All posts by Will Hansen

Digital Collections, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, TRLN CCC Project

North Carolina Interviews added to Behind the Veil Digital Collections

February 7, 2014 Will Hansen 2 Comments

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce the addition of 310 oral history interviews to the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. The addition to the collection documents the lives of African Americans from the state of North Carolina who lived through the era of Jim Crow in the Charlotte, Durham, Endfield, New Bern and Wilmington areas. The digitization efforts were made possible by the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Content, Context and Capacity grant project to document the Long Civil Rights Movement in the state. Researchers now have access over 400 digitized interviews from the collection from states throughout the American South.

To listen to the digitized interviews please visit – http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/behindtheveil/

To view the entire collection, please visit – http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/btv/

To learn more about the making of digital collection, please visit the Digital Collections blog: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/bitstreams/2014/02/07/announcing-310-new-behind-the-veil-interviews-and-a-new-blog/

For more information, contact, John B. Gartrell, Director, Franklin Research Center.

Bingham Center, News and Features

Laura Micham to Receive Career Achievement Award

February 6, 2014 Will Hansen

Laura Micham, Merle Hoffmann Director of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture and curator of gender and sexuality history collections in the Rubenstein Library, has been selected as the 2014 winner of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Career Achievement Award. The award honors significant long-standing contributions to women’s studies in the field of librarianship over the course of a career. Laura will receive the award at 8:30 a.m. on June 30, 2014, at the WGSS program during the American Libraries Association’s Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

Here at the Rubenstein Library we’re thrilled for Laura, but not surprised by this recognition of her achievements. Of the many possible testimonials to her efforts by donors, students, scholars, colleagues, and other Bingham Center patrons, a few will suffice here. Victoria Hesford, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University and a researcher in the Bingham Center’s collections, writes, “To say that Laura is an archival dynamo whose energy and enterprise constantly brings new people, new collections, and new ideas to the Bingham Center, would be an understatement! She has ideas, she works collaboratively, and she is not easily put off by the inevitable complexities and difficulties of bringing a project to life.”

Jeanette Stokes, Executive Director of the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, whose records are held in the Bingham Center, adds, “Laura’s work has made the Sallie Bingham Center a vibrant presence on the campus of Duke University, in the community of Durham, North Carolina, and in the wider academic community nationally and internationally. The center has become a hub for information, resources, and programming on women’s history and culture. It makes creative use of its collection while cooperating with campus and community groups to provide outstanding educational programs.”

Naomi Nelson, Director of the Rubenstein Library, writes, “The award announcement cites Laura’s expertise, advocacy for archives, leadership, and vision, and it notes her collaborations across the university and her proactive work with students. Under Laura’s leadership, the Bingham Center has grown in important and dynamic ways and, at the same time, she has made significant contributions to the larger profession.”

Please join us in congratulating Laura!

Events, Symposia and Conferences

Bound Images: Maps in Books, 1500-1850

January 24, 2014 Will Hansen

Date: Thursday, January 30, 2014
Time: 3:00-5:00 PM
Location: Rubenstein Library instruction room (Perkins 318)

A BorderWork(s) Lab event.

When most people think of maps and books they immediately imagine maps, or atlases. Yet maps illustrate and contribute to a larger argument in books of all kinds, including histories, geographies, travel accounts, and novels. Beyond atlases, maps are often studied or collected as individual items, or “sovereign” maps, in the words of French scholar Christian Jacob. This discussion dethrones the sovereign map, asking what changes theoretically and curatorially when we think about maps as “bound images” and a graphic part of the story told by authors and printers in book form.

Panelists:
Carla Lois, CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Matthew Edney, University of Southern Maine, History of Cartography Project
Ricardo Padron, University of Virginia
Susan Danforth, John Carter Brown Library
Jordana Dym, Humanities Writ Large/BorderWork(s) Lab, Duke; Skidmore College

A range of bound cartographic materials from the Rubenstein Library’s collections will be on display. For more information, see here on the BorderWork(s) Lab website.

Sponsored by the BorderWork(s) Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute and Humanities Writ Large.

Events, Exhibits, New at the Rubenstein Library, Readings and Talks

Unveiling the Haitian Declaration of Independence

January 14, 2014 Will Hansen 4 Comments

HaitiDeclaration1blog — The first page of the manuscript copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence now at the Rubenstein Library.

