement at Duke. Since the late 1990s, several magazines have been published with the support of the Duke Women’s Center as well as the Center for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, two of which include Womyn and Muse. Distaff being the first publication to center the experiences and creativity of women students may have contributed to the successes of these future publications.

If you’re interested in learning more about student publishing at Duke, be sure to stop by the Sperling Case (outside the Biddle Suite) to see “Power of the Press: Student Publications in Duke University Archives,” which will be on display until August 2026. The exhibit highlights publications from student groups throughout different time periods and provides an introduction to the world of politics behind student publishing.

Looking for a place to store your student group’s records, your cloud storage is filling up, or you want your group’s legacy to be documented? Donate your group’s records to the University Archives! To learn more about the student archiving initiative, visit this LibGuide, or email AskRL@duke.edu.

Events, Exhibits, Featured, From Our Collections

5th Annual Black Lives in Archives Day – April 10, 2026

April 3, 2026 John Gartrell Leave a comment

Post contributed by John B. Gartrell, Director, John Hope Franklin Research Center

Black Lives in Archives Day

Friday, April 10, 2026

11am-3pm

Gothic Reading Room, Rubenstein Library 2nd Floor

Please join us for the Rubenstein Library’s 5th annual Black Lives in Archives Day on Friday, April 10. This one-day immersive, “please touch” exhibition will spotlight collections from the Rubenstein Library’s rare and special items that document Black life and culture. This event is free and open to the public.

Featured, Franklin Research Center, Movement History Initiative, News and Features

Maisha Moses and the Young People’s Project – Special Feature from the Movement History Initiative

March 31, 2026 John Gartrell Leave a comment

Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Movement History Initiative Coordinator

This Women’s History Month, the Movement History Initiative (MHI) is proud to highlight Maisha Moses as the Executive Director of the Young People’s Project (YPP). YPP is one of the organizations that have partnered with MHI’s goal to carry forward the spirit of the organizing tradition. Using math literacy the Young People’s Project, works “to develop the abilities of elementary through high school students to succeed in school and in life, and in doing so involves them in efforts to eliminate institutional obstacles to their success” (Misson, The Young People’s Project)

Maisha Moses

Early Life and Influences:

Maisha’s early childhood was heavily influenced by her parents, veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Bob and Janet Jemmott Moses. She was born in Tanzania, where her parents were teaching at a rural school in Samé. She was educated at a very early age and could read before she started school. “Teaching and education was really deep in their spirits and how they moved through the world, and so I really benefited from that.”

Three people, man in blue jacket, woman in black coat, woman in pink coat with blue scarf — (l to r) Bob Moses, Maisha Moses, Janet Moses. “Civic Leadership Spotlight: Cambridge family brings civil rights and math to kids” Cambridge Community Foundation, Dec. 19, 2018

Maisha benefited greatly from their experience as organizers during the Civil Rights Movement. Even after their time with SNCC , her parents remained connected with other organizers, many of whom often visited the family once they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976. Maisha recalls learning freedom songs and being deeply moved by the energy that was brought into the house by her “extended family.” She would meet influential powerhouses like Ella Baker and see the respect from others that they had for her father, especially when she heard him speak publicly for the first time at Amzie Moore’s funeral.

Maisiah’s Future and the Algebra Project:

While in the 8th grade, Maisha’s father began teaching her and some of her peer’s algebra because it was not offered at the school. This would be the start of the Algebra Project, an organization, whose goal was to use math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee that every child has a quality education and understanding of complex mathematics that was needed in the coming age of technology.

Maisha says that her father’s approach to mathematics was “powerful and deep enough that they helped me make my own sense of calculus and so I think I was hooked by all of that.”

Attending Harvard University allowed her to continue to volunteer with the growing Algebra Project. She started by helping with the Saturday program facilitated by her father and later began working with her sister and her peers that were in the 8th grade.

Man in red shirt posing next to woman in pink shirt — Bob Moses and Maisha Moses at Freedom Summer 50th in Jackson, MS.

