Category Archives: Events

From Protest to (PRODUCT)RED

From Protest to (PRODUCT) RED: Generational Shift in U.S. Human Rights Activism

Date: Thursday, 10 February 2011
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

WOLA Logo

The Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies conference kicks off with a celebration of anniversaries: 30 years of human rights activism by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA); the 50th anniversary of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission; and the 100th anniversary of the Organization of American States.

Since WOLA’s founding in 1974, both the human rights community and the community of nongovernmental organizations working on Latin American issues have grown and evolved. Joe Eldridge, Alex Wilde, George Vickers, and Joy Olson—all current and former Executive Directors of WOLA—will discuss how the organization rethinks its position within these overlapping sectors to determine the best contribution it can bring to their collective work. The panel, moderated by Robin Kirk, Director of the Duke Human Rights Center, will explore how human rights challenges and the activism(s) that address them have changed and adapted to the shifting currents of national and international policy and history.

WOLA is the premier U.S.-based human rights organization working on Latin America. The Archive for Human Rights is the repository for the WOLA archives. Since 2008, WOLA and Duke University have co-sponsored the WOLA-Duke Book Award for the best non-fiction work on human rights and social justice in Latin America.

This event is presented by the Archive for Human Rights and co-sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center and the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Post contributed by Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist.

On Feminist Artists, Activists, and Archivists

Date: Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Time: 3:00-4:00pm
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Fond by Kate Eichhorn

Kate Eichhorn, Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at The New School and Mary Lily Research Grant recipient, will speak during her research visit to use the zine collections at the Bingham Center.

Based on over fifteen years of ethnographic and archival research, Dr. Eichhorn’s talk, “Feminist Artists, Activists, and Archivists: Redefining Feminism through the Archive since 1990,” will examine how and why young feminist artists, activists, archivists, and librarians adopted the archive and library as sites of feminist activism in the early 1990s—a period when many established feminist institutions, including presses and bookstores, were collapsing under the pressure of neoliberal restructuring. Her talk will bebased on her book-length project, The Order of Resistance: Redefining Feminism through the Archive, 1990-2010.

(Details about Kate Eichhorn’s 2008 book of poetry, Fond, are available on her website.)

“al margen: Photographs from Latin America and the Caribbean, 2004-2010”

Date: 17 January-1 May 2011
Location and Time: Special Collections Gallery during library hours and Frederic Jameson Gallery, Friedl Building
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu, or Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

al margen (“living on the margin”) is the result of seven years of photography by Petra Barth in fourteen countries of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. 70 gelatin silver prints are on display in two campus venues: 40 prints at the Frederic Jameson Gallery in Friedl Building on East Campus and 30 prints in the Special Collections Gallery.

Patagonia, Argentina, April 2010
Patagonia, Argentina, April 2010

Barth’s photography aims “to tell stories about the everyday lives of people living on the margin—their struggles and their dreams.” In her own words,

I use a spontaneous, intimate approach to photograph the daily life of individuals. I look for quiet, reflective moments when people are unaware of the camera and my presence, and genuine feeling is conveyed. Pieced together, these moments describe, with extraordinary clarity, the living conditions all across Latin America and the Caribbean, from Haiti’s streets to the suburbs of Nicaragua and El Salvador, and from the favelas of Rio to the victims of the recent tsunami in Concepcíon, Chile.

My photographs reveal moments that are not often depicted because they happen every day. My camera simultaneously captures the unusual in the ordinary and the ordinariness of the unusual. We often see images of devastated landscapes and human suffering in the wake of disastrous events, but that is only one part of life. What happens before, after, and in between these times? Despite struggle, there is also happiness and the ability to move on and create new narratives every day.

al margen is a candid photographic work that attempts to establish documentary photography as an art form as well as a method of communication. I would like to raise awareness about the living conditions of those who are marginalized, but I am also interested in people and the beauty of ordinary life.

Petra Barth’s photographs are part of the Archive of Documentary Arts.

al margen was organized by the Archive of Documentary Arts and the Archive for Human Rights. The exhibit is sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, the Department of Cultural Anthropology, International Comparative Studies, and the Duke Human Rights Center.

Join us for an opening reception and panel discussion, as well as a gallery tour led by Petra Barth, on Thursday, Feburary 24th from 4:00-6:00 PM in the Frederic Jameson Gallery. Stay tuned to The Devil’s Tale for more details about this event!

