Category Archives: Hartman Center

Announcing our 2026-2027 Travel Grant Recipients

The Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025-2026 travel grants. Our research centers annually award travel grants to students, scholars, and independent researchers through a competitive application process. We extend a warm congratulations to this year’s awardees. We look forward to meeting and working with you!

The Archive of Documentary Arts awarded no travel grants this year.

Doris Duke Archives

Stephanie Opperman, Faculty, Georgia College and State University, “Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith and the Legacy of Jazz Clubs in 1940s Mexico City”

Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Collections

Elon Clark History of Medicine Travel Grants

Sarah Ahmed, Graduate Student, McGill University, “Madness and Methodism: Wesleyan Sick Societies and the Treatment of Madness in the British Atlantic World, 1741-1818”

Lea Eisenstein, Graduate Student, Princeton University, “Coming Out: The Private and Public History of Hysterectomy in America”

Olivia Maddox, Graduate Student, University of California, San Diego, “Maternal Revolutions: A Cultural History of Motherhood in Modern China”

John Hope Franklin Research Center

Jennifer Blaylock, Faculty, Rowan University, “Ghanavision: Ayi Kwei Armaha’s Work in Television in the 1960s”

Peyton White, Graduate Student, University of Texas, “Rastafari, Sovereignty, and Black Religious Nationalism in 20th Century Jamaica”

Halima Haruna, Graduate Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of African American Women’s Disability Politics, 1900s – 1920”

Christina Thomas, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of South Carolina, “Digitizing Freedom Summer: An Interactive Map”

Corbin Covington, Graduate Student, Northwestern University, “Black Historiography and Psychoanalytic Theory”

Mickell Carter, Graduate Student, Brown University, “Black Men’s Style During the Black Power Movement”

Sydney Smith, Graduate Student, Rutgers University, “Reading for the Revolution: Black Bookstores and the Radical Tradition of Self-Education”

Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

John Furr Fellowship for JWT Research

Henry Jacob, Graduate Student, Yale University, “Tourism in Flight: JWT, Pan-Am, and the Making of U.S. Power in the Americas”

Mario Uolla, Graduate Student, Northwestern University, “JWT’s T-Plan and the Origins of Consumer Centricity”

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants

Jennifer Scanlon, Faculty, Bowdoin College, “We Try Harder: Paula Green, Inc.”

Francesca Polletta, Faculty, University of California, Irvine, “Advertising to the New Woman, 1970-1975”

Ijeoma Kola, Faculty, University of Notre Dame, “Kitchen Chemists: Black Women, Medical Neglect, and the Science of the Natural Hair Movement” (joint award with the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture)

Jonathan Marrow, Graduate Student, Cambridge University, “The Development of American Holocaust Tourism, 1945-2000”

Stephen Sonnenfeld, independent Researcher, “The Meaning Makers: A History of the American Advertising Agency”

Human Rights Archive

Jessica Day-Lucore, Graduate Student, Indiana University Bloomington, “The Human Rights Violators Club: The Uruguayan Dictatorship, the United States, and the Regulatory Regimes of the Late Cold War, 1973-1985”

Vivian Hernandez, Graduate Student, University of California Los Angeles, “’Nos interasa a todas’: Voluntary Motherhood and the Reproductive Rights Movement in Late Twentieth-Century to Early Twenty-First Century Mexico”

Ian Glazmer-Schillinger, Graduate Student, Syracuse University, “Web of Hate: White Power Goes Online, 1983-1999”

Eva Baylin, Graduate Student, Vanderbilt University, “Gender and the Radical Right: A Cultural History from the Margins to the Center of American Politics, 1965 – 2014”

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture 

Mary Lily Travel Grant

Amaluana Brock, Graduate Student, Auburn University, “1990s Young Women Zines as Feminist Identity Building”

Hsiao-Yun Chu, Faculty, San Fransico State University, “Exquisite Boredom: Ladies Fancy Workbooks and the Birth of Leisure Crafts, 1850 – 1910″

Maddy Coy, Faculty, University of Florida, “Feminist Knowledge, Violence Against Women, and Public Policy”

Hannah Dudley-Shotwell and Justina Licata, Faculty, Longwood University, “A History of Abortion Fund in the U.S., 1960s – Present”

Halina Haruma, Graduate Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of African American Women’s’ Disability Politics, 1900s – 1920″

