Category Archives: Readings and Talks

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

Virginia Woolf: Writing Surfaces and Writing Depths, March 3

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Virginia Woolf’s custom-made writing desk, recently acquired as part of the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, is currently on display in the Rubenstein Library’s Michael and Karen Stone Family Gallery.

What: Virginia Woolf: Writing Surfaces and Writing Depths, with Dr. Leslie Kathleen Hankins
Date: Thursday, March 3 Time: 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Where: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library

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Dr. Leslie Kathleen Hankins

Dr. Leslie Kathleen Hankins is a professor in the department of English and Creative Writing at Cornell College and past president of the International Virginia Woolf Society. She will give a talk on the various writing surfaces used by Woolf throughout her life, including the desk now on display in the Rubenstein Library that was acquired as part of the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection. How did this desk shape the apprenticeship of Virginia Stephen into a writer? What did she write at this desk? How did it launch her career? In addition to the desk at Duke, Hankins will discuss Woolf’s decorated writing table in Cassis, as well as an overstuffed chair and lap board in a storage room at Hogarth Press and in Woolf’s writing shed. Along the way, she will consider how Woolf’s desk selections demonstrate a nuanced negotiation of gender performance and the writing profession as she crafted an innovative writing space through standing/walking/and shabby chic desk strategies.

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.

Bingham Center, Events, Featured, From Our Collections, News and Features, Rare Books, Readings and Talks

Upcoming Talk: Scientists, Midwives, & Healers in the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153
Contact: Laura Micham, laura.m@duke.edu
RVSP (optional) via Facebook

Maria Sibylla Merian. De europische insecten. Tot Amsterdam: by J.F. Bernard, [1730].
Maria Sibylla Merian. De europische insecten. Tot
Amsterdam: by J.F. Bernard, [1730].
Join the staff of the Bingham Center as Duke History Professor Thomas Robisheaux gives a lecture on the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, highlighting his use of works by naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian. The lecture is free and open to the public; light refreshments will be served.

In celebration of:

Heralding the Way to a New World: Exploring Women in Science and Medicine through the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

On display in the Michael and Karen Stone Family Gallery from January 20th to April 1st, 2016

From the first entomologist to capture the stages of metamorphosis of the butterfly (1705) to the author who published the first comprehensive volume on contraception (1923), the women in this exhibit were pioneers in science and medicine. Whether self-trained or classically educated, they not only made groundbreaking contributions to their fields, but also helped open the way for future generations to follow in their footsteps. Despite their accomplishments, most of these women remain overlooked or under-recognized.

This exhibition highlights the stories of seven revolutionary women in science and medicine and celebrates the arrival of the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, from which these materials were selected.

Events, Featured, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

The Lives and Voices of Guantanamo: The Work of the Witness to Guantanamo Project

Date: January 21, 2016
Time: 6:00-7:00pm
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Rubenstein Library Room 153)
Contact: Patrick Stawski (patrick.stawski@duke.edu)

January 22nd will mark the 6th anniversary of Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo. On Thursday Jan 21st, 2016, The Human Rights Archive at Duke’s Rubenstein Library will be hosting a presentation by Peter Jan Honigsberg, “The Lives and Voices of Guantanamo: The Work of the Witness to Guantanamo Project.”

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The Witness to Guantanamo project has filmed in-depth interviews of 136 people who have lived or worked or have been involved in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center. No one else in the world is doing this kind of work. Interviewees include not only detainees, but also prison guards, interrogators, interpreters, chaplains, medical personnel, habeas lawyers, prosecutors, journalists, high-ranking military and government officials, and family member of the detainees. The project has filmed more than 250 hours of video in 20 countries.

Peter Jan Honigsberg is professor at the University of San Francisco, School of Law, and the founder and director of the Witness to Guantanamo project. Professor Honigsberg has written books, law review articles and blog pieces on Guantanamo and on post 9/11 issues. He was recently invited to speak to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Professor Honigsberg is the author of Our Nation Unhinged (University of California Press, 2009). He is currently working on a book on his research and work with the Witness to Guantanamo project.

Co-sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI.

Events, Exhibits, Featured, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Readings and Talks

New Exhibit! Malignant Fever: Benjamin Rush and the 1793 Epidemic in Philadelphia

Please visit our new exhibition Malignant Fever: Benjamin Rush and the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, curated by Mandy Cooper, PhD candidate in Duke University’s History Department. The exhibition will be on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room through March 11, 2016.

This exhibit highlights the effects of epidemic diseases on society by examining one of the most famous outbreaks in U.S. history – the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Drawing chiefly on letters written by Dr. Benjamin Rush, an eighteenth-century physician and U.S. Founding Father, to his wife Julia Stockton Rush, the exhibit examines the timeline of the outbreak, early responses, stages and symptoms, and the “cure” for yellow fever that Rush developed. Finally, the exhibit looks at the anatomy of an epidemic, focusing on the social and psychological effects exemplified by Rush’s emotion-filled letters, as well as stories that emphasize the fear, panic, and mental anguish that accompany epidemic disease outbreaks even today.

Coinciding with this exhibition is a new digital collection of the Benjamin and Julia Stockton Rush papers held by the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Library.  We encourage you to visit the exhibition and check out the new digital collection as well.

A gallery talk led by Mandy Cooper will be held on Friday, February 26, at 2 pm in the Mary Duke Biddle Room. All are welcome to attend. Light refreshments will be served.

