Category Archives: Events

You’re Invited to a Woman Suffrage Party!

Would you like to help us commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment? As we are working from home to prepare for the upcoming suffrage exhibit, that will hopefully be installed this summer in the Rubenstein Library, we would love for you to help us in your sewing rooms, craft rooms, or dining room tables. Although the RL holds various tapestries, banners, sashes, and other art objects created during the suffrage movement, these original items are very susceptible to light damage. In order to publicize the exhibition in the cases outside the Biddle Rare Book Room, we would love to incorporate YOUR versions – faithful reproductions or your own take – of suffrage banners, pins, sashes, or any kind of suffrage memorabilia! Items can reference the American women’s suffrage movement or other suffrage and voting rights struggles.

Enter your items in our friendly competition. Prizes will be awarded, and winning items will be on display with recognition in the Sperling exhibition case (and returned to creators when the exhibit is finished).

Due date: June 15, 2020

How to submit: Please send images along with a brief description of your completed item to Bingham Center-Exhibitions intern, Jess Epsten (jess.epsten@duke.edu).

Judging: Submissions will be considered by jury consisting of members of the suffrage exhibit group, Meg Brown, Yoon Kim, Laura Micham, Jess Epsten, and Genna Miller (faculty member).

Prizes: A variety of prizes to be determined.

black and white photograph showing a white woman with a large swath of fabric with stars on it drapped over her lap.
Alice Paul sewing stars on Suffrage Flag (ca. 1912-1920).

Be a part of History! Artistic expression of political ideals, such as sewing banners, pennants, sashes and other items and incorporating phrases like “Votes for Women,” was a widespread and powerful strategy for suffragists and part of the long tradition of artistic expression in social justice movements. Equal suffrage leagues even held competitions for poster designs to support the movement. There are great sources of historical objects on the internet for inspiration-feel free to copy one, or create your own!

About the exhibit: Commemorating the ratification of the 19th amendment, “Beyond Supply & Demand: Duke Economics Students Present 100 Years of American Women’s Suffrage” will highlight a range of materials from the Rubenstein Library selected by the 38 undergraduate students in the Fall, 2019 course Women in the Economy. Students in the course were tasked with going beyond simple tools of “supply and demand” to examine original, archival materials from the past one hundred years to curate an exhibit examining the complexities and strategies of the American suffrage movement.

Links for Inspiration!

Some online exhibits:

Some project ideas and supplies:

Array of buttons promoting women's suffrageQuestions?  Please contact
Meg Brown (meg.brown@duke.edu)
Jess Epsten (jess.epsten@duke.edu)
or
Laura Micham (laura.m@duke.edu)

 

Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series Event, Nov. 19: Education of American Surgeons, 1900-1960

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, Curator, History of Medicine Collections.

Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Time: Noon (12 p.m.)
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Room 153), Rubenstein Library
Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu, (919)684-8549

Please join us Tuesday, November 19 at noon for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series. Justin Barr, M.D., Ph.D., will present Creating a Profession: The Education of American Surgeons, 1900-1960.

In 1900, anyone with a medical degree could declare themselves a surgeon and operate on patients.  By 1960, American surgeons had to complete rigorous, uniform, and regulated training called residency.  Influenced by war, supported by the federal government, and driven by professional organizations, the transformation of residencies over these decades from extraordinary, unique experiences to mandated, standardized education helped create a unified profession of surgery that continues to influence health care in this country.

Dr. Barr is currently a general surgery resident and an instructor in the Department of History at Duke University.

All are welcome to attend. Light lunch will be served.

Sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

New Exhibit: “No One Can Suppress Archie Boston”

Post contributed by Kasia Stempniak, John W. Hartman Center intern for 2018-2019 and Ph.D. student in Duke’s Romance Studies department. 

The Hartman Center’s new exhibit, “No One Can Suppress Archie Boston,” on display through October in the Stone Family Gallery, focuses on Archie Boston, a graphic designer whose innovative and socially-conscious designs shed valuable insight into the intersections of race and identity in the advertising world.

