Events, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Kathryn Sikkink Reads from The Justice Cascade

Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Kathryn SikkinkKathryn Sikkink, recipient of this year’s Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)-Duke University Human Rights Book Award, will read from and discuss her award-winning book, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics during tomorrow’s award presentation. A reception and book signing will follow.

Sikkink’s book examines what she calls “the justice cascade,” a very new development in world politics. “Only 30 years ago, it was virtually unheard of, almost unimaginable, for a national or international tribunal to hold state officials criminally accountable for human rights violations,” Sikkink notes.

Now, around the world, former government and security force officials accused of human rights crimes are facing prosecutions in unprecedented numbers. In Chile, for example, the number of court cases has sharply increased and now involve the highest ranks of the security forces. Prosecutions have also expanded beyond deaths and disappearances to torture and forced exile.

This year’s panel of judges called The Justice Cascade “compelling” and “eye-opening,” recognizing it for its important contribution to the field of human rights, Latin American studies and accountability.

For further information about the book and the award, visit the related Devil’s Tale blog post or the WOLA press release.

Sikkink is a Regents Professor and the McKnight Presidential Chair in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Her publications include Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America; Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (co-authored with Margaret Keck and awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order and the ISA Chadwick Alger Award for Best Book in the area of International Organizations); and The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp).

Duke sponsors for the event include the Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Archive, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Studies, and the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

From Our Collections, Rare Books

He Lives! Frankenstein in the Rubenstein

Scary, but true: the Rubenstein’s Hinton Collection of Plays contains what’s believed to be the first published image of Frankenstein’s Creature (or “Monster,” if you’re feeling pejorative).  Are you ready to face the horror?

 

Now that you’ve recovered from the shock, you’ll be interested to know that this image is of the actor Richard John O. Smith portraying the Creature in an 1826 stage adaptation of Shelley’s novel by Henry Milner.  The Hinton Collection also contains a prompt book for Milner’s play as produced at the Theatre Royal in Birmingham, England, probably in the 1830s. The image below shows the page of the prompt book for the Creature’s awakening, with the inserted dialogue “He lives / He lives”:

This echoes the line “It lives! It lives!” from the first stage adaptation of Frankenstein, R. B. Peake’s wildly successful 1823 play Presumption (you can find an edition of this in the Hinton Collection, as well), and prefigures perhaps the most famous scene in horror cinema.

Adaptations and reimaginings of the story of Frankenstein continue to proliferate today.  See these and many more chilling items, including an issue of Frankenstein Comics from the 1940s, at the Haunted Library Screamfest from 11am-1pm today!

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

Bingham Center, Events, Readings and Talks

Scholars’ Tea with Emily Thuma

Date: Thursday, November 3, 2011
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Tea KettleEmily Thuma, recipient of one of this year’s Mary Lily Research Grants awarded by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, will discuss her post-doctoral research to revise her dissertation, “Not a Wedge, But a Bridge”: Prisons, Feminist Activism, and the Politics of Gendered Violence, 1968-1987.

She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley.

Light refreshments will be served. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s Studies as part of the “Future of the Feminist 1970s” series.

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

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Just for Fun, Manuscripts, Rare Books, University Archives

Haunted Library Screamfest

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Date: Halloween, Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Have you ever wandered around a library’s stacks in the dark? Or wondered what might go bump in an archival box?

Stop by the Rubenstein Library’s Rare Book Room for a special Halloween “eeeks”-ibit and open house. We’ll be dragging out some of the creepiest and most macabre items from the shadowy depths of the library’s vaults—including the thirteen unlucky items below.

This event is free and open to the living and the dead. There will be candy. Lots and lots of candy.

49 Glass Eyeballs
49 Glass Eyeballs. From the History of Medicine Collections.

1. A travel diary written by John Buck, a young American who found himself face-to-face with Bram Stoker (before he wrote Dracula)

2. Letters to Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory describing the 1949 poltergeist case that became the basis for The Exorcist

3. Opera Omnia Anatomico-Medico-Chirurgica by 18th century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, featuring illustrations of fetal skeletons playing instruments  among “trees” made of veins and arteries and “rocks and stones” that are actually organs, gallstones, and kidney stones

4. An entire box of glass eyeballs (49, to be exact)

5. “Jack the Ripper” and “Cthulhu by Gaslight,” two board games from the Edwin and Terry Murray Role Playing Game Collection

6. Artists’ books Mountain Dream Tarot by Bea Nettles and Femmes Fatales by Maureen Cummins. Tarot cards and pictures of medieval torture devices!

7. Brochures and advertisements for coffins and other funeral-related paraphernalia from the Advertising Ephemera Collection

8.Two copies of Henry Milner’s 1826 melodramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the very first illustration of (the actor portraying) “the Monster”

9. Bela Lugosi’s signature

10. Maps and photographs of the Rigsbee Graveyard (yes, the graveyard in the Blue Zone)

11. Comics Review #1, 1965, which includes  Stephen King’s first published story, “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber,”  from the Edwin and Terry Murray Fanzine Collection

12. Halloween postcards (complete with spooky messages . . . or invitations to Halloween parties) from our Postcard Collection

13. Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Whispering Witch by Kathryn Kenny, 1980

Which one will give you nightmares come the witching hour?

Halloween Postcard, 1908.
Halloween Postcard, 1908. From the Postcard Collection.
Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, Manuscripts, News and Features, Rare Books, RL Scholars

Happy North Carolina Archives Week!

