We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012. Two newly acquired selections will be featured in a post every day this week. All of these amazing resources are available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!
Kitab Dala’il al-Khairat wa Shawariq al-Anwar fi Dhikr al-Salah ‘ala al-Nabi al-Mukhtar [Guidebook of Benefits and Illuminations of Prayers to the Chosen Prophet]. The Dala’il al-Khairat of al-Jazuli (Al-Jazuli, Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad ibn Sulaymana, d. 1465) is one of the most popular devotional works in Islam, comprising a cycle of prayers to the prophet Muhammad. The manuscript now at Duke is Arabic written in the Maghrebi script, and likely was created in North Africa in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The manuscript also contains other prayers and devotional texts. Its calligraphy and ornamentation are beautiful witnesses to a text of surpassing importance in the Muslim faith.
Opening from the newly acquired manuscript of the Dala’il al-Khayrat. Arabic in Maghrebi script.
National Coalition for Haitian Rights Records: This organization is dedicated to furthering the civil and international human rights of the Haitian community in the US and helping influence US policy over Haiti to support human rights. In over 146 linear feet of material, the records document the activity of the Coalition from 1981 to 2003. This adds to a growing collection of material in the Human Rights Archive related to human rights in Haiti; see the Human Rights Archive’s LibGuide for more information on other collections related to human rights in Latin America.
We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012. Two newly acquired selections will be featured in a post every day this week. All of these amazing resources will be available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!
Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae: This 1482 incunable (or book printed in Europe before 1501) printed in Tarvisio, Italy, is a rare edition of one of the great Renaissance guides to rhetoric. The remarkable copy now at Duke is unique, bearing the extensive handwritten annotations of a 16th-century scholar, Augustino Pistoia (or Agostino da Pistoia). In addition, Pistoia drew two self-portraits at the end of the text, and noted the date on which he finished reading the work: “On the 20th of October [?] 1583 I Augostino Pistoia have read this book by Quintiliano under the teaching of mag. Pompeo Gilante my master/ 1583 1584.”
Self-portrait by Augustino Pistoia, in Quintilian, Institutiones Orationae (1482).
Edith Ella Baldwin Papers: Born in 1870 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Ms. Baldwin was an artist, craftswoman, and author. Frustrated in her early attempts to publish her writings, Baldwin decided instead to keep one copy of each of her works for posterity, making a binding for each herself. The collection consists of 38 unpublished volumes of stories, novels, poetry, lecture notes, and family history, including a novel about sex education for women, diary excerpts describing her visits with painter Mary Cassatt in 1890s Paris, and copies of letters from her aunt, Ellen Frances Baldwin, dating from 1848 to 1854. Edith Baldwin’s writings tend to cover timeless themes of religion and love, although many compositions feature contemporary issues such as automobiles, labor strikes, and women’s rights. The Baldwin Papers add to the rich body of materials documenting women’s literary expression in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.
We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012. Two newly acquired selections will be featured in a post every day this week. All of these amazing resources will be available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!
Phantom des Menschenhirns, by Ludwig Fick: Published in 1885, this ephemeral pamphlet includes two diagrams of the brain. One diagram features moveable flaps, making this item a nice addition to the History of Medicine Collections‘ anatomical flap books, highlighted in last year’s Animated Anatomies exhibit.
Diagram of the brain, from Ludwig Fick, Phantom des Menschenhirns (1885).
Joy Golden Papers: Joy Golden was a well-known advertising copywriter who started her own creative company, Joy Radio, in the 1980s that specialized in humorous radio advertising. She did a series of commercials for Laughing Cow Cheese that became particularly well known. She also was active in the Friars Club, including holding the position of Governor. Her papers include files related to her work in advertising from the 1960s forward, and audiotapes of many of the radio advertisements created by her company. Her papers add to the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History‘s rich collections on women and advertising and the development of radio advertising.