Ijeoma Kola, Faculty, University of Notre Dame, “Kitchen Chemists: Black Women, Medical Neglect, and the Science of the Natural Hair Movement”

Felicity Palma, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University, “Eurydice in the Underworld”

Hope Tucker, Faculty, University of Iowa, “Feminist Bookstores in the South: A Film”

Lisa Walters, Faculty, University of Queensland, “Forgotten Histories: Renaissance Women and the Science of Atomism”

Jessie Wilkerson, Faculty, University of Tennessee – Knoxville, “In Sisterhood, In Struggle: A History of Feminist Possibilities in the American South”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grant

Rachel Haines, Graduate Student, University of Virginia, “Close Reading as Queer Reading: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ‘kind of formalism’”

Jennifer Hamilton, Faculty, University of New England, Australia, “Exploring the Relationship Between Queer Theory, Buddhism, and Textile Art in Sedgwick’s Body of Work”

Samuel Rutherford, Faculty, University of Glasgow, “Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Transmasculinity and the History of Queer Ideas”

Suzanne Scanlon, Faculty, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “In Time, a novel”

Anne Pickford: A Timeless Model

Post contributed by Brandee Newkirk, Processing Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

For my first-ever processing project as an intern at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, I was given the opportunity to process the papers of Anne W. Pickford, known professionally as Kaylan Pickford. Anne Pickford was a model between the 1970s and the 2000s. However, unlike traditional models who typically begin their careers in their late teens or early twenties, Pickford, with the help of her friend J. Frederick Smith, started her career in her 40s after two marriages and the birth of two children.

To better understand the significance of Anne Pickford’s presence in the modeling industry, it is helpful to understand the changes the fashion industry made by the early 1980s. Through the commercial success of 1960s models like Twiggy and Donyale Luna, by the late 1970s the fashion industry saw the potential in establishing new relationships between the models and the public audience. This new preoccupation with how models engaged with the audience created the rise of the “Supermodel” and saw the deliberate hiring of models at younger and younger ages.

For Anne Pickford, who began her career in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, the industry’s interest in cultivating youth as fashion ambassadors made it difficult for her to enter the industry at a later age. In an interview with the New York Times, Pickford described the beginning of her career as difficult and how she had to break through, stating, “I earned $3,000 the first year and $3,000 the second year. Then I sort of caught on.” This financial difficulty is reflected in the Hartman Center’s collection of Pickford’s papers, as Pickford kept detailed records of her checkbooks and pay stubs.

This early difficulty led Pickford, throughout her career, to dedicate herself to celebrating her age, opting not to dye her grey hair or undergo cosmetic surgery. When considering the fashion industry at the time, Pickford had good reason to assume an ageist bias. Models such as Brook Shields, Farida Khelfa, and Paulina Porizkova all began their careers in their mid-to-late teens, and larger fashion brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Jean Paul Gaultier were all known for hiring only teen to twenty-year-old models. This industry standard trickled down to more commercial advertising.

Inside the Anne “Kaylan” Pickford papers, researchers will see Anne Pickford’s interest in challenging the commercialization of older women. Featured in the collection are a series of advertising images that showcase Kaylan Pickford using beauty cosmetics or luxury goods. Anne Pickford wanted older women to be celebrated for their beauty in aging, making a conscious effort to turn away commercial pharmaceutical jobs for more beauty-based photoshoots. The collection also includes the writings of Anne Pickford. Two of her books, Always a Woman (1982), and Always Beautiful (1985), were written to inspire “mid-life” women and provide helpful tips on maintaining beauty without resorting to surgery.

Anne “Kaylan” Pickford’s collection is a celebration of what it means to get older. Anne Pickford dedicated her career to letting women know that just because they have lived a successful life, it does not mean that their beauty has faded.

 

Save the Date: “Test, Inform, Protect: Consumer Reports Archives Exhibit Opening and Panel Discussion”

Due to weather, this event has been rescheduled from January 27 to March 4.

Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 PM
Location: Rubenstein Library Room 153 (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room)
Registration required:  Click the blue “Begin Registration” at the bottom of the page here to reserve your seat.

For 90 years, Consumer Reports has been the premier source for product reviews and ratings, consumer advice, and consumer issues advocacy in the United States—and a model for consumer movements around the world. The nonprofit organization manages a complex of testing facilities, advocacy and outreach offices, and a media operation that delivers content through radio, television, and online, in addition to the popular Consumer Reports magazine and seasonal Buying Guides.