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

Bingham Center, Events, Featured, Readings and Talks

Zine Scholar Janice Radway at the National Humanities Center, December 10th

“From the Underground to the Archive in Ten Years: Girl Zines, Feminist Networks, and the Politics of Memory” – Janice Radway, Northwestern University
Thursday, December 10, 6:00 p.m.
National  Humanities Center, 7 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC
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In the early nineties, a certain cohort of dissident, non-conforming girls turned to self-publishing to express their deep dissatisfaction with conservative reaffirmations of normative femininity. Calling themselves “Riot Grrrls” after several influential all-girl punk bands, they crafted handmade publications known as “zines” in order to voice their disaffection and to think through alternative ways of being in the world. Despite their own fairly small numbers and the fact that they reproduced their zines in limited fashion, these young women quickly caught the attention of the mainstream media, cultural commentators, and a range of academics and librarians alike. Within ten years, at least three major collections of girl zines had been collected at places like Smith College, Barnard College, and Duke University. This lecture will explore the significance of girls’ self-publishing efforts, the complex reasons for their zines’ quick assimilation into legitimate cultural institutions, and the political benefits and drawbacks to this kind of memorialization.

Janice Radway is the Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies and a professor of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. She is also Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University. This year, as the Founders’ Fellow at the National Humanities Center, she is working on a book project, Girls and Their Zines in Motion: Selfhood and Sociality in the 1990s.

Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

Lecture – “Marcus Garvey and the Fallen Angel”

Date: November 4, 2015

Time: 4:00PM

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

Speaker: Prof. Robert Hill, Emeritus Professor of History, UCLA

Hill-Garvey3Please join the John Hope Franklin Research Center to celebrate the recent acquisition of the Robert A. Hill Collection of the Marcus Garvey & UNIA Papers Project Archive. Prof. Robert Hill, leading expert on Marcus Garvey and his influence on the African Diaspora will lecture on a new departure in research on the legacy of one of the notable voices of the African Diaspora of the 20th century. For the past thirty-five years, Prof Hill has researched and collected materials on Garvey and served as editor of the 12-volume Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project (University of California Press, Duke University Press). His collection now joins the archive of the Franklin Research Center documenting African and African American History and Culture in the David. M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Contact – John B. Gartrell, john.gartrell@duke.edu

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History, African & African American Studies, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Reception to follow

Post submitted by John B. Gartrell, Director, John Hope Franklin Research Center

Archive of Documentary Arts, Audiovisual Materials, Events, Readings and Talks

2015 Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Visiting Artist: Nate Larson

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Reception & Artist’s Talk

Date: November 5

Time: 6:00-8:00 pm

Location: Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 W. Pettigrew St, Durham, NC

Nate_Larson_272x381In October 2015, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library will welcome Nate Larson as the second Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Artist. Named in honor of Dr. Diamonstein-Spielvogel, a prolific author, interviewer, curator, and champion of the arts, this new artist-in-residence program provides an extended opportunity for an artist to study and engage with archival, manuscript and other special collections in support of developing a new body of creative work.

Nate Larson is a contemporary artist working with photographic media, artist books and digital video. His projects have been widely shown across the US and internationally as well as featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including Wired Raw File, The Picture Show from NPR, Slate, CNN, Hyperallergic, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed News, Vice Magazine, the New York Times Lens Blog, Flavorwire, the BBC News Viewfinder, Frieze Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, and Art Papers. His artwork is included in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago. Additionally, Larson holds a full‐time academic appointment in the photography department at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and chaired the 2014 national conference of the Society for Photographic Education.

Larson will be in residence at the Rubenstein Library October 26-November 22, 2015.  During this time, Larson will meet with scholars, students and staff from across the academic disciplines at Duke and conduct his own research. Larson will give an Artist’s Talk about his work to date at the Center for Documentary Studies on November 5, 2015 from 6:00-8:00pm.

The event is free and open to the public and made possible through the generous support of Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel. Larson’s visit is jointly organized and sponsored by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Program at Duke University.

Contact – Lisa McCarty, lisa.mccarty@duke.edu

Image below by Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman from the series Geolocation

Tell me I'm not making a mistake. Tell me you’re worth the wait. #fb

 

Post submitted by Lisa McCarty, Curator, Archive of Documentary Arts

Events, Featured, Readings and Talks

SFWA Southeast Reading Series: Storytelling and Migration, September 17th

Date: Thursday, September 17, 2015
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Bays 4 and 5, Smith Warehouse, Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University
Contact: Sara Seten Berghausen, sara@duke.edu

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In collaboration with Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and the FHI Story Lab, Duke Libraries presents a panel of SFWA Southeast member authors speaking on the theme of Storytelling and Migration.

Authors Gail Z. Martin, Alyssa Wong, Ursula Vernon, Delilah Dawson, and Monica Byrne will be on the panel, and the discussion will be moderated by Jaym Gates.

This event is free and open to the public. More information on Facebook.

Bingham Center, Events, Featured, News and Features, Readings and Talks

Duke Alumni Reception at NC Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

Date: Monday, August 17, 2015
Time: 6:00-8:00 PM
Location: The Carolina Theatre of Durham (309 West Morgan St., Durham, NC 27701)
Contact: Tori Crowley, 919-681-1940 or Laura Micham, laura.m@duke.edu

Logo for "Queering Duke History" exhibit.Attending the North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival? Please make plans to attend this inaugural reception hosted by the Duke Heritage Society and the Office of Gift Planning!

Gather with friends and learn about a few of the ways that Duke is active with and supportive of its LGBTQ student and alumni community:

  • Bernadette Brown, the new director of Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, will be introduced.
  • Kristen Brown Smalley of the Office of Gift Planning will share more about Duke’s activities in the LGBTQ community and our growing affinity network across the country.