Raised in segregated St. Petersburg, Florida in the 1940s, Archie Boston moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s to pursue a career in graphic design. In 1963, Boston and his brother Brad started their own advertising agency, Boston & Boston. As one of the first African-American owned advertising agencies, Boston & Boston faced difficulties securing clients in an almost exclusively white industry. Rather than hide their identity, Boston and his brother confronted the industry with provocative self-promotional ads that made explicit references to slavery and racism. “We wanted our potential clients,” Boston remarked in an interview, “to know that we were a black firm.”

Archie Boston's Pentel ad, featuring an image of him with a display of Pentel pens. The larger text reads: "I told Pentel what to with their pens. And they did it."Boston later worked at the ad agency Botsford & Ketchum where he developed one of his most famous ads for Pentel that boasted the caption, “I told Pentel what to do with their pens.” By placing himself at the center of the ad, Boston subverted the usually invisible presence of the advertising executive. At a time when very few African-Americans worked in advertising, the ad also announced a subtle shift in the demographics of the industry.

In the late 1970s, Boston left the agency to pursue a career as a professor at California State University-Long Beach (CSULB) where he developed the design program for the next thirty years all while still operating his own graphic design firm, Archie Boston Graphic Design.

The first African-American recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Fellow Award, Boston served multiple terms as president of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles where he was the first African-American elected to this position. In his final lecture at CSULB, Boston articulated how design, teaching, and social activism shaped his career: “I want to be remembered as a professor who cared about his students and did what he thought was best for them. I want to be remembered as someone who stood up against criticism and spoke out on controversial issues. And finally I want to be remembered as a designer and educator, someone who documented my experience as an African American.”

Book jacket image from "Fly in the Buttermilk," showing Mr. Boston drinking out of a milk carton through a red-and-white striped straw.
Book jacket image for Fly in the Buttermilk

The Archie Boston Papers offer a comprehensive view of Boston’s wide-ranging career including early student sketches, self-promotional ads for Boston & Boston, corporate ads for Lloyd Bank, Pentel, and Yamaha, awards and university materials related to Boston’s tenure at CSULB as well as Boston’s two published texts, his memoir Fly in the Buttermilk: Memoirs of an African American in Advertising, Design & Design Education (2001) and Lil’ Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City (2009).

Some of Boston’s most important designs, including Boston’s famous Pentel ad, are on display in the exhibit. Other highlights of the exhibit include Boston’s most recent work that engages directly with race and identity, including poetry and designs that Boston created after being inspired by Black Lives Matter, the 2014 events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2017 event in Charlottesville, Virginia. These recent works convey a growing sense of urgency and frustration with the treatment of African-American communities in the United States.

The Archie Boston Papers are available for the public research at the Rubenstein Library.

Teaching with Archives: Duke Summer Doctoral Academy

Date: May 20-24, 2019
Time: 1:30-4:30pm
Location: Rubenstein Library, Room 150
Registration Required. Registration closes May 5, 2019.

Faculty from across the humanistic and interpretive social science disciplines will demonstrate how they have incorporated archival materials into undergraduate teaching, providing students with the chance to hone research and critical thinking skills through close engagement with rich primary sources.  Seminar participants will discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by these new pedagogical approaches, including best practices in using new technologies to present archivally-based research.

Participating faculty include:

Trudi Abel (Rubenstein Library)
Edward Balleisen  (Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies)
Kristen Neuschel (History)
Thomas Robisheaux (History)
Victoria Szabo (Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Information Science & Studies)
Elvira Vilches (Romance Studies)
Clare Woods (Classical Studies)

This course  is offered to Duke doctoral students and Duke post-doctoral fellows at no charge. There is a $500 fee for Non-Duke students and Non-Duke post-doctoral fellows. More details are available on the Duke Doctoral Academy website.

Event: Radio Haiti Culminating Event with Haitian Journalist and Human Rights Activist Michèle Montas

What: Radio Haiti Project Culminating Event: A Conversation with Michéle Montas

When: 5:30 PM, Thursday, April 11

Where: Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4 (C105) Smith Warehouse, 114 S Buchanan BLVD, Durham, NC 27701

Haitian journalist and human rights activist Michéle Montas discusses the legacy of Radio Haïti-Inter, Radio Haiti’s archive at Duke’s Rubenstein Library, and the past, present, and future of justice and impunity in Haiti. With additional remarks by Laurent Dubois, Radio Haiti project archivist Laura Wagner, and AV archivist Craig Breaden. Light refreshments. Free and open to the public.Poster for Radio Haiti Event

The processing of the Radio Haiti Archive and the Radio Haiti Archive digital collection were made possible through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Event: Why Did the United States Medical School Admissions Quota for Jews End?