Join the Duke University Libraries for a special event featuring a panel discussion and gallery talk highlighting the opening of two Consumer Reports exhibits—This Sneeze is for Science, featuring photography of the striking visual narratives depicting scientific testing of consumer products; and Test, Inform, Protect: The Consumer Reports Archives at Duke University, which explores the history and impact of the organization over its 90-year history.

Attendees will hear from panelists from Duke and Consumer Reports, who will comment on the significance of the Consumer Reports Archives, the evolution of the organization and the impact it has had on the Consumer Movement.

Gallery talks with exhibit curators will offer opportunities to connect with the exhibits and reflect on the intersection of science, activism, and public trust.

Panelists will also be available for questions at the conclusion of the panel discussion.

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Panelists

  • Lisa L. Gill, Investigative Reporter, Consumer Reports
  • Jason Holmes, Director of Testing, Consumer Reports
  • Edward Balleisen, Senior Vice Provost of History and Public Policy, Duke University
  • Jacqueline Wachholz, Director, Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
  • Moderator: Ashton W. Merck, Historian and Researcher, Duke Ph.D. (2020)

 

Header Image: Dishwasher testing preparation, undated, Consumer Reports Archives, Iconographic Materials, Box PD20, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

 

 

Research Travel Grants Open for 2026 – 2027

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for the 2026 – 2027 Research Travel Grant Programs, offering awards of up to $1,500 to support research projects associated with the following collecting Centers, subject areas, and collection holdings:

  • Archive of Documentary Arts General Grant
  • Archive of Documentary Arts Sidney Gamble Travel Grant
  • Doris Duke Foundation Travel Grant
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grant
  • Harry H. Harkins, Jr. T’73 Travel Grant
  • History of Medicine Collections
  • Human Rights Archive
  • John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History
  • John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
  • Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Mary Lily Research Grants)

Anyone whose research would be supported by resources from the Rubenstein Library’s research centers is eligible to apply. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers.

For assistance determining the eligibility of your project, please contact AskRL@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”

Eligibility

Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees.

Information Session

An online information session will be held Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 2-3 PM EST. This program will review application requirements, offer tips for creating a successful application, and include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions of staff involved with the travel grant program. This information session will be recorded and posted online afterwards. You can register for the session here.

Timeline

The deadline for application will be Friday, February 27, at 8:00 PM EST. Decisions will be announced by the end of April 2026 for travel during May 2026 – June 2027. Awards are paid as reimbursements for personal expenses after completion of the research visit(s).

“The Best, the Only, and the Unexpected” lives at the Rubenstein!

Cover of a summer 2002 Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, featuring a sonic insect trap.

The Hartman Center and the Rubenstein Library are pleased to announce the arrival of the records of Hammacher Schlemmer, the 177-year-old hardware merchants-turned-purveyors of unique, odd, and oddly practical items, sold through a variety of catalogs that themselves represent one of the historical high points of creativity in catalog design and direct-to-consumer merchandising. The company produced its first catalog in 1881 and is considered the oldest catalog-based retail company in the United States, pre-dating Sears and Montgomery Ward by several years.

Hammacher Schlemmer began as a supplier of tools and trade equipment in 1848 in the Bowery section of New York by Charles Tollner. In 1853 he hired a 12-year-old German immigrant, William Schlemmer, as an assistant. A few years later another German immigrant, Albert Hammacher, invested in the growing hardware store. Eventually Schlemmer bought Tollner’s stake in the company, and in 1883 the company was renamed Hammacher Schlemmer & Co., a name it maintained for a century and a half.

Cover of an 1884 catalog for Hammacher Schlemmer featuring tools.Originally Hammacher Schlemmer sold primarily tools, from files and saws to more complicated machinery like the Lougee hair picker (a cotton gin-like machine for combing horsehair used in upholstery stuffing). By the 1900s the company had expanded to offer specialized tools for automotive, piano-building, and other trades; in the 1930s the company began to transition from hardware to housewares and general retail merchandise.

Hammacher Schlemmer maintained a store in the Bowery (and later branched to Chicago and Los Angeles), but an increasing percentage of sales came from its catalog operation. In the early days the catalogs doubled as selling aids for sales agents. They developed a reputation for detailed, useful print and finely rendered line drawings, as seen in this catalog entry for the Lougee hair picker:

Advertisement for the Lougee Hair Picker featuring a line drawing of the machine and explanatory text.

