Category Archives: Events

Celebrating Feminists of Faith

Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Tibbie Roberts and B Holt at the 75th Anniversary of the NC Council of Churches. Courtesy of Jeanette Stokes.

Please join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for an afternoon honoring women of faith who have contributed their papers to the Center’s growing collection of materials documenting women’s religious experiences and activities, particularly personal spiritual struggles and women’s involvement in Protestant religious organizations.

We will be celebrating the contributions of Diane Weddington, Bett Hargrave, Bertha “B” Holt, Tibbie Roberts, Nancy Peeler Keppel, and the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South.

This program is sponsored by the Bingham Center and the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. Light refreshments will be served.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.

Dear Diary: Girls Rock!

7/13/10

Dear Zine Diary,

Today was one of my favorite days of the year: zine workshop day at Girls Rock Camp. Amy and I spent the morning doing a zine workshop for about 45 young girls at Durham’s Girls Rock Camp. The day started with everyone standing in a circle, holding hands, and then turning to the person beside them and telling them “You rock!” What a way to start the day. We were able to talk with the girls about zines, as well as more about the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture and how they can come and look at zines in our collection. The girls were so excited to work on their own zine pages. We brought tons of markers, stickers, stamp pads, magazines, and glue sticks for them to make their own zine pages, and they did not disappoint! The zine pages they created included lots of things, such as their band names (Black Lizards, Beach Girls, 24/7, and The Flaming Moonshiners) and stickers proclaiming their love of music (and animals), and included statements like “I want to be a singer, an actress, and an architect.” I was asked how to spell words like “appreciate” and “different.” It was so great. Oh Zine Diary, every day should be like this!

Until next year. . .
Rachel


7/14/10

Dear Zine Diary,

Kelly and I spent yesterday morning at Girls Rock Camp in Chapel Hill. I was amazed at how eager, smart, and enthusiastic the girls were to learn about women’s history and zine-making! We went around the room and introduced each other and Kelly and I found out the names of the girls’ bands. We talked about the three waves of feminism and we even did the wave! We also talked about female stereotypes and how we can fight them together. Then the girls got down to business with markers, stickers, magazines, glue sticks, and stamps. They made pages for their bands as well as individual pages, and as Rachel mentioned, their pages were creative and inspiring. I was so excited to hear the girls talk about everyday injustices and how they want to fix them. Kelly told them that since they are part of the Third Wave they are the future of feminism and will help to decide the future for women. After yesterday, I’m glad to know the future is in good hands.

Rock on,
Alex

For more photos from Girls Rock Camp, visit the Bingham Center’s Flickr photostream!

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, former Bingham Center intern and Conservation Technician, and Alex Krensky, Bingham Center intern.

Networks for Freedom

Date: Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

1862 broadside.

Join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program with historian Deborah Lee, recipient of a 2010-2011 Franklin Research Center travel grant.

Dr. Lee’s research traces the networks of anti-slavery activists that operated between 1810 and 1865 in the upper Potomac River basin. As Dr. Lee writes, “these white and black anti-slavery men and women used sophisticated peaceful means—persuasion, law, philanthropy, colonization, and the underground railroad—to help thousands of individual bondspeople obtain freedom, fray the institution of slavery locally, and advance the movement nationally.”

Dr. Lee’s visit to the RBMSCL will allow her to examine a number of our 19th century manuscript collections, including the Rankin-Parker Papers, the John Rutherfoord Papers, and the Funkhouser Family Papers.

Light refreshments will be served.

Rights! Camera! Action!: Trouble the Water

Date: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Sarah P. Duke Gardens (map and directions)
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

As Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, 9th Ward resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, and her husband Scott, used their Hi 8 camera to film their experience of the storm, from the trepidation of the day before the storm’s landfall to the failing of the levees. Trouble the Water weaves this home movie footage with archival news segments and verite footage shot over the next two years to tell the story of a community struggling to rebuild itself.

The film screening will be preceded by a panel discussion with Wahneema Lubiano and Mark Anthony Neal, both of Duke’s Department of African and African American Studies.

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.

Happy United Nations Charter Day!

