Post contributed by Zoë Eckman, PhD Candidate in English and Research Services Intern.

At the beginning of this month, I became intrigued by the event called “Movember” or “no-shave November.”  It’s an awareness-raising charitable event in which mustaches are grown over the month to spark conversations about men’s health and encourage donations.  Inspired by this event, I decided to delve into the resources of the Rubenstein to research the simple topic of facial hair.  What I discovered spanned centuries, genres, materials, and occasionally conflicting opinions about beard and mustaches.

Because the Rubenstein’s collections are so expansive, it may seem intimidating to begin a research project – but experience in libraries will hone your research skills and introduce you to new tools which are advantageous no matter what subjects you’re fascinated by.  The most important thing to bring with you are questions – what could I discover about the way facial hair has been viewed over time?  What importance (if any) did facial hair have in the past?  There was a lot of material to wade through, but I chose things which seemed interesting to me and might help me answer my questions.

The first was a play written in 1707, Colley Cibber’s “The Double Gallant”. While the play itself isn’t about facial hair, it contains the brilliant quote:  “Modesty’s a starving virtue, madam, an old threadbare fashion of the last age, and would sit as oddly upon a lover now as a picked beard and mustachios” (p. 30).  Clearly, in the eighteenth-century in Britain, growing facial hair was not the route to choose when attempting to choose a paramour.

Not so in France in 1842, when Eugène Dulac’s “Physiologie et Hygiène de la Barbe et des Moustaches” [image 2] encouraged young men to grow beards and mustaches because they were a visual symbol of male dominance – something women, in the author’s opinion at least, found extremely attractive.

After this, I discovered a comedic song from 1931 called “Put Away the Moustache Cup” in a book of music called “Soft boiled ballads : a collection of heart-wrecking songs.”

Wanting to know what a “mustache cup” was, I searched the library and found a physical example of one in the Richard Pollay ACME Advertising Collection  which advertised hair dye (so if you think branded giveaways like coffee mugs or water bottles are a modern trend, think again).

Also not a modern trend, I discovered, was the removal of beards and mustaches considered unattractive.  A book from 1906 encourages the removal of “unwanted facial hair” on women through the hot, new medical procedure of electrolysis!  One hundred years later, the feminist magazine “Bitch” included an article in their essay collection titled, “Beyond the Bearded Lady:  Outgrowing the Shame of Female Facial Hair.”

Perhaps one of the most famous mustaches in the world belonged to the artist Salvador Dalí, whose facial hair was so iconic that it was given its own book, “Dalí’s Mustache.”  The book is a “photographic interview” in which short questions are posed to the artist, he responds in his iconoclastic style, and a picture is featured in which his mustache is styled to match his answer.  When the question, “What do you see when you look at Mona Lisa?” is asked, he responds like this:

Facial hair also has local historical significance:  in 1953, to celebrate Durham’s centennial, a group of 3,093 men paid a $1 membership fee, got a button, and pledged to maintain facial hair of some sort (you can learn more about that here, in a previous intern’s blog post).  “Grow a ‘Mo, Save a Bro” is one of Movember’s mottos – the Durham men called themselves “The Brothers of the Brush.”  On the opposite end of the spectrum, a Winston-Salem man was, in 1974, required by his employer to shave off his mustache and remain clean-shaven.  He filed a lawsuit with the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and we have the records of his struggle to maintain his personal facial hair and insure the rights of others to do the same (he was going to lose his case, unfortunately, so settled out of court).

So, researching something as simple as facial hair has lead us from the 18^th century through the 19^th, 20^th, and into the 21^st.  We’ve encountered fictional texts, medical treatises, musical ballads, advertisements, surreal art, historical events and lawsuits, and feminist journalism.  The Rubenstein is a research tool which contains a wealth of items touching diverse and seemingly disparate subjects.  All you have to do, no matter what you’re interested in, is dive in.

Post contributed by Noah Huffman, Archivist for Metadata, Systems, and Digital Records

Darkness is Coming.  I don’t know about you, but on Monday, August 21, I’m heading to Greenville, S.C., inside the path of totality for the Great American Eclipse of 2017.  It’s my first eclipse chase, but I was curious if there was evidence of any earlier eclipse chasers in our Rubenstein collections.  Here’s what I found:

Eclipse of November 30, 1834 – Washington, D.C. – Charles Wilkes

In 1833, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) assumed command of the Navy’s Depot of Charts and Instruments, what would later become the Naval Observatory.  When a partial eclipse cast its shadow over D.C. the following year, Wilkes carried out a series of observations and measurements on a hill “directly north of the Capital, distant from it 1300 feet, and about 80 feet to the West of its center.”  Wilkes relayed his observations (in excruciating detail) to Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson in a letter dated December 13, 1834, found in the Rubenstein’s Charles Wilkes Papers:

Sir, Agreeably to your desire, I have the honor to report the following results of the observations made at this Depot on the Eclipse… The instruments employed in the observation were a three foot reflecting telescope by Troughton, a 42 inch refraction by Harris, and a 30 inch refraction by Gilbert, the former with a magnifying power of 175, the two latter with ones of 40… The times of beginning (meantime) 0.49.40, ending 3.30.01 afternoon…

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, which include temperature measurements (it dropped 24 degrees during the eclipse), notes on how he synchronized three clocks (very carefully), and nearly two-pages on his method for determining the precise latitude of his observatory. Compared to modern eclipse chasers, Wilkes’ comments are strictly scientific. There is no self-reflection in his account, no mention of prostrating and weeping in ecstasy, only an apology for his tardiness in sending his observations:  “…they would have been sent to you sooner but owing to a severe sickness I was unable to attend to them.”

Eclipse of July 18, 1860 – Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, Canada – William Ferrel

William Ferrel (1817-1891), the meteorologist not the comedian, spent most of his career studying “mid-latitude atmospheric circulation,” but as the total eclipse of 1860 approached he headed for more northern latitudes in the path of totality–all the way to Cumberland House, a remote outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company in what is now Northern Saskatchewan.

Ferrel was dispatched from Boston north to Saskatchewan by Charles Henry Davis, the superintendent of the American Nautical Almanac Office. In a letter dated June 11, 1860, Davis wrote to Ferrel with instructions:

I hereby instruct you to proceed to Cumberland House … for the purpose of making, in its vicinity and on the central line of shadow, observations upon the eclipse of the Sun of the 18th of July of this year…I have called your special attention, first, to the bulging protuberances, or rose colored prominences, seen at the time of total obscuration, in order that you may assist if possible in determining the question of their origin. Second, to the use of the polariscope, in the manner recommended by Arago; and, third, to the careful examination during the period of darkness, of the regions bordering on the Sun, for the possible discovery of inter-Mercurial planets…

While Ferrel’s papers don’t include any written record of his observations, we do have two photos he snapped during the period of totality. Don’t look directly at them, but if you squint you can maybe see some…bulging protuberances?

Eclipse of May 28, 1900 – North Carolina – Edward Featherston Small

Edward Featherston Small (1844-1924) was a photographer, salesman for the Duke tobacco company, owner of a popular roller-skating team in Durham (it’s true!), and, in 1900, an amateur astronomer. When the path of totality crossed through central North Carolina on May 28, 1900, Small aimed his (large) telescope and camera to the heavens to capture the event. We can only hope he was wearing proper eye protection.