Working with Words: Historical Documents, Systems of Knowledge, and Text-as-Moving Image Art in the Films of David Gatten

Date: Thursday, 7 April 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Still from Still from "Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST"
Still from “Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST”

Next Thursday, award-winning filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow David Gatten returns to the RBMSCL to present three of his films. Gatten will introduce each film and discuss his use of historical documents, “out-dated” instructional texts and rare books as both inspiration and image in his filmmaking practice.

Over the last fifteen years, David Gatten’s films have explored the intersection of the printed word and the moving image, while investigating the shifting vocabularies of experience and representation within intimate spaces and historical documents. His films trace the contours of both private lives and public histories, combining elements of philosophy, biography and poetry with experiments in cinematic forms and narrative structures.

“Secret History of the Dividing Line” (2002) is one of the nine parts in Gatten’s ongoing investigation of the life and library of William Byrd. Torn fragments of Byrd’s official history of the 1728 dividing line expedition commingle with the privately circulated ‘secret history’ of the surveying party.

“The Matter Propounded, of its possibility or impossibility, treated in four Parts” (2011) makes use of an early 19th century system for telling one’s future. Divided into four sections—Instructions, Questions, Answers and Conclusions—the film invites viewers to draw their own conclusions about the questions we ask of the world and the answers we find for ourselves.

“Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST” (2010) is the latest in Gatten’s austerely beautiful “Invisible Ink” series.  Incorporating writings by Sir Francis Bacon, lists from Western Union telegraphic codes, and phrases from wedding vows in The Book of Common Prayer, the film also includes images made using pine pollen and tiny flowering plants in extreme, swirling macro-close-ups. This moving and very personal film actually served as Gatten’s wedding vows at his July 2010 marriage.

Gatten is a Visiting Associate Professor and Distinguished Filmmaker in Residence in the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University. His films premiere annually in the New York Film Festival and have been included twice in the Whitney Biennial. His work resides in the permanent collections of the British Film Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as in numerous university and private collections. Since 1997, his films have won more than twenty awards at festivals around the world. In 2005, Gatten was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his film series investigating the library of William Byrd.

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Celebrating Tenn’s Centennial

10 DarlingToday, March 26, 2011, would be the hundredth birthday of Tennessee Williams, one of America’s great playwrights. The Carson McCullers Papers here at Duke contain many letters between McCullers and Williams, most from the late 1940s, shortly after Williams had written McCullers a fan letter and the two had immediately become close friends. The letters are full of passionate discussion of their work, travels, and deep affection for each other.

Tennessee Williams' signatureOn behalf of McCullers and all lovers of American theatre and literature: Happy birthday, “10 Darling.”

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

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The Poetic Mushroom

On Hadrian's Wall, front of photograph.
On Hadrian's Wall, front of photograph.

During the summer of 1970, four remarkable American writers and editors paid a visit to 70 year old Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting in his home in Corn Close, Yorkshire, England. The leader of this group was Jonathan Williams, poet and founder of North Carolina’s the Jargon Society, which published the works of innovative poets such as Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, and Duke alumnus Guy Davenport.

Williams asked his companions to stop and pose for the camera “near the end of the trek up the Pennines,” a low-rising mountain range separating the North West of England from Yorkshire. “Quite a rough go, by the way.”

On Hadrian's Wall, back of photograph.
On Hadrian's Wall, back of photograph.

Williams helpfully typed on the back of this small (2 ½ inch square) photo the names of those pictured. From the left is Williams’ life partner, the poet and translator Thomas Meyer; Dan Gerber, co-founder of the Michigan-based little magazine Sumac; and Russell Banks, then a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill (BA ‘67), and now the prominent novelist and author of The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, and other acclaimed books.

He then sent the snapshot to R. Philip Hanes, an executive at Hanes Dye and Finishing Company, who was a founding board member of the Jargon Society.

The photo comes from the R. Philip Hanes Papers. Hanes’ papers provide a rich and entertaining look at one small, North Carolina publisher’s fund raising efforts. Williams’ wit and garrulousness shows in the letters. He has many names for money, for instance, names like “lucre,” “lolly,” “moola,” “smackers,” and plenty of others. “I’m apparently not doing as a fund-raiser. But, us mountain boys is a mess, that’s been true for hundreds of years.”

We also learn about some of Hanes’ interests: “Dear Morchella Esculenta,” Williams writes in August 1971, “One suspects there will be a conglutination of those fearsome fungi of yourn this year. Lots of showers here lately too. Everything grows heavily—the pollens, the tourists, anglophobia, anglophilia—the lot.”

That is, Hanes hunted mushrooms.

Post contributed by David Pavelich, Head of Research Services.

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Change Blog Readers Can Believe In (take our poll)

Flagpole Sitter, 1956
Flagpole Sitter, 1956. From the Duke University Archives.

We’re librarians: we like information. For the next month, The Devil’s Tale will be gathering information from you, our reader, in our first-ever feedback poll!

This is your chance to tell us a little bit about your blog-reading habits and what you’d like to see when you visit The Devil’s Tale. In the sidebar you’ll see an orange button that links to our short survey—we hope you’ll take a few minutes to help us learn how to create a better, more informative blog. Of course, your responses and comments will be submitted anonymously, so click away!