Joan Papert Preiss, tireless activist and organizer for farm workers’ rights, passed away in Durham on June 1, 2012. Preiss helped to found and chaired the Triangle Friends of the United Farm Workers (TFUFW) from 1973 into the 2000s. One of the most active groups in the Eastern U.S. associated with the United Farm Workers of America, TFUFW helped to bring Cesar Chavez, Baldemar Velásquez, and Dolores Huerta to speak at Duke and organized regional boycotts of products to improve conditions for migrant farm workers. Preiss also served on the board of the National Farm Worker Ministry, which has published a memorial to her, and was involved with the work of Student Action with Farmworkers since its foundation at Duke in 1992.
Joan Preiss and Baldemar Velásquez, founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. From the Joan Preiss Papers.
Preiss’s legacy can be explored in her papers at the Rubenstein Library. The papers contain extensive documentation of boycotts coordinated by TFUFW with other groups, including the creative and colorful picket signs, leaflets, and other materials (such as the “pickle tiara”) for which Preiss became known in Durham and beyond.
Preiss wearing her pickle tiara during the FLOC boycott of Mt. Olive Pickles. From the Joan Preiss Papers.
Karen Glynn, long-time Photography Archivist in the Archive for Documentary Arts, retires today to move to South Africa. In her honor, we present some images of travel and farewell from our digitized collections. Happy trails, Karen! We’ll miss you!
Sidney Gamble, Men in boxcar ("Travelling Fourth Class"), China, 1917-1919. From the Sidney D. Gamble Photographs.William Gedney, South Dakota, 1966-1967. From the William Gedney Photographs and Writings.ca. 1980s, from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives.Gary Monroe, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1994. From the Gary Monroe Photographs.
Boy with fish in Guantanamo Camp #9, ca. 1994-95. From the Americans for Immigrant Justice Records.
We recently completed processing the Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ) Records. Formerly the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC), AIJ is a not-for profit legal organization that advocates on behalf of immigrants and refugees, including those being held at various detention centers, such as Guantanamo, Krome and Turner Guilford Knight. The majority of the material in this collection deals with the Haitian refugee population in Florida. Two aspects of this collection struck me. First, while this collection contains material that addresses the Haitian refugee crises from a broader political and historical perspective, it is notable for the quantity of material it contains that focuses on the stories and testimonies of individual refugees, in their own words, in documents such as affidavits and correspondence.
The second aspect of this collection that struck me as particularly interesting is the amount of material it contains on children – child refugees and detainees, children seeking asylum, children stranded in Haiti, and especially unaccompanied minors. As I became more familiar with this collection, I became especially interested in the detained child as both a fact and an idea. Sifting through accounts both by and about children of their emotional, mental, and physical experiences in detention, I began to wonder how the search for asylum and subsequent detention is conceived of by children.
The reason why this subject fascinated me is because of the strong incongruity in the idea of the child, on the one hand, and the idea of imprisonment of any kind, on the other, an incongruity that suggested to me that accounts of children in detention might uniquely illuminate how we think about detention and refuge. We often associate children with places of refuge, with a powerful need for and unique faculty to find or construct places of refuge. One example of this faculty is play. As I looked through photographs of and read testimony by children detained at Guantanamo, I began to wonder what place “play” has in detention, in homelessness, and in lack of refuge.
Boy holding guitar in Guantanamo Camp #9, ca. 1994-95. From the Americans for Immigrant Justice Records.
The subset of documents about which I am writing are dated from around the early and mid-1990s, during and following the campaign of terror against Aristide supporters. One must bear in mind that the majority of Haitian refugees held at Guantanamo at this time were forcibly returned to Haiti where their lives were imperiled (5,000 Aristide supporters were estimated to be killed in 1993). In fact, many of the children detained at Guantanamo were unaccompanied for precisely this reason – their parents or caretakers had been killed in Haiti during this period. As the AIJ Records reveal, many of these children, upon repatriation, were thus compelled to eke out a living on the streets.
So, how does the child reconfigure the way we conceive of detention? Three photographs from the Photographic Materials Series caught my attention. After I selected them, I asked myself why I had been drawn to them, and I realized that in each, a child or children were holding some kind of object – a fish, makeshift drums, a guitar.
