Category Archives: Bingham Center

Bingham Center, Events, Symposia and Conferences

Women’s Education Symposium Redux: Pedagogy Panel

Date: Friday, 23 April 2010
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Perkins Library Room 118
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu


Next Friday, join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture to watch videos from their 30 October 2009 symposium, “What Does It Mean to Be an Educated Woman?”

This month, we’ll be watching the “Pedagogy Panel.” The full list of speakers, which include RBMSCL Research Services Librarian Elizabeth Dunn, is available on the online symposium schedule. Desserts will be provided!

We’ll miss you if you can’t attend, but—just in case—videos for all three panels are also available online.

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, News and Features, Travel Grants

2010-2011 Mary Lily Research Grants Awarded

Duke University cheerleaderThe Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Mary Lily Research Grants. These grants allow scholars to travel to Durham to conduct research using the Bingham Center’s collections.

  • Katie Anania, Art History, University of Texas-Austin, for dissertation research on the rise of feminism as a framework for evaluating contemporary art.
  • Lori A. Brown, Architecture, Syracuse University, for research for a book examining the relationships between space, abortion, and issues of access.
  • Kate Eichhorn, Culture and Media Studies, The New School, for research comparing zines and scrapbooks as archival collections of ephemera.
  • Julie Enszer, Women’s Studies, University of Maryland, for an examination of lesbian-feminist print culture in Durham, NC, 1969-1989 as part of a historical narrative of lesbian-feminist publishing.
  • Karen Garner, Historical Studies, SUNY Empire State College, for an examination of U.S. global gender policy in the 1990s.
  • Rebecca N. Mitchell, English, University of Texas – Pan American, for research for an article examining the proto-feminist aspects and eroticism of Victorian mourning attire.
  • Michelle Moravec, History and Women’s Studies, Rosemont College, for research on feminist art activism as a U.S. social movement, 1967-1991.
  • Whitney Strub, Women’s Studies and American Studies, Temple University, for research for a book examining the relationships between queer sexuality, LGBT activism, and antigay activity in post-WWII United States.

Watch The Devil’s Tale for news about upcoming discussions with several of the travel grant recipients from the Bingham, Hartman, and Franklin Research Centers.

Bingham Center, Events, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Solidarity with Incarcerated Women

Date: Monday, March 29, 2010
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Duke Women’s Center (map and directions)
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

When we think of prisoners, we generally think of men. Yet according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 114,000 women are currently incarcerated in the United States.

In Monday’s discussion, Victoria Law, author of the newly-released Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women and publisher of Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison, will examine the particular challenges facing incarcerated women and discuss their past and present strategies of resistance.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Duke graduate student and member of the organizing committee for Durham’s Harm Free Zone, will talk about the Harm Free Zone process and facilitate interactive writing exercises based on some of the writings in Tenacious.

This event is co-sponsored by Duke’s Women’s Center, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, and the Archive for Human Rights.

Bingham Center, Events, Symposia and Conferences

Women’s Education Symposium Redux: Scholarship Panel

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Date: Friday, March 26, 2010
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Perkins Library Room 118
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Bring your bag lunch to the library and join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture to watch videos from their 30 October 2009 symposium, “What Does It Mean to Be an Educated Woman?”

This month, the “Scholarship and Education” panel will be shown. The full list of speakers, which include University Librarian Deborah Jakubs, is available at the online symposium schedule. Desserts will be provided!

A viewing of the third panel has been scheduled for 23 April. Stop by The Devil’s Tale in the coming weeks for reminders and more information.

We’ll miss you if you can’t attend, but—just in case—the videos are also available online.

Bingham Center, Events, Symposia and Conferences

Women’s Education Symposium Redux: Activism Panel

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Date: Friday, 26 February 2010
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Perkins Library Room 118
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Beginning this month, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture invites you to grab your lunch and watch videos from their 30 October 2009 symposium, “What Does It Mean to Be an Educated Woman?”

This month, the “Activism and Education” panel will be shown. Visit the symposium schedule to see the list of speakers. Desserts will be provided!

Viewings of the second and third panels have been scheduled for 26 March and 23 April, respectively. Stop by The Devil’s Tale in the coming weeks for reminders and more information.

If you won’t be able to attend the viewings, the videos are also available online.

Bingham Center, News and Features

Remembering Susan Hill

With great sadness, the RBMSCL would like to recognize the passing of Susan Hill, who died Saturday, 30 January, 2010, from breast cancer. Hill gained national prominence as a champion for women’s rights. She was president of the National Women’s Health Organization, a group of abortion clinics in the eastern U.S.

In 2003, Hill donated her papers and the records of the NWHO to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (collection guide here).

“We are honored to preserve the papers of Susan Hill. Our thoughts are with her many friends and family members at this difficult time,” said Laura Micham, Director of the Bingham Center.