With the transition to household goods (kitchen gadgets, furniture, cleaning implements and the like; a separate catalog for gourmet food products began in the 1930s) the catalog layouts shifted from line drawings to black-and-white (and later, color) photography. The catalogs for the centennial years 1947-1948 featured whimsical pastel drawings in color. By 1977 the catalogs would shift to an all-color layout.

Cover of the centennial Hammacher Schlemmer catalog featuring a pastel illustration of a woman in pink riding in a horse-drawn carriage.

The hardware line was dropped in the mid-1950s, and Hammacher Schlemmer turned to feature more high-end luxury goods, curated from other manufacturers’ items, as well as those developed by its own subsidiary, Invento, which was established in 1962. In 1983, the company established another subsidiary, Hammacher Schlemmer Institute, that focused on product testing and comparisons among competing products (similar to testing performed by groups such as Consumer Reports), later adding a Consumer Testing Panel for end-user testing and evaluation. In 1986, Hammacher Schlemmer began online sales in addition to its mail-order catalog operation. It joined SkyMall in 1991 as a charter member, advertising its products to airline passengers on U.S. domestic and selected international routes.

The catalogs featured a wild variety of products at every price point: slipper socks ($34.95); a walking stick with a built-in telescope ($89.95); a single-serving coffee maker ($199.95); a bamboo Tiki bar ($499.95); a leather chair in the shape of a baseball glove ($6,200); a full-scale working replica of the original 1966 Batmobile ($200,000); and a two-person fully functional electric submarine ($1.5 million). These products lived side-by-side in the page layouts of the catalog, a million-dollar submersible or a $65,000 robot next to entries for compression socks, garden hoses, and pens.

Two-page spread of a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog showing everyday items and luxury items advertised right next to each other.

Along the way, Hammacher Schlemmer was instrumental in introducing a number of household items that started out as novelties and moved into mainstream popularity: pop-up toasters (1931); electric shavers (1934); steam irons (1948); telephone answering machines (1968); Mr. Coffee (1973); and the Cuisinart (1977), to name a few. Hammacher Schlemmer’s status as an American cultural icon is evidenced through parodies of the company’s catalog offerings that appeared in places such as the pages of Readers Digest and on the Family Guy television cartoon.

The Hammacher Schlemmer records should be available for researchers in the Rubenstein Library by late 2025. The collection offers a rich resource for scholars interested in topics as varied as advertising history; direct marketing; catalog design; line art; and the evolution of a historically important American retail establishment.

Announcing our 2025-2026 Travel Grant Recipients

The Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025-2026 travel grants. Our research centers annually award travel grants to students, scholars, and independent researchers through a competitive application process. We extend a warm congratulations to this year’s awardees. We look forward to meeting and working with you!

The travel grants for the Archive of Documentary Arts and Human Rights Archive have been paused for the 2025-2026 cycle.

Doris Duke Archives

Joan Marie Johnson, Northwestern University, “Doris Duke and the Business of Philanthropy”

Richard Treut, “Doris Duke’s Stewardship of Duke Farms”

Elon Clark History of Medicine Travel Grants

Jessica Brabble, Ph.D. Candidate, College of Willilam & Mary, “Her Best Crop: Eugenics, Agricultural Programming, and Child Welfare, 1900-1964”

Michael Ortiz-Castro, Lecturer, Department of History, Bentley University, “Acts of Citizenship: Belonging and Biology in the Post-Reconstruction US.”

John Hope Franklin Research Center

Irene Ahn, Faculty, American University, “Bridging Divides through Local Reparations: Examining How Communities Repair Racial Injustices”

Emmanuel Awine, Ph.D. Candidate, Johns Hopkins University, “The Socio-Political History of the Raided Communities in Northern Ghana and Southern Burkina Faso 1800-2000”

Carlee Migliorisi, M.A. Candidate, Monmouth University, “Asbury Park Uprising: Race, Riots, and Revenue”

Maria Montalvo, Faculty, Emory University, “Imagining Freedom”

Michael Ortiz, Faculty, Bentley University, “Acts of Citizenship: Belonging and Biology in the Post Reconstruction US”

Summer Perritt, Ph.D. Candidate, Rice University, “A Southern Reclamation: Understanding Black Identity and Return Migration to the American South in the Post-Civil Rights Era, 1960-2020”

McKenzie Tor, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Missouri, “The Black Temperance Movement in Nineteenth Century America”

Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

John Furr Fellowship for JWT Research

Raffaella Law, “Global Branding, Local Tastes: Nestle and the Rise of Internet-Age Food Advertising in the 1990s”

Joseph Semkiu, “Wartime Advertising and Radio Voices: Selling Masculinity On and Off the Radio to the 1940s US Home Front”

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants

James Bowie, “The 20th-Century Development of the Logo as a Cultural Object”

Bryce Evans, “Marketing Abundance: JWT’s Creative and Strategic Approach to the Pan Am Account”

Townsend Rowland, “Supplementation, Radiation, Mutation: Food and Scientific Authority in Postwar America”

Mark Slater, “Big Tobacco and Blackness: American Advertising, Black Culture, and Cigarettes in Post-WW2 America”

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture Travel Grant Awardees

Mary Lily Travel Grant

Daniel Belasco, Independent Researcher, Al Held Foundation, “Total Revolution: The Origins of the Feminist Art Movement, 1963-1969”

Ayumi Ishii and Kate Copeland, Independent Researchers, Pacific Northwest College of Art, “Compleat and Infallible Recipes”

Chloe Kauffman, Graduate Student, University of Maryland, College Park, “’If women are curious, women also like to speak’: Unmarried Women, Sexual Knowledge, and Female Mentorship in the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Atlantic”

Lucy Kelly, Graduate Student, University of Sussex, Sussex Center for American Studies, “’I want to fight the fight. I want my rightful place’: Queer Worldmaking in the American South, 1970-2000”

Lina-Marie Murillo, Faculty, University of Iowa, Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, and History, “The Army of the Three and the Untold History of America’s Abortion Underground”

Melissa Thompson, Graduate Student, West Virginia University, “Redefining and Recreating the Meaning of Family, 1929 – 2010s”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grant

Stephanie Clare, Faculty, University of Washington, Seattle, “Eve’s Pandas: Queer Futurity and the More-Than-Human”

Julien Fischer, Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, Stanford University, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, “Writing the Incurable: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on Love and the Impossible”

Research Travel Grant Applications Open for 2025-2026

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for the 2025-2026 Research Travel Grant Program, offering awards of up to $1500 to support research projects associated with the following Centers, subject areas, and collection holdings:

  • Archive of Documentary Arts General Grants
  • Archive of Documentary Arts Sidney Gamble Travel Grants
  • Doris Duke Foundation Research Travel Grants
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grants
  • History of Medicine Collections
  • Human Rights Archive
  • John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
  • John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
  • Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Mary Lily Research Grants)

Anyone whose research would be supported by sources from the Rubenstein Library’s research centers is eligible to apply. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers.

For assistance determining the eligibility of your project, please contact AskRL@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”

Eligibility

Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees.

Information Session

An online information session will be held Wednesday, January 15, 2025, 2-3 pm EST.  This program will review application requirements, offer tips for creating a successful application, and include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. This program will be recorded and posted online afterwards. Register for the session here.

Timeline

The deadline for applications will be Friday, February 28, 2025, at 6:00 pm EST.

Decisions will be announced by the end of April 2025 for travel during May 2025-June 2026. Awards are paid as reimbursement after completion of the research visit(s).

 

Announcing our 2024-2025 Travel Grant Recipients

The Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024-2025 travel grants. Our research centers annually award travel grants to students, scholars, and independent researchers through a competitive application process. We extend a warm congratulations to this year’s awardees. We look forward to meeting and working with you!

Archive of Documentary Arts

Elizabeth Barahona, Ph.D. candidate, Northwestern University, “Black and Latino Coalition Building in Durham, North Carolina 1980-2010.” (Joint award with the Human Rights Archive)

Diana Ruiz, Faculty, University of Washington, Seattle, “Apprehension through Representation: Image Capture of the US-Mexico Border.” (Joint award with the Human Rights Archive)

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Mary Lily Research Travel Grants

Taylor Doherty, Ph.D. candidate, University of Arizona, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, “Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Anti-Imperialist Lesbian Feminist ‘Longed-for but Unrealized World.’”

Thalia Ertman, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Los Angeles Department of History, “U.S. Feminist Anti-Nuclear Activism and Women’s Bodies, 1970s-1990s.”

Samuel Huber, Faculty, Yale University, Department of English. “A World We Can Bear: Kate Millett’s Life in Feminism.”