I considered these photographs against the written testimony about and by children detained at Guantanamo (information packets, emergency action requests related to medical conditions, correspondence, affidavits, reports, etc.). The written documentation described abuses, including rape, that were committed at Guantanamo against women and children. Child detainees, not surprisingly, wrote of their desperation and depression (their own words), and observers of these children offered similar accounts. Yet, these children not only subsist at Guantanamo but also, as the photographs above communicate, find ways to play. It is not difficult to perceive a form of resistance in their play, in their insistence upon occupying places that we cannot envision as inhabitable. I was likewise captivated by the photographs in which children are holding objects because they seem to me to manifest the construction of places of refuge within displacement and dispossession. The subjects in these photographs seek asylum in the objects themselves. There is something about gripping an object, possessing that object, that also solidifies the reality of oneself – and this in a place in which that very reality is relentlessly objected to – in abuse, obscurity, neglect, remaining unheard.
Boys playing drums in Guantanamo Camp #9, ca. 1994-95. From the Americans for Immigrant Justice Records.
Post contributed by Clare Callahan, graduate student assistant in Rubenstein Technical Services and the Human Rights Archive.
Doris Duke at Shangri-La, ca. 1960-65. From the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Historical Archives.
As we cruise into summer after another busy semester, here’s a rundown of some notable recent news stories about the Rubenstein Library:
New York’s Museum of Arts and Design is preparing an exhibition entitled “Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art,” according to GalleristNY. The story features a beautiful photo from the Doris Duke Papers on the Shangri La Residence here in the Rubenstein. The exhibition is scheduled to open on September 7, 2012.
Twostories in the Durham Herald-Sun document the Rubenstein Library’s May 15 event to celebrate the publication of Reynolds Price’s final memoir, Midstream, and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his first book, A Long and Happy Life.
The Raleigh News and Observerreported on Durham County Library’s Comics Fest. Rubenstein Assistant Curator Will Hansen spoke about the Library’s comic book collections on a panel entitled “Comics Go to College” with colleagues from Duke and UNC.
The May/June issue of Duke Magazine features a piece on advertising pioneer David Ogilvy, whose career is documented in the Kenneth Roman Papers; an article about Princess Irene’s 1967 visit to Duke by University Archivist Valerie Gillispie; and a column on the American Family Robinson radio serial, rare acetate discs of which are preserved in the Randy Riddle Collection of Race Records and Radio Programs.
Look for more exciting news about the Rubenstein Library in the coming months!
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 Time: 7:00 p.m. Location: Gothic Reading Room, Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus (map) Contact: Will Hansen, (919) 660-5958 or william.hansen@duke.edu
To celebrate the publication of Reynolds Price’s final book, Midstream, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of his first book, A Long and Happy Life, the Libraries welcome a distinguished group of Price’s friends, family, and colleagues to discuss his life, work, and legacy.
Speakers include:
– Rachel Davies WC’72 AM ’89, student and friend of Reynolds Price
– Allan Gurganus, acclaimed author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and White People
– Susan Moldow, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Scribner, and editor of many of Reynolds Price’s books
– William Price T’63, former Director of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, and Reynolds Price’s brother
The event will include a display of materials from the Reynolds Price Papers in the Rubenstein Library, including early handwritten manuscripts of A Long and Happy Life, rare photographs and letters, and more.
Free and open to the public. A reception with refreshments will follow the program.
The Archive of Documentary Arts monthly blog post highlights work in our holdings that has been digitized. This month, we remember the work of photographer Hugh Mangum (1877-1922), currently on exhibit at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Graduate student Sarah Stacke curated the exhibit Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum as her final project for the Graduate in Liberal Studies degree, Spring 2012. The exhibit can be viewed at the Lyndhurst Gallery at the Center for Documentary Studies until October 20, 2012. Keep All You Wish will be viewable online through the Library’s exhibit site shortly.
Hugh Mangum primarily photographed in small towns between Durham, North Carolina, and southern Virginia. The collection is comprised of unidentified glass plate negatives. The images in this blog are jpegs of photographer Bill Bamberger’s inkjet prints created for the exhibit from the Library’s scans of the glass plate negatives.
Post contributed by Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist, Archive of Documentary Arts.
Dates: 2 April- 30 July 2012 Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu
African Americans have had a long and rather complex history in the American motion picture industry. The exhibit “From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Representations of African Americans in Film” seeks to explore the ways in which “Blackness” has been portrayed in films during the 20th century.