At Home and Abroad with Doris Duke

Date: 13 January – 3 April 2011
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Mary Samouelian, 919-660-5912 or mary.samouelian(at)duke.edu

From 1944-1945, Doris Duke was a war correspondent in Europe for the International News Service.

Who was Doris Duke? Her public persona was that of the glamorous, yet eccentric, heiress who named her butler the executor of her estate, but privately she was determined not to be defined by social expectations or her vast wealth.

The materials on display in “Philanthropist, Environmentalist, Collector: Doris Duke and Her Estates” reveal a much different and more complex story of James Buchanan Duke’s only child. On the surface these artifacts are seemingly unassuming—inventories of furniture, a security ledger, and architectural drawings are amongst the objects in the exhibit—but in fact they paint a picture of an adventurous, intelligent and independent woman, who in many ways was considered ahead of her time. Throughout her life, Doris Duke continued her family’s quiet but innovative pattern of philanthropy, eagerly advocated for the protection of the environment, and pursued her lifelong passion as both a collector and patron of Islamic art.

During your next visit to Perkins-Bostock Library, be sure to stop by the Perkins Library Gallery to see the exhibit on display. Also featured in this exhibit are Doris Duke’s home movies and an interactive map of a journey she made to the Middle East in 1938. If you can’t visit in person, you can enjoy the online exhibit!

Also, please join curators Mary Samouelian and Molly Bragg for a gallery talk and screening of Doris Duke’s home movies on Thursday, February 24th from 4:00-5:00 PM in the Rare Book Room. Stay tuned to The Devil’s Tale for more details about this event!

Update: Listen to Duke Today’s podcast featuring the exhibit curators!

Post contributed by Mary Samouelian, Doris Duke Collection Archivist.

Rights! Camera! Action! Spring 2011 Season

The third season of the popular Rights! Camera! Action! film series begins tomorrow evening with Citizen King, which traces the final five years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life, starting with his momentous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.

Citizen King

We’ll provide free drinks and popcorn, as well as a panel discussion following the film!

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke’s Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

For more about Rights! Camera! Action!’s Spring 2011 season, as well as details about tomorrow’s screening, click below.

Continue reading Rights! Camera! Action! Spring 2011 Season

The End of an Ironclad Mystery?

Sketch of the CSS Virginia.

The Battle of Hampton Roads, fought on March 9, 1862, marks the first time two ironclads engaged in battle: the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack). While both warships escaped destruction that day, neither would survive the year intact. The CSS Virginia was destroyed by the Confederacy in May rather than risk its capture by Union forces. On December 31st, the USS Monitor sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina during a heavy storm. Duke University has ties to both.

In 1973, John G. Newton, Marine Superintendent for the Duke University Marine Laboratory, led a team that discovered the wreckage of the Monitor. Artifacts recovered from the site are currently on display at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. However, the Duke University Archives might have a piece of the Virginia/Merrimack in its possession.

Photo by Mark Zupan.

Earlier this year, the University Archives curated “‘As Far As Possible from Forgetfulness’: The Trinity College Historical Society.” Precursor to the University Archives, the Society was established in 1892, with the objective of collecting material illustrative of the history of North Carolina and the South. The exhibit included artifacts and documents that once belonged to the Society. One of the most popular pieces displayed was a non-descript piece of wood. My co-curators and I found no mention of this item’s identity or significance in the Society’s records, yet we felt strongly that the piece of wood should be included in the exhibit: at some point in the history of the Society, someone believed that piece of wood had historical significance.

On the day of the gallery talk on the exhibit, I delved deeper into resources available in the University Archives in hopes of uncovering any tidbits on the piece of wood. In the Christian Educator (a predecessor, in some respects, to the Chronicle), I found a reference to two pieces of wood donated to the Society in 1896. One was said to be from Libby Prison in Richmond and the other was said to be from the CSS Virginia/USS Merrimack. I mentioned these references at the gallery talk and also stated that a RBMSCL colleague with a background in archaeology noted the piece of wood appeared to have been in water at some point, leading me to speculate that this particular piece of wood might be from the ironclad.

