Category Archives: Travel Grants

2011-2012 Franklin Research Center Travel Grants Awarded

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s travel grants. These grants support the work of students, scholars, and independent researchers for travel to Durham to conduct research using the Franklin Research Center’s collections.

  • Andrew David Amron, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, University of Alabama, for his dissertation on black working-class masculinity and identity during the World War I era.
  • Maureen Cummins, independent scholar, for the production of a limited edition artist book concerning slavery in the U.S., mid 19th century.
  • Ira Dworkin, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, The American University in Cairo, for research on African Americans in the Congo, particularly George Washington Williams.
  • Nina Ehrlich, master’s student, Department of History, Colorado State University, for a study of relationships between black and white women during the Civil Rights Movement.
  • Reginald K. Ellis, Visiting Professor, Department of History, Florida A&M University, for work on a manuscript concerning James Edward Shepard and black North Carolinians in the 20th century.
  • Rebecca Wieters Moake, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, University of Maryland-College Park, for work on her dissertation concerning the working people of Charleston, S.C., in the late 19th century.
  • Tyler D. Parry, Ph.D. candidate and master’s student, Department of History, University of South Carolina, for dissertation and article exploring slave kinship in the Antebellum South.
  • Ibram H. Rogers, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Africana & Latino Studies, State University of New York College at Oneonta, for a book examining the struggle to diversify higher education, 1965-1972.
  • Daniel Royles, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, Temple University, for research exploring African American AIDS activism and advocacy in the United States.

2011-2012 Mary Lily Research Grants Awarded

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Mary Lily Research Grants. These grants support the work of students, scholars, and independent researchers who will travel to Durham from all over the U.S. to make use of the Bingham Center’s rich collections. We would like to gratefully acknowledge our faculty reader, Kimberly Lamm, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies, who offered her insights and expertise as the committee reviewed a competitive pool of 40 proposals.

This year’s grant program received additional support from the Program in Women’s Studies. Every year, the Program in Women’s Studies explores ideas and concepts from a variety of disciplines that touch on women, gender, and feminism. The theme for 2011-12 is “The Future of the Feminist 1970s.” Many of our grant recipients this year are focusing on related research questions, and we anticipate that they will help enrich the conversations on campus that will evolve in the classroom and beyond about how the multiple feminist paradigms of the 1970s continue to have an impact on feminist thought.

  • Marika Cifor, master’s student, History and Library and Information Science, Simmons College, for master’s thesis research that examines historical relationships of lesbians and prostitutes in the United States, 1869-1969.
  • Jessica Frazier, PhD candidate, History, Binghamton University, for dissertation research on Vietnamese militiawomen and the interconnections of empire, race and gender in the feminist movement, 1965-1980.
  • Choonib Lee, PhD candidate, History, State University of New York at Stony Brook, for dissertation research on militant women in the new left and civil rights movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
  • La Shonda Mims, PhD candidate, History, Georgia State University, for dissertation research on lesbian community and identity in the cities of Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA from WWII to the present.
  • Jennifer Nelson, Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Redland, for a book on community health reform movements from the mid-1960s to the present.
  • Ally Nevarez, master’s student, Book Arts and Library and Information Science, University of Alabama, for an artist’s book that highlights the important role that women have in contributing to community and preserving culture.
  • Rose Norman, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Alabama at Huntsville, for research on lesbian feminist activism in the South, 1965-1985.
  • Robin Robinson, Associate Professor, History, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, for a book and article on transportation and transformation of female convicts as unfree labor in Colonial America.
  • Emily Thuma, PhD candidate, American Studies, New York University, for dissertation research on prisons and the politics of resisting gendered violence, 1968-1984.
  • Elizabeth York, Associate Professor, Music Therapy, Converse College, for research on Atlanta women’s music and culture, 1976-1986.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Bus Boycotts and the Politics of Race

Date: Thursday, 17 March 2011
Time: 3-4 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu

Cover of Freedom's Main Line by Dr. Derek CatsamPlease join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program with Dr. Derek Catsam, recipient of a 2010-2011 Franklin Research Center travel grant. Dr. Catsam is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

Dr. Catsam’s talk, “Tired Feet, Rested Souls and Empty Pockets: Bus Boycotts and the Politics of Race in the U.S. and South Africa,” will examine comparative aspects of these movements in the United States and South Africa.

During his research visit to the RBMSCL, Dr. Catsam will be studying our collections related to apartheid South Africa.

(More details about Derek Catsam’s book Freedom’s Main Line: the Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides and his research interests can be found on his departmental website.)

Post contributed by Jennifer Thompson, John Hope Franklin Research Center Librarian.

RBMSCL Travel Grants: $$$ to Visit Us!

Photo by Mark Zupan.

Good news, researchers! The RBMSCL is now accepting applications for our 2011-2012 travel grants.

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History will award up to $1,000 per recipient to fund travel and other expenses related to visiting the RBMSCL. The grants are open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, independent scholars, artists, and activists living outside a 100-mile radius from Durham, NC with research projects that would benefit from access to the centers’ collections.

More details—and the grant application—may be found on our grants website. Applications must be postmarked or e-mailed no later than 5:00 PM EST on January 31, 2011. Recipients will be announced in March 2011.

We’re also excited to announce that the RBMSCL will be offering three new grants this year for scholars interested in using our German Studies and Judaica collections. Additional information about applying for one of these three grants will be available on our grants website soon. These new grants will have a later deadline.