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It’s North Carolina Archives Week, a weeklong celebration of North Carolina’s cultural heritage repositories and the wonderful researchers that use them—that’s you!

Stop in, meet your friendly neighborhood special collections librarians, and request some archival collections and rare books—we think you’ll find that the Rubenstein Library has something for everyone! Or check out the North Carolina Archives Week’s website to find more ways to celebrate with cultural history repositories throughout the state.

Need some inspiration? We’ve gathered together a few previously-published blog posts written by our researchers:

We’ll see you in the reading room!

A very fill Rubenstein Library reading room!

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Instruction, Rare Books

The Anatomy of Anatomy Day

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Monday was the annual Anatomy Day visit to the History of Medicine Collections. This is one of my favorite times of the year!

In the fall, all of the first year medical students here at Duke—about one hundred of them—visit the History of Medicine Collections to view historical anatomical atlases. This is a chance for them to see how anatomy has been represented over hundreds of years, and also provides stimulating and interesting texts that they can compare to what they are seeing in the dissection lab.

Curator Rachel Ingold talks with medical students at Anatomy Day.
Curator Rachel Ingold talks with medical students at Anatomy Day. Photo by Angela Mace.

Faculty and staff contribute to Anatomy Day by engaging with students and asking questions about the texts on display. This year, participants included the main coordinator of the event, Dr. Jeff Baker, along with Dr. Ara Tourian, Dr. Rick Madden, Professor Valeria Finucci, Professor Shannon Withycombe, and Rubenstein Library staff members Laura Micham, Kate Collins, Andy Armacost, and Jessica Janecki. Materials on display ranged from a 17th century copy of a 14th century illuminated Islamic medical manuscript to the controversial Pernkopf atlases from the mid-twentieth century.

The comments I heard this year were “awesome,” “I love anatomy so I loved everything,” and “overall, this experience was great and I liked to see the progression of anatomical representations.” I overheard students have serious ethical discussions about dissection and talk about the variety of ways they learn about the human body. I also talked to a student who told me that the greatest tool out of all the tools a student could have in the anatomy lab is the hand.

Dr. Rick Madden talks with medical students at Anatomy Day.
Dr. Rick Madden talks with medical students at Anatomy Day. Photo by Mark Zupan.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s Anatomy Day and talking with students about the array of anatomical texts here at the History of Medicine Collections!

For more photos, visit the “Anatomy Day 2011” set on our Flickr photostream!

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

Bingham Center, Events, Readings and Talks

The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life

Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: The Regulator Bookshop (720 9th Street, Durham)
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Cover of The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing LifeNava Atlas will discuss and sign copies of her new book, The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Process: Inspiration and Advice from Celebrated Women Authors Who Paved the Way.

Filled with more than 100 archival images, The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life presents twelve celebrated women authors (including Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Anaïs Nin, and Virginia Woolf), drawing on their diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews to create inspiring portrayals of their views on the craft of writing.

Nava Atlas is a visual artist and the author and illustrator of many well-known vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, as well as two previous books of humor, Expect the Unexpected When You’re Expecting and Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife. The Sallie Bingham Center’s artists’ books collection contains two of her artists’ books, Love and Marriage and (Mis)labeling Hillary.

(Mis)labeling Hillary
(Mis)labeling Hillary, 2008.
Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Manuscripts, Research Tips

Researching the Civil War?

This has been the most terrific days battle since commincement. The enemy made a terrible charge over our Breastworks with re-inforcementz & succeeded in charging some of our men out of them, capturing many of our Division. All our Regiment that were left from the first days fight were captured.
—from the Henry Beverige Diary, Thursday, May 12, 1864.

Beverige, a soldier and hospital steward with the 25th Virginia Regiment of the Confederate States of America, describes one of the many terrifying, bloody days of the American Civil War. His diary is one of the numerous first person accounts available in the Rubenstein Library. Other perspectives on life during the conflict are offered by fiery teenager Alice Williamson;  Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow, African Americans such as Edgar Dinsmore, and the many others who experienced the loneliness, losses, and deprivations—and occasional triumphs—of the conflict.

"Come and Join Us Brothers," 1863

To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Rubenstein Library staff have collaborated on a guide to Civil War resources that provides highlights of our rich collections. Special sections describe manuscript and print material related to military history, medicine, women, African Americans, literature, and music in the Rubenstein Library, as well as other library guides and relevant databases and websites.

We anticipate that this guide will be helpful for scholars, genealogists, and anyone with a personal interest in Civil War history. Please contact us if you have questions or comments about our collections.

Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian.

Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

Nelson Mandela and a Centering of Memory

Date: Monday, October 17, 2011
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu

Please join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program entitled “Nelson Mandela and a Centering of Memory,” with Verne Harris, Head of the Memory Programme at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Centre of Memory and Dialogue. A reception will follow.

Nelson Mandela and Verne HarrisVerne Harris has been Nelson Mandela’s archivist since 2004. As Head of the Centre of Memory, he has been the project leader on several publications about Nelson Mandela’s life: Nelson Mandela: Conversations with Myself (Macmillan, Johannesburg, 2010); Nelson Mandela: The Authorised Comic Book (Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2008); and A Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela’s Prison Archive (Penguin, Cape Town, 2005). He has also written about and presented on a number of topics concerning archives, records management and freedom of information in South Africa.

Verne Harris’ visit to Duke is co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute, where he will also be speaking on archives and justice on Tuesday, October 18th. Please find more information on this event at http://www.fhi.duke.edu/events/verne-harris-seminar.

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

Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University