Why Did the United States Medical School Admissions Quota for Jews End?

Date: Thursday, April 11

Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Room 153, Rubenstein Library

Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu, (919)684-8549

Professional photo of Dr. HalperinPlease join the History of Medicine Collections for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Edward C. Halperin, M.D., M.A. will present “Why Did the United States Medical School Admissions Quota for Jews End?” At the end of World War II anti-Semitic medical school admissions quotas were deeply entrenched in the United States. Twenty-five years later they were gone. Why did that happen and what are the implications for the current controversy regarding alleged quotas directed against Asian-Americans?

Dr. Halperin is Chancellor/Chief Executive Officer of the New York Medical College, Valhalla NY.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend. No registration is needed. A light reception will follow.

The Newest Negroes: Black Doctors and the Desegregation of Harlem Hospital, 1919-1935

Date: Tuesday, March 26
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Room 153, Rubenstein Library
Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu, (919)684-8549

Please join the History of Medicine Collections for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Adam Biggs will present “The Newest Negroes: Black Doctors and the Desegregation of Harlem Hospital, 1919-1935.”

Professor Biggs’s lecture will focus on the desegregation of Harlem Hospital, highlighting the conflicts an tensions that took shape as black doctors sought to merge their professional goals with the larger cause of racial improvement. Adam Biggs is faculty at the University of South Carolina Lancaster where he teaches African American Studies and US History.  His research examines black doctors and their efforts to address the problem of race in early 20th century America.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend.

We thank our friends at the Bullitt History of Medicine Club at UNC-Chapel Hill for co-sponsorship.

“Since the war began ‘times ain’t what they used to be:’” Life at Trinity College During the Great War

Post contributed by Mandy Cooper, PhD, exhibit curator, former Research Services Graduate Intern, and Duke History PhD.

One hundred and one years ago, the doors to the East Duke Parlors were “thrown open” and “tables and machines [were] hauled in” along with “oilcloth, bleaching, hammer and tacks.” Led by Trinity College’s newly established branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the women at Trinity College and in the surrounding community turned the East Duke Parlors into a Red Cross room. According to Trinity’s YWCA president Lucile Litaker, the room was now “splendidly equipped” and “great bundles of material began to appear.” Throughout the next year, women at Trinity were joined by women from Durham to roll and send bandages overseas. The Red Cross room was officially open every Tuesday and Friday afternoon from 2:00-4:30, with the Trinity Chronicle reporting in February 1918 that between forty and fifty women had worked in the room the previous Friday. The women at Trinity were determined to do their part for the war effort.[1]

Black and white photograph of nine young men in Army uniforms, standing in two rows. A brick building is a background.

Black and white photograph of young men in Army uniform. They are standing in a line together, holding rifles. A building on Duke's East Campus is in the backgroun
Photos of the Student Army Training Corps at Duke in the University Archives Photograph Collection, Box 72.

They were not the only ones. By the 1917-1918 school year, the United States had officially entered World War I, and Trinity was feeling its effects. The impact on enrollment was immediate. Trinity saw a decrease of over 100 enrolled students from 1916-1917 and 1918-1919. President William P. Few was alarmed and attempted to boost enrollment in multiple ways: he encouraged current students to remain at Trinity until they were drafted; he toured North Carolina to promote the need for college-educated men to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe; and, like many other North Carolina universities, he started a Student Army Training Corps (SATC) unit on campus. The young men who enrolled in the SATC officially joined the US Army, but remained students at their institutions and were protected from the draft while receiving the training necessary to be considered for officer positions after graduation. Special classes were established for the SATC to ensure that those enrolled received the necessary training. The War Department required that Trinity create a course for the SATC that covered the “remote and immediate causes of the war and on the underlying conflict of points of view.” This course was intended to enhance the SATC’s morale and help them understand the “supreme importance to civilization” to the war.[2]