Her father’s method of teaching math was eye opening. His technique of viewing the classroom as a meeting space, drawn from his experience of organizing in the rural South, felt “very familiar… but at the same time, it was so different from anything else that I have experienced in all my education.”

After graduating in 1991 Maisha and the Algebra Project would become a 501(c)(3). What would she do next? Become an educator? No, she wanted more experience before stepping into that role. Pursue a master’s degree? Not yet, she didn’t have a clear path on what to study. What she did know was that she wanted to find her place and purpose to create systemic change, just as her parents and “extended family” had. “I felt like I had a lot to give, you know, having received so much. I had a sense of that.”

Maisha told her father she wanted to keep working with the Algebra Project. “I didn’t see anything else that was hitting all the buttons for me like the Algebra Project.” So, he sent her to a junior high school in Oakland, California to help support teachers and implement the curriculum he had developed. She stayed in Oakland until 1997, helping shape the program to fit the school and its environment.

Maisha and the Young People’s Project (YPP)

While Maisha was in Oakland, her father and brothers were in Jackson, Mississippi establishing what would be the start of the Young People’s Project. Working with a group of students from Brinkley Middle School in an abandoned science classroom, they would play the flagway game and continue expanding their knowledge of mathematics.

Group of children playing — Children at Brinkley YPP

Man in black shirt speaking to class of students — Omo Facilitating Shelby

As the Moses brothers and students at Brinkley began laying the foundation for the YPP, Bob Moses called Maisha from Oakland to have her help establish the budding organization. She was tasked with developing a training program for the middle and high school students that would serve as math literacy workers. Years later, Bob Moses’s insight and Maisha’s leadership proved invaluable as YPP grew out of the classroom at Brinkley Middle and into other institutions of education. Omo Moses wrote in his memoir “White Peril: A Family Memoir,” that Maisha’s involvement in the early stages of YPP “created space for the spirit of love to flourish” calling her YPP’s mother.

The Young People’s Project Today

Today Maisha serves as the Executive Director of the Young People’s Project. For thirty years the organization has stayed true to its original cause of giving young people the space to organize and teach themselves and one another through mathematics. In 2005, support from the National Science Foundation made it possible to open a second office in Boston, with expansion into high schools in Chicago and Michigan soon after.. While maintaining close ties to the Algebra Project, YPP has also partnered with the Education Testing Service and, in 2015, extended its impact internationally by bringing the Flagway Tournament to Dublin, Ireland. Grounded in its tradition of grassroots organizing, the organization also helped inspire “Finding Our Folk” (FOF), a student-led response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the government’s failure to respond effectively.

Woman in black shirt holding microphone — Maisha Moses at Flagway

The Young People’s Project offers two signature programs: the Flagway Tournament and Math Playground. Flagway™, a fast-paced, team-based math game, allows students to decode number patterns and race their solutions, building fluency, strategy, and pride. In 2025, YPP hosted its 9th National Flagway Tournament at the University of San Francisco, bringing together seven teams and about 200 students, educators, and families. Math Playground extends this work to broader audiences, creating interactive spaces where math becomes shared and engaging. YPP has facilitated seven Math Playgrounds across three states, reaching hundreds of participants, including more than 350 students and 225 community members. Together, these programs embody YPP’s mission to make math collaborative, empowering, and alive. The 10th Flagway Tournament will be hosted May 16th this year at MIT campus Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The growth of the Young People’s Project and Maisha as a leader and math literacy expert is a testament to the power of the organizing spirit as it has transformed over time. The Young People’s project remains rooted in the belief that young people have the ability to lead their own learning and transform their own communities, just as Maisha has remained rooted within the legacy of her parents’ work. Together they continue to carry the spirit of the movement forward.

And Don’t Forget!

The 10th National Flagway™ Tournament and Math Playground

May 16, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM | MIT Campus (Cambridge, MA)

The 10th National Flagway™ Tournament and Math Playground is a dual-format, youth-led celebration of math literacy bringing together students, families, educators, and community partners on the MIT campus during the 2026 Year of Math.