Her obituary was published in Raleigh’s News and Observer.

Bingham Center, Exhibits, From Our Collections

Behind the Scenes: Intern Angela DiVeglia

Most people associate Victorian women with high tea and corsets, not with struggles for justice and equality. However, Angela DiVeglia, graduate intern at the Sallie Bingham Center and co-curator of “I Take Up My Pen: 19th Century British Women Writers,” spends much of her days examining the relationships between current feminist thought and the work done by early feminists in the United States and Great Britain.

Angela DiVeglia gives this Frances Power Cobbe pamphlet a thumbs-up.

Several of the items in the library’s current exhibit, such as the pamphlet above (Our Policy: An Address to Women Concerning the Suffrage by Frances Power Cobbe), were produced by strong and outspoken feminists who wrote and lectured widely during a time when women were still expected to remain within the domestic sphere.

DiVeglia writes, “It’s really inspiring and grounding to work with these kinds of materials; it’s easy to think of our own struggles outside of their historical contexts, to feel like we’re the only people fighting these particular fights. Seeing pamphlets and books produced by people like Frances Cobbe and Annie Wood Besant—women who were often ostracized for their work, and who occupy marginal places in history—reminds us that we’re actually part of a huge, rich legacy of people who want to create a better world.”

If you haven’t had a chance to visit the exhibit yet, it will be on display in the Perkins Library Gallery until February 21!

Bingham Center, Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Rare Books

“I Take Up My Pen: 19th Century British Women Writers”

Date: 15 December 2009-21 February 2010
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Meg Brown, meg.brown(at)duke.edu

An Amusing Story by T. Conti
“An Amusing Story” by T. Conti. From the Illustrated London News, 1 April, 1893

Tumultuous, changeable 19th century Britain was the era of the professional woman writer. Amid emerging controversies over women’s suffrage and a woman’s rights over her property, her children, and her own body, women demanded a place alongside men in the world of letters to contribute to cultural discourse, to make their opinions heard, and to tell their own stories.

“I Take Up My Pen: 19th Century British Women Writers” focuses on women’s use of writing as a powerful tool to alter their positions within a social order that traditionally confined them to the home. The women represented here—including Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the Brontë sisters—are lecturers, suffragists, publishers, world travelers, professional writers, poets, journalists, and labor reformers. The exhibit also highlights the fascinating array of literary publications available to 19th century readers and writers: everything from periodicals and the penny press to three-volume bound editions, gift books, pamphlets, letters, and diaries.

Curator Angela DiVeglia arranges exhibit materials
Curator Angela DiVeglia arranges exhibit materials

An online guide to the exhibit offers links to the digitized full-text versions of many rare 19th century works in the RBMSCL’s collections.

“I Take Up My Pen: 19th Century British Women Writers” is presented by the Duke University Libraries and curated by Sara Seten Berghausen, Angela DiVeglia, Anna Gibson, and William Hansen with co-sponsorship from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

For more pictures of the curators installing this exhibit, visit the Duke University Libraries on Flickr!

Bingham Center, From Our Collections, Just for Fun

A Holiday Recipe from Us to You

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This season, as you begin to plan your holiday parties, the RBMSCL would like to offer this gem of a recipe, from 1929’s Electric Refrigerator Menus and Recipes.

Frozen Cheese

1/4 lb. American cheese
1 small cream cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
6 maraschino cherries
6 green mint cherries
1/2 pint cream

Grate the American cheese. Add cream cheese, and mayonnaise dressing and beat thoroughly. Fold in 6 maraschino cherries and 6 green mint cherries, chopped fine, and 1/2 pint cream, beaten stiff. Freeze until set. Remove to serving dish and sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped nuts or paprika. Serve with salad course.

To those of you brave enough to make this, please send us photos. Yum?

Bingham Center, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Zine Mania, Round One: Cristy Road

Date: Monday, 16 November, 2009
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Duke Women’s Center Lower Lounge
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Cristy RoadYou know those issues of Greenzine you have stacked on your bookshelf? Now you’ll finally have your chance to meet writer and illustrator Cristy Road as she visits Duke’s Women’s Center for a reading and discussion.

Road, a Cuban-American from Miami, Florida, has been illustrating ideas, people, and places ever since she learned how to hold a crayon. Blending the inevitable existence of social principles, cultural identity, sexual identity, mental inadequacies, and dirty thoughts, she testifies to the beauty of the imperfect. Today, Road has moved from zines to illustrated novels, although her visual diagram of lifestyles and beliefs remain in tune with the zine’s portrayal of living honestly and unconventionally.

Stop by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture during reading room hours to see issue #14 of Greenzine, one of some 4000 zines (and counting!) preserved in the center’s zine collection.

(Artwork courtesy of Cristy Road: “Hope Beyond Despair” from Greenzine 14, 2004)