Few’s worries that Trinity would lose many students “to government service of one kind or another” proved apt. Although Few tried to dissuade freshman Charlton Gaines from leaving Trinity when he heard of his plans, Gaines enlisted and was sent to Camp Meigs for training. He apologized to Few shortly after arriving at Camp Meigs for leaving “without giving you notice of my departure.” Gaines served throughout the war, attaining the rank of Sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps, and never returned to Trinity College.[3]

Even those students who remained at Trinity felt the effects of the war. Friends and former students who had joined the military often returned to campus to visit on the weekends. The Chronicle reported in January 1918, that there would be no Chanticleer for the 1917-1918 largely because of the war. In addition to financial woes carried over from the previous year, the editor-elect had failed to return to Trinity in fall 1917—presumably because he joined the army. As the Chronicle writer reported, though, Trinity was not the only college (even just in North Carolina) that had been forced to cancel the yearbook for the year. In the end, the writer told students that they must “patriotically adapt” themselves to this situation because “since the war began ‘times ain’t what they used to be.’”[4] The Chanticleer returned in 1919 as a special edition. It was issued at the end of the war, published as Victory, 1919, and highlighted the victory of the United States and its allies in the war.

The war had some unexpected effects on Trinity as well. Football had been banned at Trinity since 1895, and in 1918 students petitioned for its return. They argued that a football program would help build a manly physique during a time when there was “a distressing need for physically well-developed men.”[5] As the war was ending, the administration lifted the ban and football returned to Trinity.

Trinity’s connection to the war was never more clear than in the masses of letters that alumni and former students sent to friends still at Trinity, to President Few or other faculty, to the Trinity Chronicle, or to the Alumni Register. Lt. R.H. Shelton wrote to Duke Treasurer D.W. Newsome from the front in France, telling him that he had seen “some of the worst over here.” Shelton continued, “Sherman certainly knew what he was talking about, but his was an infant.”[6] Alumni like Shelton made the horrors of war clear to everyone still at Trinity.  The pages of the Alumni Register for the war years are filled with letters from the front, placed in the same volumes as the President’s updates on the war’s effect on the college.

scan of a page of a book. the only thing on the page is a black and white photograph of a young white man in a military uniform. His hair is cut short, he doesn't have any facial hair, and he is looking directly at the camera.
Captain Charles R. Bagley (’14, A.M. ’15) wrote multiple letters from the front that were published: one in the Alumni Register in April 1918 and one in the Chronicle in December of the same year. Photo of Captain Charles R. Bagley, ’14, A.M. ’15, Camp Jackson. In the Trinity Alumni Register, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 1918, p. 48. Available digitally at https://archive.org/details/trinityalumnireg04trin

 

The Alumni Register and the Chronicle both regularly reported on the service of Trinity alumni and students overseas, including the first alumnus killed in action. First Lieutenant Robert “Kid” Anderson was among the first wave of American soldiers sent overseas. Part of the class of 1914, he was killed in action on May 29, 1918, at the Battle of Cantigny in France—the first major American engagement in the war. The news of Anderson’s death was sent both to his family and to President Few. The Alumni Register announced that Anderson had been killed in action in its July 1918 issue. The Register profiled his time at Trinity and his military service before reprinting an account of the memorial service held in his honor in his hometown of Wilson, North Carolina, a letter to Anderson’s parents from a fellow soldier that described his, and portions of Anderson’s letters to relatives and friends.[7]

To honor the centennial of the end of the First World War, selected items from the Duke University Libraries are on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room as part of the exhibit “Views of the Great War: Highlights from the Duke University Libraries.” In addition to the impact of World War I on Trinity College and other people back home, the exhibit highlights aspects of the Great War and tells the personal stories of a few of the men and women (whether soldiers, doctors, or nurses) who travelled to France with the American Expeditionary Force during the “war to end all wars.” “Views of the Great War” is on display through February 16, 2019.