Alan Mitchell, Ph.D. candidate, Cambridge University, Faculty of Art History and Architecture, “Redefining Phoebe Anna Traquair through the lenses of historicism and intersectionality.”

Emily Nelms Chastain, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, School of Theology, “The Clergywoman Question: The International Association of Women Preachers and Ecclesial Suffrage in American Methodism.”

Ana Parejo Vadillo, Faculty, School of Creative Arts, Cultures and Communications, Birkbeck, University of London, “Bound: The Queer Poetry of Michael Field.”

Carol Quirke, Faculty, American Studies, SUNY Old Westbury, “Feminism’s ‘Official Photographer:’ Bettye Lane, News Photography and Contemporary Feminism, 1969-2000.”

Paula Ramos, Independent Researcher, “Spatiality and gender: spatial circumstances of the creative process of feminist artists in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Dartricia Rollins, Graduate Student, University of Alabama, School of Library and Information Studies, “‘You Had to Be There:’ Charis’ 50-Year History as the South’s Oldest Independent Feminist Bookstore.”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Research Travel Grants

Ipek Sahinler, Ph.D. candidate, University of Texas Austin, “A Portrait of Young Women as Proto-Queer Thinkers: Eve Sedgwick vis-à-vis Gloria Anzaldúa.”

David Seitz, Faculty, Harvey Mudd College, “‘No Less Realistic’ but with ‘Different Ambitions’: Reparative Reading, Human Geography, and a Return to Sedgwick.

Doris Duke Foundation Travel Grants

Olivia Armandroff, Ph.D. candidate, University of Southern California, “Volcanic Matter: Land Formation and Artistic Creation.”

Cameron Bushnell, Faculty, Clemson University, Department of English. “‘The Invisible Orient’ in Orientalism Otherwise: Women Write the Orient.”

John Hope Franklin Center for African and African American History and Culture

Thomas Blakeslee, Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University, History Department, “Domestic Disturbances: The Resistant Masculinity of Black Fatherhood from Anti-Slavery to Civil Rights.”

Mara Curechian , Ph.D. candidate, School of English, University of St Andrews, “Acting Like Family: Performing Kinship in the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction.”

Michelle Decker, Faculty, Scripps College, English Department, George Washington Williams’s and Amanda B. Smith’s Appalachian Origins and African Explorations.”

Timothy Kumfer, Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgetown University, 2023-2024 Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Counter-Capital: Grassroots Black Power and Urban Struggles in Washington, D.C.”

Hunter Moskowitz, Ph.D. candidate, Northeastern University, “Race and Labor in the Global Textile Industry: Lowell, Concord, and Monterrey in the Early 19th Century.”

Summer Sloane-Britt, Ph.D. candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, “Visions of Liberation: Gender and Photography in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960-1970.”

Mila Turner, Faculty, Clark Atlanta University, “Bridging Histories: Connecting the Atlanta Student Movement with College Student Activism throughout the Southeast”

Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History

Kadin Henningsen, Ph.D. candidate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Walt’s Companions.”

Julie Kliegman, Author, book-length exploration of transgender pioneers.

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History

John Furr Fellowship

Hannah Pivo, Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology, “Charting the Future: Graphic Methods and Planning in the United States, c. 1910-60.”

Lewis Smith, Faculty, Brunel University London, Brunel Business School, Division of Marketing, “Marketing the State”: J. Walter Thompson Company and the Marketing of the Public Sector in Britain.”

Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grants

Warren Dennis, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, “Hard Power Paths: Gender and American Energy Policy, 1960-2000.” (Joint award with History of Medicine with support from the Louis H. Roddis Endowment)

Dan Du, Faculty, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Department of History, “U.S. Tea Trade and Consumption after the American Revolution.”

Will Mari, Faculty, Louisiana State University, Manship School of Mass Communication, “Selling the computer to women media workers: gendered ads during the Cold War.”

Janine Rogers, Ph.D. candidate, University of California Los Angeles, Theater Department, “Performance, Militarization, and Materialisms: Canned Goods in Asian America”.

Foare

Jonathan MacDonald, Ph.D. candidate, Brown University, Department of American Studies, “Psychology Hits the Road: Driving Simulators, Billboards, and Hypnosis on the Highway.”

History of Medicine Collections

Warren Dennis, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, “Hard Power Paths: Gender and American Energy Policy, 1960-2000.” (With support from the Louis H. Roddis Endowment; Joint award with the Hartman Center)

Ava Purkiss, Faculty, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, “After Anarcha: Black Women and Gynecological Medicine in the Twentieth Century.”