From the RBMSCL Wire

Boy lying on couch, reading comics. From the William Gedney Photographs and Writings, 1950s-1989.
Boy lying on couch, reading comics. From the William Gedney Photographs and Writings, 1950s-1989.

Sure, you could lie on a couch and read comic books, but why not have a look at some of the articles and blog posts about the RBMSCL that have been published recently?

A profile of Susie King Taylor appears at TheAtlantic.com. (Read the post here). Taylor’s Reminiscences of My Life in Camp is part of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture’s Black Voices Collection.

Our new exhibit, “‘As Far as Possible from Forgetfulness’: The Trinity College Historical Society,” found itself on the front page of the Durham Herald-Sun. (Read the article online.)

And Hartman Center travel grant recipient Ari Samsky wrote about his two-week research visit to the RBMSCL for web magazine Splice Today. You’ll find his essay—which makes us glad that Durham’s cooled off considerably in the past few days—here.

Let us know if you find any other mentions of the RBMSCL during your wanderings across the Internet and through print.

Networks for Freedom

Date: Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

1862 broadside.

Join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program with historian Deborah Lee, recipient of a 2010-2011 Franklin Research Center travel grant.

Dr. Lee’s research traces the networks of anti-slavery activists that operated between 1810 and 1865 in the upper Potomac River basin. As Dr. Lee writes, “these white and black anti-slavery men and women used sophisticated peaceful means—persuasion, law, philanthropy, colonization, and the underground railroad—to help thousands of individual bondspeople obtain freedom, fray the institution of slavery locally, and advance the movement nationally.”

Dr. Lee’s visit to the RBMSCL will allow her to examine a number of our 19th century manuscript collections, including the Rankin-Parker Papers, the John Rutherfoord Papers, and the Funkhouser Family Papers.

Light refreshments will be served.

Drawing Feminism

Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Detail of portrait of Irene Peslikis by Alice Neel. From the Irene Peslikis Papers.

The summer research project season is in full swing!

Next Tuesday, Katie Anania, graduate student in Art History at the University of Texas-Austin and recipient of a Mary Lily Research Grant, will discuss her research on the feminist adoption of drawing as an intimate means of artistic expression.

Anania’s research at the RBMSCL has focused on the Irene Peslikis Papers and the Kate Millett Papers.

Light refreshments will be served.

For more about feminism and art, visit “Stretching the Canvas: Women Exploring the Arts” and “The Feminist Art Movement, 1970s-1980s,” online versions of two exhibits prepared for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture‘s 2007 symposium, Neither Model Nor Muse: Women and Artistic Expression.

Global Women, Local Women

Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Please join us for a program featuring Mary Lily Research Grant recipients Karen Garner and Lori Brown.

Karen Garner, Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at SUNY Empire State College, will discuss her research on U.S. global gender policy in the 1990s using the Sisterhood is Global Institute Records, Robin Morgan Papers, and Robin Chandler Duke Papers.

Lori Brown, Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, will also present her examination of relationships between space, abortion, and issues of access to reproductive health services based on research using our women’s health clinic records.

Light refreshments will be served.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.

Black Petticoats and Bold Protests

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

The first Staff & Scholars Tea of the summer, hosted by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, will feature Mary Lily Research Grant recipients Rebecca Mitchell and Michelle Moravec.

Rebecca Mitchell will present her findings on the proto-feminist aspects and eroticism of Victorian mourning attire. Mitchell is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American.

Michelle Moravec will speak about feminist art activism as a U.S. social movement. Moravec is Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rosemont College.

These two diverse topics will be sure to spark a lively conversation! Light refreshments will be served.

For more about other happenings at the Bingham Center, check out the latest issue of the center’s newsletter!

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.

2010-2011 Franklin Research Center Travel Grants Awarded

John Hope Franklin. From the John Hope Franklin Papers.

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s travel grants. These grants allow scholars to travel to Durham to conduct research using the Franklin Research Center’s collections.

  • Shanna G. Benjamin, Department of English, Grinnell College, for work on a biography of the late Nellie Y. McKay, Bascom Professor of English and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  • Derek Charles Catsam, Department of History, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, for a chronicle of the events of 1985 in South Africa, a tumultuous year in that country’s history.
  • Jametta Davis, Department of History, Howard University, for research for her dissertation detailing the effects of New Deal policies and programs on African American women.
  • Jacob S. Dorman, Department of History, University of Kansas, for an examination of the formation and development of black Jewish religions in the past 45 years.
  • Elizabeth Herbin, Department of History, St. John’s University, for an analysis of racial conflicts and segregation among small Southern farmers from 1900 to 1945.
  • Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, Department of History, Geography, and Economics, Texas Southern University, for an account of “boomerang migration”: the return of African American Southerners from their new homes in the North to participate in social and political uplift activities during the Jim Crow era.
  • Deborah Lee, independent scholar, for a study tracing the networks of anti-slavery activists in the Potomac River basin from 1810 to 1870.
  • Joseph Moore, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro,for research on the 1850 trial of George Grier, an enslaved South Carolina man, for seditious speech, with emphasis on an exploration of the community of Abbeville County, South Carolina.

Watch The Devil’s Tale for news about upcoming discussions with several of the travel grant recipients from the Bingham, Hartman, and Franklin Research Centers.