Footnotes

[1] Lucile Litaker, “The Year with the Y.W.C.A.,” The Alumni Register, Volume IV, No. 2, July 1918; 148-149. Available digitally at https://archive.org/details/trinityalumnireg04trin. For the Chronicle article, see: “Red Cross Notes,” The Trinity Chronicle, Vol. 13, No. 19, Wednesday, February 6, 1918. Available digitally at https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/dukechronicle_dchnp83014/.

[2] Memo from the War Department Committee on Education and Special Training to Institutions where Units of the Student Army Training Corps are Located, September 10, 1918. Wartime at Duke Reference Collection, World War I – Student Army Training Corps, Box 1.

[3] For Few’s statement about losing students, see: William Preston Few to Benjamin N. Duke, July 16, 1917, Few Papers, Box 17, Folder 210. For the Charlton Gaines’s letter, see: Charlton Gaines to President Few, February 19, 1918, Few Papers, Box 19, Folder 235.

[4] “No Chanticleer for 1918.” The Trinity Chronicle, Vol. 13, No. 17, Wednesday, January 16, 1918. Available digitally at: https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/dukechronicle_dchnp83013/.

[5] Statement from the Student Committee on Football, May 14, 1918. Trinity College Yearly Files, 1918. Board of Trustees Records, Box 5, Duke University Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

[6] Lt. R.H. Shelton to D.W. Newsom, June 25, 1918. Trinity College (Durham, N.C.) Office of the Treasurer Records, Box 1, Duke University Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

[7] The Alumni Register, Volume IV, No. 2, July 1918; 98-104. Available digitally at https://archive.org/details/trinityalumnireg04trin.

Exhibit and Symposium: Arabic Medicine Conquers Latin Europe, 1050-1300: Methods and Motives

Image from a manuscript showing a drawing of a person designed to show their anatomy, including the circulatory and digestive systems. There is writing in Persian
From Unidentified Persian text on human anatomy, between 1500 and 1699

Please join us on November 1 and 2 for Arabic Medicine Conquers Latin Europe, 1050-1300: Methods and Motives, a symposium held at Duke University.

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018, 5:00pm
Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153

5:00PM: Exhibit tour
With curators Sean Swanick and Rachel Ingold

5:30PM: Keynote lecture
Cristina Alvarez Millán of the UNED (Madrid), “Arabic Medicine in the World of Classical Islam: Growth & Achievement”
Reception to follow

Friday, Nov. 2, 2018, 10 a.m.- 3 p.m.,
Carpenter Conference Room, Rubenstein Library Room 249
10AM-3PM Symposium featuring:
Eliza Glaze (Coastal Carolina University)
Francis Newton (Duke)
Michael McVaugh (UNC – Chapel Hill)
Joseph Shatzmiller (Duke)

The event coincides with an exhibit, Translation and Transmission an Intellectual Pursuit in the Middle Ages: Selections from the History of Medicine Collection on display in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room from October 16, 2018 – February 2, 2019.

Scan of a page from a 1593 printing of an earlier Arabic medical text. It looks like a title page with decorative stamps and larger writing in Arabic
Avicenna. Libri V. canonis medicinae … Arabice nunc primum impressi. Romae : Typ. Medica, 1593.

 

Exhibit Talk and Tour, 11/6: “If We Must Die”: African Americans and the War for Democracy

Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Time: 12:00-1:00 PM
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library 153
Contact: Elizabeth Dunn, elizabeth.dunn@duke.edu
Register here!

Join the Duke University Libraries for a lunchtime talk with Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith and take a tour of the new exhibit marking the centennial of the end of World War I, “Views of the Great War: Highlights from the Duke University Libraries.” A light lunch will be provided.

Adriane Lentz-Smith is Associate Professor of History, African & African-American Studies, and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke. Her book, “Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I” (Harvard, 2009), won the Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her current book project, “The Slow Death of Sagon Penn,” examines state violence and the remaking of white supremacy in Reagan-Era southern California. A Ford Foundation fellow, Professor Lentz-Smith holds a B.A. in History from Harvard-Radcliffe and a Ph.D. in History from Yale University.

Following the talk, attendees will be invited to enjoy the exhibit in the Mary Duke Biddle Room.

Color photo of Adriane Lentz-Smith. Photo by Rahoul Ghose/PBS.
Photo by Rahoul Ghose/PBS