Date: Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Time: 5:00-7:00 PM
Location: John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies, 2204 Erwin Road, Room 240
Contact Information: Will Hansen, william.hansen(at)duke.edu

The Rubenstein Library has acquired a very rare manuscript copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence. This declaration by the army of black Haitians, of liberty from French colonial rule or death, made on 1 January 1804, carries strong echoes of the rhetoric of the American Revolution some thirty years earlier. It established the first black republic in the world, and is the first declaration of independence written after the American version of 1776.

The scribal copy of the Declaration now at the Rubenstein was found in the papers of Jean Baptiste Pierre Aime Colheux de Longpré, a French colonizer of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) who fled the country during its revolution and settled in New Orleans. The copy was very likely made shortly after the Declaration took effect on 1 January, 1804. It is one of only a few contemporary or near-contemporary manuscript copies known to scholars, joining copies at the British Library, the French National Archives, and the National Library of Jamaica.

A celebration of the Haitian Declaration of Independence will be held on 21 January at the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies, in collaboration with faculty and staff from Duke’s Haiti Lab. A round table of scholars of the Haitian Declaration, including Duke Professors Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, Assistant Prof. (and Duke PhD) Julia Gaffield of Georgia State University, and Prof. Richard Rabinowitz and Lynda Kaplan of the American History Workshop, will discuss its history and creation. The Rubenstein Library’s manuscript copy of the Declaration will be on display in the Center’s gallery. Haitian specialties will be served.

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library

Fantastical Characters for Twelfth Night

January 5, 2014 Will Hansen

Tonight is Twelfth Night, with the conclusion of the twelve days of Christmas (and coming of the Epiphany celebration) on tomorrow, 6 January. In England, Twelfth Night is a time of celebration with rich food and drink; traditionally, and especially in the Tudor era, it was also a festival of fantasy and role-reversal presided over by a Lord of Misrule. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was written as a fitting performance for the night.

By the nineteenth century, these associations were inspiring many commercial endeavors as well. A recently acquired sheet of advertisements for a lottery to be held in January 1820 features a menagerie of 24 Twelfth Night characters, mostly anthropomorphic edibles, from “Tabby Turnip” to “Solomon Sirloin.”

Uncut sheet of lottery puffs featuring Twelfth Night characters by George Cruikshank, 1820.

These advertisements, known as “puffs,” were made to be cut apart and handed out on the street to encourage the purchase of lottery tickets. The characters were engraved by George Cruikshank, and this sheet is a rare, early example of his work, before he became famous as a caricaturist and illustrator of the works of Charles Dickens and others.

Twelfth Night, with its sudden elevation of commoner to (mock) royalty, was a logical association to cultivate for a lottery. The eight-line poems beneath each character all promote the lottery. For instance, the poem for Timothy Tun-Belly reads:

With a bottle and glass, and a favorite Lass,
For old Daddy Care, what care I?
Supporters like mine — fill’d with generous wine,
Blue Devils and Care may defy.
By the drop in my eye, — a scheme I espy;
My cellars with liquor to store,
This Month, Sirs, the Twelfth, gives us Lottery wealth,
And Fortune I mean to implore.

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Five

December 13, 2013 Will Hansen

To celebrate the holiday season this week, we’re highlighting a few of the many wonderful books that the Rubenstein Library has received as gifts over the past year. We are truly grateful for the generosity of our donors. A hearty “Happy holidays” and thanks and to all of those who have contributed to making 2013 a wonderful year for the Rubenstein Library!

A beautiful copy of one of the pinnacles of American literature, the 1854 first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods, has been donated to the Rubenstein Library by Professor Leland Phelps.

Thoreau’s genre-bending record of his experiment in simple living in the forest by Walden Pond has been an important influence and inspiration for literary scholars, naturalists, environmentalist, philosophers, economists, and many others for over 150 years. While it was immediately recognized as an important work by many of Thoreau’s transcendentalist contemporaries, such as his friend (and owner of the land on which Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 2000 copies printed for the first edition took almost five years to sell.

The copy donated by Professor Phelps to Duke was formerly owned by Professor Frederick Whiley Hilles and is in excellent condition, with its original binding and remarkably bright pages. Thanks to this gift, students and scholars at Duke will have the opportunity to experience this iconic text in its original form, nearly as it would have been encountered in 1854, fresh from the press.

Walden is one of the highlights of a large donation by Professor Phelps this year, which also includes other editions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature such as a remarkable collection of William Faulkner’s works (including many first editions), and many important books in art and architecture. We are honored by his support of the Rubenstein Library and thankful for his remarkable donation!