Baylee Staufenbiel, Ph.D. candidate, Florida State University, Department of History, “The Seven-Cell Uterus: De Spermate and the Anatomization of Cosmology.”

Brian Martin, Ph.D. candidate, University of Alabama, History Department, “Racial Theory and African American Medical Care in the U.S. Civil War.”

Human Rights Archive

“Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride” flyer, September 30, 2003, illustrates one area of coalition building in Durham, NC, as described in Elizabeth Barahona’s dissertation research proposal. From the Joan Preiss Papers, Box 27.

Elizabeth Barahona, Ph.D. candidate, Northwestern University, “Black and Latino Coalition Building in Durham, North Carolina 1980-2010.” (Joint award with the Archive of Documentary Arts)

Diana Ruiz, Faculty, University of Washington, Seattle, “Apprehension through Representation: Image Capture of the US-Mexico Border.” (Joint award with the Archive of Documentary Arts)

Kylie Smith, Faculty, Emory University. School of Nursing, Department of History, “No Place for Children: Disability, Civil Rights, and Juvenile Detention in North Carolina.”

Harrison Wick, Faculty, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) Special Collections and University Archives, “Examination of Primary Sources related to Social Justice and Latin American Immigration in the Human Rights Archive.”

2024-2025 Research Travel Grant Program

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for the 2024-2025 Research Travel Grant Program, offering awards of up to $1500 to support research projects associated with the following Centers, subject areas, and collection holdings:

  • Archive of Documentary Arts
  • Doris Duke Foundation Research Travel Grants
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grants
  • Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
  • History of Medicine Collections
  • Human Rights Archive
  • John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
  • John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
  • Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Mary Lily Research Grants)

Anyone whose research would be supported by sources from the Rubenstein Library’s research centers is eligible to apply. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers. For assistance determining the eligibility of your project, please contact AskRL@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”

Eligibility

Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees.

Information Session

An online information session will be held Thursday, January 11, 2024, 2-3 pm EST.  This program will review application requirements, offer tips for creating a successful application, and include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. This program will be recorded and posted online afterwards.  Register for the session here.

Timeline

The deadline for applications will be Thursday, February 29, 2024, at 6:00 pm EST.

Decisions will be announced by the end of April 2024 for travel during May 2024-June 2025. Awards are paid as reimbursement after completion of the research visit(s).

Enticing Engineers: New Areas of Outreach in the Rubenstein Library

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

In September, the Rubenstein Library partnered with colleagues in the Natural and Engineering Sciences (NSE) for an open house event. While our Engineering Exposition targeted students, faculty, and staff from Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, all were welcome to attend.

Photograph showing a large room with several tables displaying books. At one table, three people look closely at two books.
Faculty from the Engineering School examine works on engineering from the 16th and 17th centuries! Photo by Deric Hardy.
A woman with brown hair wearing a green dress talk with a student, whose back is toward the camera. On a table between the two people, is a toothpaste testing device composed of metal parts and sets of fake teeth.
Robin Klaus, graduate Intern in the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History talks with a student about the toothpaste testing device found in the Consumer Reports archive. Photo by Janelle Hutchinson.

 

Items from a variety of collecting areas within the Rubenstein Library were available for visitors to examine and handle. Some highlights included

Photograph of a table with three examples of microscopes on display.
Examples of 18th and 19th century microscopes that visitors were encouraged to handle and try out! Photo by Deric Hardy.
Photograph of table displaying several small, plastic anatomical figures as well as a laptop playing a video showing the making of those figures. The table also displays several books featuring pop-up components.
Examples of moveable books from the History of Medicine Collections and samples of 3D printed anatomical manikins made from items in our collection! Photo by Deric Hardy.
Image from an anatomical flap book. The left side of the image shows an artistic representation of a human eye and human ear and shows the flaps closed. The right side of the image shows the paper flaps lifted to reveal, underneath the original images, the anatomy of the inside of the eye and inside of the ear.
Pages from an anatomical flap book where the flaps can be lifted, as shown on the right, to reveal detail about the human body. Photo by Janelle Hutchinson.

Anyone is welcome to view our items in-person during our open hours. We also have great digital collections.

We look forward to our continued partnerships with colleagues across the Library and campus. Let us know what you might like to see at our next Engineering Exposition!