Professor Emeritus of Botany and former director of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens Richard White attended the gallery talk and graciously offered to submit a sample of the piece of wood to a lab in Wisconsin that could potentially identify its species. We were able to obtain a loose sample from the artifact which was then submitted to the Center for Wood Anatomy Research for testing. The lab determined the wood to be of the white oak group.

Further research shows that white oak was often used in the construction of Civil War ironclads, including the Virginia/Merrimack. Is it possible that the mystery of the piece of wood’s identity and significance has been solved?

Post contributed by Kim Sims, Technical Services Archivist for the Duke University Archives.

Book + Art = You!

As this semester winds down, don’t just hit the books. Make one!

For the conclusion of this semester’s Book + Art festival, undergraduate students from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are invited to participate in a juried exhibition of student artists’ books, to be held at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hanes Art Center. Works selected for the exhibition will be displayed in the John and June Allcott Undergraduate Gallery at UNC’s Hanes Art Center. From the works selected for exhibition, one will be awarded best-in-show honors.

Rules

  • The exhibit is open to undergraduate students from Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
  • All entries must be original work by the artist.
  • There is no entry fee.
  • Limit three entries per person.
  • Completed entries are due by Dec. 17th, 2010.

You’ll find instructions on submitting your work at the student exhibition’s website.

Or, if you’re in need of some inspiration, visit the Duke University Libraries’ YouTube channel to see students from Merrill Shatzman’s “Book Art: Text as Image” class discussing artists’ books from the Bingham Center‘s collection.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wutd4Prn20s]

Rights! Camera! Action!: Rain in a Dry Land

Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Rain in a Dry Land (82 min.) chronicles the first 18 months of the new American lives of two families finally allowed to immigrate to the United States after over a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp. Beginning with “cultural orientation” classes in Kenya, where they are introduced to such novelties as electric appliances and the prospect of living in high-rise apartment buildings, the film follows the families as they learn that the streets in America are definitely not paved with gold. The families’ sponsors—Jewish Family Services in Springfield, Massachusetts, and World Relief in Atlanta—have pledged six months of support, which makes for a daunting learning curve as the families settle into their new homes.

A discussion with director Anne Makepeace and Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director of Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, will follow.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke’s Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

A Worthy 100 Years

Date: Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Tim Pyatt, 919-684-8929 or tim.pyatt(at)duke.edu

William Preston Few

On November 9, 1910, William Preston Few was inaugurated as the sixth president of Trinity College. Few accepted the presidency of Trinity College promising “to keep the future worthy of the past.” This would be no hollow promise as, over the next three decades, he would transform the strong and growing liberal arts college into a major research university.

To celebrate this pivotal moment in the history of Duke University, Michael Schoenfeld, Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Affairs and Stephen Nowicki, Dean of Undergraduate Education, will give brief remarks on Few’s legacy and lasting impact. University Archivist Tim Pyatt will introduce members of the Few family attending and talk about the materials documenting Few’s life and presidency that will be on display.

Congratulations to the 2010 Middlesworth Award Winners!

On Friday, the RBMSCL celebrated with students and parents at one of our favorite events of the year: the Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize Reception.

Given annually, the Middlesworth Awards recognize the authors of the best undergraduate and graduate student papers based on research in the collections of the RBMSCL. Funding for the awards has been generously provided by Chester P. Middlesworth (A.B., 1949) of Statesville, NC.

2010 Middlesworth Award winners Adrienne Niederriter, Bonnie Scott, and Hannah Craddock.

Undergraduate student winner Adrienne R. Niederriter plumbed the depths of the Hartman Center’s Ad*Access image database for her paper, “Speak Softly and Carry a Lipstick: Government Influence on Female Sexuality through Cosmetics during World War II.”

Undergraduate student winner Hannah C. Craddock received her award for her senior honors thesis, “‘A New Self-Respect and a New Consciousness of Power’: White Nurses, Black Soldiers, and the Danger of World War I.” Craddock’s study focused upon the Ann Henshaw Gardiner Papers and the Samuel Loomis Hypes Papers.

Graduate student winner Bonnie Scott’s paper began at the heart of Duke’s West Campus, as she compared sermons preached in the Duke Chapel to those preached by North Carolina minister Kenneth M. Johnson during the Civil Rights Movement.

Their papers will now become part of the RBMSCL’s collections.

We know that great papers are being researched and written this semester as well. If you are a Duke student, submit your paper and we might be toasting you next fall! Details about submitting your paper can be found here.