The day begins with the Math Playground—an open, family-friendly arena featuring 25+ interactive math games designed for K–8 learners and led by high school Math Literacy Workers (MLWs). Participants can explore hands-on activities that make math creative, collaborative, and accessible for all ages.

The event culminates in the National Flagway™ Tournament, a fast-paced, team-based competition built on the Möbius function, where middle school teams are coached by high school MLWs using YPP’s distinctive near-peer leadership model. Students don’t just solve math problems—they strategize, move, collaborate, and lead!

Families, educators, and supporters are invited to attend, observe, participate, and celebrate a public vision of math where leadership, inclusion, and opportunity take center stage.This is a free event!

Watch a preview of the event here!

Archive of Documentary Arts, Featured, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive

“Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner” Wins 2026 Rubenstein Library Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award

March 27, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

The 2026 Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award, presented by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, has been awarded to Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner, directed by Brad Bailey in association with Gwen Carr and the Mothers of the Movement.

The short documentary centers on Gwen Carr’s enduring fight for justice following the 2014 death of her son, Eric Garner, after being pinned to the ground in a chokehold by a police officer in Staten Island. The New York City medical examiner stated the cause of death as a homicide. Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry in protests against police violence and systemic racism across the United States. Filmed over several years, the documentary places Carr’s voice at its core, tracing her transformation from grieving mother to nationally recognized advocate for accountability and human rights.

Through intimate, long-term engagement with Carr and her family, Her Fight, His Name documents her evolution from private citizen to public advocate. The film follows her testimony, organizing, and national advocacy work, offering viewers rare access to the sustained emotional and political labor required to pursue accountability. By foregrounding Carr’s perspective, the documentary restores depth and humanity to a story often reduced to viral footage.

The film traces a complex history of love, loss, family, and community. As Carr continues her fight for accountability, she endures the loss of her daughter and later her husband, revealing how private grief and public struggle unfold side by side. Yet the documentary also shows how activism generates new forms of care and solidarity. Through the communities she builds and joins, Carr finds strength, connection, and joy. In honoring this multifaceted portrait, the award recognizes the power of documentary storytelling to sustain moral witness over time.

Director Brad Bailey

Director Brad Bailey said, “Documentary filmmaking is, at its core, an act of preserving memory. Through years of listening and filming with Gwen Carr, this project sought to create a lasting record of family, community, and lived experience. My hope is that the film helps carry these stories forward so they remain part of how we understand our recent past.”

Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist at Duke, said, “While the film presents a powerful portrait of Gwen Carr’s advocacy, only a small portion of the interviews appear on screen. Through this award, the full interviews will be preserved at the Rubenstein Library and made available to students and researchers, ensuring that the deeper record of lived experience and testimony remains accessible for generations.”

Caitlin Margaret Kelly, Curator for the Archive of Documentary Arts, added, “We are excited to add this body of work and interviews to the archive at Duke University, where new generations of students and researchers can learn first-hand from the interviews with Gwen Carr and follow the unfolding of the film Her Fight, His Name through Brad Bailey’s work.”

The Rubenstein Library will be inviting Brad Bailey to Duke and Durham for a community screening and conversation of the film in fall semester 2026. Exact date and location will be announced later this year.

The Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award is co-sponsored by the Human Rights Archive and the Archive of Documentary Arts. It supports outstanding documentary artists and activists exploring themes of human rights and social justice. The award aims to expand the library’s digital documentary holdings while ensuring long-term preservation and access.

The award honors projects that transcend simple information sharing. It celebrates digital storytellers who create deeply contextualized, multi-sensory works that may include still images, moving images, oral histories, soundscapes, and documentary writing.

Winners receive $3,500 and are invited to present their work at Duke University, where they collaborate with archivists to preserve their materials.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library has a longstanding commitment to human rights and the documentary arts. Its collections represent the work of global creators and document the power of documentary to inspire action and transform the world.