Category Archives: Events

Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Rare Books

“Abusing Power: Satirical Journals from the Special Collections Library”

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Date: 22 February-11 April 2010
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Meg Brown, meg.brown(at)duke.edu

"Pobre España" by Anonymous. From La Flaca, 12 September 1872.

The RBMSCL’s outstanding collection of over 60 satirical magazines from Europe and North and South America offers a panoramic view of international journalistic caricature from its origins in the 1830s to the present day. This exhibit, which gathers vivid examples from these periodicals and places them in their historical context, surveys the spectrum of comic journalism, examining the visual languages of graphic satire, and investigating its rhetorical power.

Curated by Neil McWilliam, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies with the assistance of students in his “From Caricature to Comic Strip” course, the exhibit coincides with “Lines of Attack: Conflicts in Caricature,” an exhibition of contemporary and historical graphic satire at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

To see images from the exhibit, and to learn more about the RBMSCL’s collection of satirical journals, visit the exhibit’s online guide.

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, 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!

Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

Tea with Trailblazers: MaryAnn Black

Date: Wednesday 3 February 2010
Time: 2:30 PM
Location: The History of Medicine Reading Room, Duke Medical Center Library (map and directions)
Contact Information: Jessica Roseberry, 919-383-2653 or jessica.roseberry(at)duke.edu

MaryAnn BlackIn celebration of Black History Month, the Duke Medical Center Library and Archives has partnered with the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture to present a special guest, MaryAnn Black, MSW, LCSW. In an informal talk, Ms. Black will share some of her “trailblazing” experiences at Duke and in the Durham community. Ms. Black, who has worked for Duke University since 1981, is the Associate Vice President for Community Relations for the Duke University Health System. Tea and light refreshments will be served.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Do Your Research, Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Instruction

Historical Photography Display

Dates and Times: Wednesday, 27 January 2010, 1:00-5:00 PM and Thursday, 28 January 2010, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Unidentified man wearing a blue tie. Quarter-plate tintype, ca. 1850s. From the Jarratt-Puryear Family Papers.
Unidentified man wearing a blue tie. Quarter-plate tintype, ca. 1850s. From the Jarratt-Puryear Family Papers.

The Archive of Documentary Arts‘ annual display showcases the numerous formats that document the evolution of the photographic process from early daguerreotypes to modern digital prints. The display will include photographs by Mathew Brady, Timothy O’Sullivan, Edward Curtis, Doris Ulmann, Eudora Welty, Lewis Hine, Manual Alvarez Bravo, Minor White, and Walker Evans.

Please note that the display is open by appointment only during the hours noted above. Contact Karen Glynn (919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu) to schedule your appointment.

Unable to visit the display? Over 100 images from the archive’s collection have been reproduced in Beyond Beauty: The Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. This full-color, 128-page publication is our gift to you with a $50 minimum donation to the archive (donation form here).

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Films, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive

Rights! Camera! Action!: Escuela

Date: Tuesday, 26 January 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

Courtesy of Women Make Movies


Rights! Camera! Action! is starting off the spring semester with a screening of Hannah Weyer’s 2002 documentary, Escuela. This film centers on Liliana Luis, the daughter of Mexican American farm workers, as she begins her first year of high school.

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, and the Franklin Humanities Institute, 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.

Events, Exhibits, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Opening Reception for “Conscience of a Nation”

Date: Wednesday 20 January 2010
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Perkins Library Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Jean Hunt, 919-660-5922 or k.j.hunt(at)duke.edu

Join the exhibit curators and the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture as they celebrate the legacy of Professor John Hope Franklin (1915-2009).

Speakers will include Judge Allyson Duncan, a 1975 Duke Law graduate, and Dr. Walter Brown, former dean of North Carolina Central University’s School of Education.

Events, Exhibits, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

“Conscience of a Nation: John Hope Franklin on African American History”

Date: 13 January-31 March 2010
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Janie Morris, 919-660-5819 or janie.morris(at)duke.edu, or Paula Mangiafico, 919-660-5915 or paula.mangiafico(at)duke.edu

Sit-In Songs LP, 1962. From the Frederick Herzog Papers


The recent passing of historian, author, teacher, and activist John Hope Franklin has prompted all of us at the RBMSCL to consider the role of historical research and education in ending injustice, fear, and hatred. As Dr. Franklin wrote in a 3 June 2002 letter to fellow historian Nell Irvin Painter (on display in this exhibit), history’s responsibility is “to illuminate and interpret the past in order to ‘map’ what we think the future should be.”

Inspired by Dr. Franklin’s powerful words, this exhibit is a tribute to his legacy. The exhibit uses materials from the RBMSCL’s collections to explore four themes crucial to understanding the history of African Americans in the United States: African American enslavement, segregation and the Jim Crow era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the contributions of African American historians.

Dr. Franklin’s papers (collection inventory here) are held by the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture. For more information on using this collection, contact the Franklin Research Center staff at franklin-collection(at)duke.edu.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections

“Cedric Chatterley: Photographs of Honeyboy Edwards”

Date: 18 January-28 March 2010
Location and Time: Special Collections Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

David “Honeyboy” Edwards at home on South Wells near 43rd Street, Chicago, Illinois, winter, 1994.


In this series of black and white photographs, photographer Cedric Chatterley traces the life of blues musician David “Honeyboy” Edwards, beginning at his birth place in Shaw, Mississippi and continuing through the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago. Chatterley drove thousands of miles—often with Honeyboy himself—photographing important people and places in Honeyboy’s long career, as well as his performances at blues festivals, concerts, and recording sessions.

Reflecting on the photographs, Chatterley writes, “Touring with Honeyboy in the 1990s, and also traveling alone with his life’s story in hand, were formative times for me as an image maker. . . . From him I learned that there is a rhythm, a cadence, and a particular way in which time and sight and sound and memory—expressed and unexpressed—are inseparable when they come together to shape an image, whether that image is delivered in the form of a song, photograph, or any other form of expression.”

If you’re unable to visit the libraries, you can still see the photographs in the online exhibit.

These photographs belong to the Cedric N. Chatterley Photographs, 1985-2003 (collection inventory here), a collection recently acquired by the RBMSCL’s Archive of Documentary Arts. For more information on using this collection, contact the RBMSCL at special-collections(at)duke.edu.

On 28 January, two additional exhibits of Chatterley’s work—including his handmade cameras—will open at the Center for Documentary Studies. The CDS will also host a public reception for Chatterley that evening at 6 PM. More information is available here.