Category Archives: Do Your Research

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks, Travel Grants

Art, Abortion, Activism

Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

New York Feminist Art Institute poster, ca. 1980s
New York Feminist Art Institute poster, ca. 1980s. From the Irene Peslikis Papers.

Tomorrow, please join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for “Art, Abortion, Activism: Facets of Feminist History,” a Scholars’ Tea with Mary Lily Research Grant Recipients Jennifer Nelson and Michelle Moravec.

Jennifer Nelson, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Redlands, will be speaking on her research for her book, Abortion Referral and Feminist Health in the 1970s. Her research at the Bingham Center focuses on the Feminist Women’s Health Center Records.

Michelle Moravec, Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rosemont College, is researching an article entitled “While Historians Debated, Artists Created: Culture, History and the Women’s Movement.” Her research will explore the papers of feminist artists Kate Millett and Irene Peslikis, among others.

Light refreshments will be served. The tea is co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s Studies.

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

Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Instruction, Rare Books

Spying on Galileo

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Professor Begali's class in the Rare Book RoomOn Friday, April 8th, Professor Matteo Gilebbi’s Italian 22 course, offered by the Romance Studies Department, held a special lesson at the RBMSCL. The class was led by guest speaker Professor Mattia Begali. While Professor Begali’s expertise centers on the Baroque period, Professor Gilebbi’s research focuses on the use of new technologies in the fields of literature and pedagogy. This unique collaboration sought to facilitate student learning processes through the merger of old and new media.

This particular lesson aimed to utilize the RBMSCL as a pedagogic and engaging space for students interested in Italian culture and language. The class focused on the intellectual network of scholars who were active in Rome during Galileo’s affair. By using both ancient editions available in the RBSMCL’s collections and online sources, students were able to explore the visual rhetoric presented in works of authors such as Roberto Bellarmino and Tommaso Campanella, while endeavoring to understand their role and position in Galileo’s entourage.

Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, News and Features, 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.
Bingham Center, Do Your Research, News and Features, Travel Grants

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.

Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, News and Features, RL Scholars

Letters to Diamond Hill

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As part of our “RBMSCL Scholars” series, we’ve asked some of the wonderful researchers that the RBMSCL has hosted over the years to contribute a few words on their new books and research projects. Today, we have an essay from J. Keith Jones, editor of The Boys of Diamond Hill: The Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina, released in March by McFarland Publishers.

Cover of The Boys of Diamond HillWhen I first began investigating the Robert Boyd Family Papers at Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, I expected to find something that would appeal to genealogists of this family and those researching the history of Abbeville County, South Carolina. I didn’t know that I would discover a rich story about the triumphs of love and the tragedies of war. I would not have believed that two years later their story would be available to the world in The Boys of Diamond Hill: The Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina. With the guidance of the staff at RBMSCL and my editors at McFarland Publishers, that is exactly what has happened.

The backbone of this work can be found in the 86 letters of the five Boyd brothers and the husband of their eldest sister lovingly preserved in the RBMSCL. With the additional research of this family and the units they served in, their full story slowly emerged. In April 1861, brothers Daniel and Pressley Boyd joined the Confederate army. Soon the war would sweep the other three Boyd brothers—William, Thomas and Andrew—as well as their brother-in-law Fenton Hall, away from their farm in Abbeville County, South Carolina. Researching this collection uncovered warmth, humor, horror and loss of four long years of war.

I understand from descendants of Fenton Hall that a number of letters from this family had been lost in a house fire. They were thrilled to learn that those destroyed did not constitute the entire body of the brothers’ letters. It is so wonderful that Duke has preserved these surviving letters so the fascinating lives of these young men would not be lost to history. The helpful staff and wonderful facilities made the marathon sessions with this collection a joy and their support through the preparation for the publication process was invaluable.

To learn more about the book, as well as Keith’s other research projects, visit his website!

P.S. We’re still collecting responses for our reader feedback poll. Please click the orange button at the right to tell us your thoughts about The Devil’s Tale. Thanks!

Do Your Research, Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks, Travel Grants

Bus Boycotts and the Politics of Race

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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.

Do Your Research, From Our Collections, University Archives

You Can’t Take It with You

Wallace Fowlie in 1968.
Wallace Fowlie in 1968. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.

“Cleaning my apartment,” wrote Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) in his memoir Aubade, “means discarding each week an object, a book, and even a notebook that has served its purpose.” In other words, the influential Duke faculty member destroyed many of his own manuscripts.

Still, something of Fowlie’s archive was recovered from his Durham home at Valley Terrace Apartments and survives in the Wallace Fowlie Papers, a modest collection of his correspondence and later manuscripts.

Fowlie arrived in Durham in 1964 and taught French literature at Duke until his death in 1998; he was named the James B. Duke Professor of French in 1968. Fowlie is best known for his critical readings and translations of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Cocteau, and other French writers.

The Wallace Fowlie Papers include highlights from his correspondence, such as letters from Jean Cocteau, Anaïs Nin, and other important literary figures.