We’ll be gathering responses through Friday, April 15th, and we’ll be sure to let you know what we’ve learned once the results are tabulated.

All of the other Duke University Libraries blogs will be running the exact same poll, so head over to the other blogs that you read and leave some feedback for them, too.

Thanks!

Uncle Terry’s Bracket

Terry Sanford's 1992 NCAA Bracket
Click to enlarge.

On any ordinary Monday morning in 1992, then-North Carolina Senator and former President of Duke University Terry Sanford began his week attending to the public’s business.  However, this particular Monday in March happened to be the day after Selection Sunday and, like so many of us, Senator Sanford contemplated his blank NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket at the expense of perhaps more pressing work.

Among the hundreds of linear feet of Terry Sanford’s records and papers held in the RBMSCL (his senatorial papers) and University Archives (records from his Duke presidency) is his 1992 NCAA Tournament bracket.  Although he couldn’t have foreseen Christian Laettner’s last second turnaround jumper against Kentucky and Duke’s trouncing of Michigan’s “Fab-5” in the tournament final, the man that the Duke Student body fondly referred to as “Uncle Terry” chose Duke to repeat as NCAA champions.  Will they do it again in 2011?

Post contributed by Josh Larkin-Rowley, Research Services Assistant.

P.S. Through Friday, April 15th, we’ll be gathering responses as part of our first-ever reader feedback poll! Click the orange button in the sidebar to participate, or visit this blog post to learn more.

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.

Happy International Women’s Day!

International Women's Day Flier, 1973
This flier is from a 1973 event sponsored by the Atlanta Anti-Imperialist Coalition celebrating International Women’s Day. From the flier: “International Women’s Day dates back over 100 years of struggle to March 8, 1857, when women garment and textile workers went on strike in New York. . . . People have continued to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 since 1910.”

Activists have used this holiday to celebrate the achievements of notable women in history as well as to advocate for women’s equality, particularly labor issues such as better child care, maternity leave, and equal pay for equal work.

(The flier is from the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance Archives, box 14.)

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

An Anonymous Author Unveiled, 125 Years Later

Title Page of The Fall of the Great Republic
Title Page of The Fall of the Great Republic.

It’s not often that we acquire two copies of the same work at the Library.  Sometimes, however, a second copy can have unique characteristics that make it nearly irresistible—as in the case of a copy of The Fall of the Great Republic recently acquired for the Glenn R. Negley Collection of Utopian Literature, which may have solved the 125-year-old mystery of its author’s identity.

A well-known anti-socialist and xenophobic dystopian work published in 1885 and foretelling the demise of the United States, the book was published under the pseudonym Henry Standish Coverdale.   The copy now at Duke seems to establish the author as New Lebanon, N.Y. newspaperman Abner Hitchcock (1851-1936).  The volume comes from his library, bears the ownership signature “Hitchcock,” and includes a penciled note in the rear, dated from August 1924, stating that “Authorship [was] kept a complete secret.”

The specially-bound volume contains clippings and reviews of the work from across East and parts of the Midwest, including a suspiciously positive review from the Boston Journal, a paper for which Hitchcock wrote.   Of the various reviews, the owner has written in the volume: “The most striking thing about it is in the illustration the pasted-in comments give of the impression it made on different readers. – One sees in me an ass, and one a prophet. I suspect there is some basis for both judgements.”

Clippings pasted into The Fall of the Great Republic
Clippings pasted into The Fall of the Great Republic.

The volume was discovered by a bookseller cleaning out of the attic of the Hitchcock House in New Lebanon, now a bed-and-breakfast inn.  It has now found its permanent home at Duke, where it will remain a one-of-a-kind resource for future generations of scholars.

Special thanks to Garrett Scott for permission to quote from his description of this item.

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

The King’s Letter

The King’s Speech, the film dramatizing King George VI’s efforts to conquer his stutter, is thrilling cinephiles, history buffs, and Colin Firth admirers. On Sunday, the film received four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Firth), Best Directing (Tom Hooper), and Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler). It was nominated for an additional eight Oscars, making it the most-nominated film this year.

Our Herbert Henry Asquith Papers contain letters written to this former Prime Minister and his second wife, Emma, by George VI’s father, King George V (played in the film by Michael Gambon), and brother, Prince George, the Duke of Kent. We’d like to share a letter from King George V to Emma Asquith, written from perhaps one of the more recognizable home addresses in the RBMSCL’s collections.

George V Letter, page one

George V Letter, page two

Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian. With special thanks to Sam Hammond, Original Cataloger of Rare Materials.

Daughters of the American Revolution

Date: Thursday, 3 March 2011
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Richard White Lecture Hall
Contact Information: Laura Micham, 919-660-5828 or laura.m(at)duke.edu

Dorothy Q. ThomasDorothy Q. Thomas will speak about recovering  a legacy of progressive Americanism for contemporary women’s rights activists, drawing on her on-going research for a book that chronicles the lives of some of her female ancestors, including descendants of former presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and mother of the American Revolution Dorothy Quincy Hancock. Thomas is currently a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She was previously a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and was founding director for the Human Rights Watch Women’s Division.

The lecture is cosponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the Duke Human Rights Center, Women’s Studies, the Program in the Study of Sexualities, and the Franklin Humanities Institute. Generous support was also provided by the Trent Foundation.

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