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Four

December 12, 2013 Will Hansen

The Münchener Bilderbogen are a famous series of illustrated broadsides produced in Munich for over fifty years, from 1848 into the first decade of the twentieth century. Important documents in the development of comic strips and cartooning, and quite influential in Europe’s visual culture in the nineteenth century, the Bilderbogen were created by German artists, illustrators, and writers such as Wilhelm Busch, Lothar Meggendorfer, and Adolf Oberlander.

MunchenerBilderbogenStallmeister — “Der Stallmeister und sein Pferd” (“The Stableman and His Horse”), *Munchener Bilderbogen* no. 1014, ca. 1886.

Seventeen bound volumes of the Bilderbogen were donated this year to the Rubenstein Library by Christine L. Shore in honor of her mother Ottilie Tusler Lowenbach.

MunchenerBilderbogenRabbits — “Vom Osterhasen” (“The Easter Bunny”), *Munchener Bilderbogen* no. 1015, ca. 1886.

This generous gift complements existing Rubenstein Library holdings related to caricature and cartoons, and our comic book collections. Our thanks to Christine Shore!

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Three

December 11, 2013 Will Hansen

Frontispiece of Holy Bible, with circular photographic onlay.

Funds donated to the Rubenstein Library in 2013 facilitated the purchase of two very different books featuring photographs. One, the Holy Bible published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1865, features twenty mounted photographs by Francis Frith. Frith, an Englishman, was a pioneering photographer of the Middle East in the 1850s, and some of the early photographic views of Holy Land sites such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem are included in this Bible. This purchase was made possible by the addition of funds to the Leland Phelps Rare Book Endowment Fund.

"Bethlehem with Church of the Nativity," by Francis Frith, from Holy Bible. — “Bethlehem with Church of the Nativity,” by Francis Frith, from Holy Bible, 1865.

A generous donation of funds for materials related to military history facilitated the acquisition of Lee and Amy Pirkle’s work A Real Fighting Man. Published in an edition of twenty copies in 2012, A Real Fighting Man is an artist’s book that combines art based on snapshots sent home by Lee Pirkle (Amy’s grandfather) from the Korean War with text chosen by Amy from an essay that Lee wrote about his wartime experience.

PirkleRealFightingMan — Lee and Amy Pirkle, *A Real Fighting Man*. Image courtesy of Vamp & Tramp Booksellers.

A Real Fighting Man‘s flag book structure, as seen above, allows the reader to juxtapose sections of image and text in many revealing ways.

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Two

December 10, 2013 Will Hansen 5 Comments

Richard Heitzenrater, William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Church History and Wesley Studies in Duke’s Divinity School, donated a number of books in the fields of law, religion, and literature to the Rubenstein Library this year. Among them is an early printing of the Magna Carta and other laws of England, Magna Charta cum Statutis tum Antiquis tum Recentibus, published in 1587 by Richard Tottell, the foremost printer and bookseller of law books in Elizabethan London.

A rare and important book in any condition, the copy donated by Prof. Heitzenrater is particularly notable for its unusual format: the paper is much larger than in typical copies of the book, and the printing confined to one upper corner of each page, as seen on the title page below.

This format allowed for very large margins in which those in the legal professions could record their notes and cite additional or updated statutes. Indeed, this copy contains many early (probably seventeenth-century) handwritten notes and citations throughout the text.

Our thanks to Prof. Heitzenrater for this important document of the Elizabethan era!

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day One

December 9, 2013 Will Hansen 1 Comment

A donation from Duke Professor of French Studies Helen Solterer features rare and iconic works of Irish and American literature. These volumes came from the library of Elizabeth Solterer, whose father, Constantine Curran, was a friend of James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, and other important figures in twentieth-century Irish literature.

The donation includes a very rare first edition, first printing of At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (the pseudonym of Brian O’Nolan). The book’s publication was poorly timed, appearing a few months before Great Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. Only 240 or so copies were sold before most of the unsold stock was destroyed in a London bombing raid by the German Luftwaffe in 1940. Its reputation as a groundbreaking and hilarious work of comedic metafiction has grown from a small cult following, and it now features regularly in lists of best English-language novels and novels of the twentieth century. Copies of the edition printed before World War II are exceptionally rare, especially in the original dust jacket, present on the copy now at the Rubenstein Library.

Another highlight of the donation is a 1934 edition of the Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats featuring two handwritten lines of his poem “Into the Twilight” and his signature, dated to December 1935.

Other books in the donation include signed works by Robert Frost and Henry James. We thank Prof. Solterer for this marvelous donation!

Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University