Letter from Jean Cocteau to Wallace Fowlie, 1957. From the Wallace Fowlie Papers.
Letter from Jean Cocteau to Wallace Fowlie, 1957. From the Wallace Fowlie Papers.

Two spiral notebooks—apparently the only notebooks not discarded by the self-described “eccentric” scholar—contain Fowlie’s notes on Marcel Proust, Dante, and other writers. Most notable, perhaps, is Fowlie’s personal reminiscence of his relationship with the novelist Henry Miller.

For further details about the Wallace Fowlie Papers, consult the collection’s finding aid or contact RBMSCL staff.

Post contributed by David Pavelich, Head of Research Services.

Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, News and Features

Mystery Solved!

A few months ago, UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student Adam Domby spent a morning at the RBMSCL studying several of our manuscripts collections, including a heretofore unidentified North Carolina farm woman’s diary. “You know,” he said as he prepared to leave, “I think I could figure out who wrote that diary.”

Read the full story in the most recent issue of the Duke University Libraries Magazine!

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, Human Rights Archive, Instruction, Jazz Archive

Instruction-a-Go-Go

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Instruction Session in the Rare Book RoomThis past semester, RBMSCL librarians led over 90 instruction sessions with students from Duke University and beyond—including students taking courses on advertising history at Elon University and Johnson & Wales University. We’ve pulled together a mere sampling of the courses we’ve supported over the past few months. We think you’ll see that the RBMSCL has something for every research interest!

  • Advertising in Society
  • The Age of Jim Crow: Racial Segregation from Plessy to Brown
  • African American Women and History
  • American Business History
  • Animals and Ethics: Welfare, Rights, Utilitarianism, and Beyond
  • Book Art: Text as Image (videos produced by students in the class)
  • Citizen Organizing, 1776-Present
  • Classics of American Literature, 1860 to1915
  • Consumerism in Great Britain and the U.S.
  • Documenting Race, Class, and Gender (Writing 20)
  • Enlightenment Orientalism
  • Globalization in Writing (Writing 20)
  • Hidden Children: Children and Childhood in U.S. History and Across Cultures Cultures (Writing 20)
  • History of Photography, 1839 to the Present
  • Human Rights Activism
  • Intermediate German Conversation
  • Introduction to German Literature
  • Introduction to Old English
  • Methods of Social Research
  • Native American History through Autobiography
  • New Media, Memory, and the Visual Archive
  • New Testament Greek Reading
  • Photography in Context: Photographic Meaning and the Archive of Documentary Arts
  • The Politics and Obligations of Memory
  • Reading Gender, Writing Technoscience (Writing 20)
  • Southern History
  • Witchcraft in Comparative Perspective
  • Writing Sound and Sound Writing: Hearing Race (Writing 20)
  • Writing the Self (Writing 20)

Wondering if the RBMSCL could support your Spring 2011 course? Send us an e-mail at special-collections(at)duke.edu!

Digital Collections, Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff

Human Rights Records, Electronically

I’m a history Ph.D. candidate, so I knew something about working in archives when I started my internship with Technical Services at Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library (RBMSCL), but not a lot about processing paper records, never mind electronic ones. However, as I started processing several collections acquired through the Archive for Human Rights, I discovered that electronic files were often just as important to the collection as paper ones. When I started working on the Common Sense Foundation Papers, I faced over 16,000 electronic files in addition to 34 boxes of paper records! A North Carolina think-tank active from 1994 to 2008, the Common Sense Foundation (CSF) worked on initiatives such as the death penalty, testing in public schools, and LGBTQ rights.

When I met with Paula Jeannet Mangiafico (Senior Processing Archivist), Seth Shaw (Electronic Records Archivist), and Patrick Stawski (Human Rights Archivist) to discuss the collection, we decided to integrate the electronic and paper files in the finding aid since the content overlapped and the volume was about equal. A researcher interested in the death penalty will thus find both electronic and paper records described in the Criminal Justice Subseries, which contains letters written by incarcerated people, a survey of capital defense lawyers, research on specific death-row inmates, and documents reflecting the daily work that occurred in CSF’s office surrounding this policy initiative.

Just as when working with paper documents, I screened the electronic files for sensitive information, such as personal, financial, and medical records. I then used the original path of the networked drive to describe the electronic files in the finding aid and used both the number of files and the megabyte size to indicate the physical extent. That way, researchers interested in a particular aspect of CSF’s work will know which electronic folders to request from RBMSCL staff, just as they would request a physical box by its number.

The RBMSCL has acquired almost 200 collections with electronic records in the past few years. Hopefully, my work with the CSF Papers will serve as model for processing future collections with strong electronic components.

Post contributed by Liz Shesko, Technical Services Processing Intern.

The Common Sense Foundation Papers are currently being processed. The finding aid will be published and the collection will be available for use in January 2011. For more information, contact the RBMSCL at special-collections(at)duke.edu.