The United Nations Conference on International Organization officially convened between April 25 and June 26, 1945 in San Francisco. On 26 June 1945, delegations from 50 countries signed the United Nations Charter, a constituent treaty by which all member nations are bound in an international body and in which organization’s mission and commitment to peaceful resolution are defined.

The Veil by Julie Chen, 2002.
Photo courtesy of Vamp and Tramp Booksellers.


Over fifty years later, book artist Julie Chen wove the text of the famously eloquent Preamble into her 2002 free-standing concertina, The Veil. This carousel book offers the artist’s reflections on the political conflicts in the Middle East through both words and abstract visual meditations which unfold over the text of the charter. The Veil will be featured in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture’s Book + Arts Exhibit this October.

Post contributed by Christine Well, UNC SILS graduate student volunteer, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Drawing Feminism

Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Detail of portrait of Irene Peslikis by Alice Neel. From the Irene Peslikis Papers.

The summer research project season is in full swing!

Next Tuesday, Katie Anania, graduate student in Art History at the University of Texas-Austin and recipient of a Mary Lily Research Grant, will discuss her research on the feminist adoption of drawing as an intimate means of artistic expression.

Anania’s research at the RBMSCL has focused on the Irene Peslikis Papers and the Kate Millett Papers.

Light refreshments will be served.

For more about feminism and art, visit “Stretching the Canvas: Women Exploring the Arts” and “The Feminist Art Movement, 1970s-1980s,” online versions of two exhibits prepared for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture‘s 2007 symposium, Neither Model Nor Muse: Women and Artistic Expression.

Global Women, Local Women

Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Please join us for a program featuring Mary Lily Research Grant recipients Karen Garner and Lori Brown.

Karen Garner, Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at SUNY Empire State College, will discuss her research on U.S. global gender policy in the 1990s using the Sisterhood is Global Institute Records, Robin Morgan Papers, and Robin Chandler Duke Papers.

Lori Brown, Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, will also present her examination of relationships between space, abortion, and issues of access to reproductive health services based on research using our women’s health clinic records.

Light refreshments will be served.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.

Black Petticoats and Bold Protests

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

The first Staff & Scholars Tea of the summer, hosted by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, will feature Mary Lily Research Grant recipients Rebecca Mitchell and Michelle Moravec.

Rebecca Mitchell will present her findings on the proto-feminist aspects and eroticism of Victorian mourning attire. Mitchell is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American.

Michelle Moravec will speak about feminist art activism as a U.S. social movement. Moravec is Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rosemont College.

These two diverse topics will be sure to spark a lively conversation! Light refreshments will be served.

For more about other happenings at the Bingham Center, check out the latest issue of the center’s newsletter!

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.

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.

“You’ve Got . . . Personality: Testimonial and Celebrity Endorsement Advertisements”

Date: 8 April-30 June 2010
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Jackie Reid, 919-660 5836 or j.reid(at)duke.edu

Testimonial advertisements, today seemingly reserved for fading actors, retired politicians, and late-night cable infomercials, were once a mark of innovation and prestige in advertising. This exhibit, a complement to “The Power of Refined Beauty: Photographing Society Women for Pond’s, 1920s-1950s,” highlights some examples of this style of advertising, as documented in the collections of the Hartman Center.

In 1923, JWT created a new advertising campaign for Pond’s creams, based on the testimonials of leading American society women and European titled nobility. That campaign lasted for over thirty years and is the focus of half of the exhibit. Newsletters, internal memos, publications, ads and other items allow the viewer a behind-the-scenes look at bringing a concept to fruition in a long-standing advertising campaign.

Taking a broader view, the other half of the exhibit documents an overview of the use of testimonials and celebrity endorsements in advertising for a range of products. From an 1893 endorsement by arctic explorer Lieutenant Peary for Kodak, to Count Basie for Camel cigarettes, to Coach K for American Express, a wide variety of well-known celebrities are shown endorsing products. Advertisements, reports, and memos illustrate advertisers’ belief that celebrity testimonials could lend products a feeling of familiarity and credibility, while also creating the illusion that to purchase a given product was to belong to an elite cast.

Post contributed by Jackie Reid, Director of the Hartman Center, and Lynn Eaton, Hartman Center Reference Archivist