Bingham Center, Featured, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, Students and Interns, Technical Stuff

Born to Belonging: the Mab Segrest Papers

December 10, 2015 Katrina Martin

For the past few months, I have had the pleasure of processing the papers of Dr. Mab Segrest, a leading feminist writer, activist, scholar, and speaker, who has traveled the United States and around the world fighting for social justice. Her papers are a foundational collection for the Sallie Bingham Center and a valuable resource for the study of feminism, race, class, sexuality, and gender, as well as literary theory and social movement history.

mabsegrest3 — Mab Segrest in her home in Durham, circa 1978-80

Filling 124 boxes and spanning from 1889 to the present, the materials document many aspects of Dr. Segrest’s personal and professional history. In the series related to her family, there are a variety of valuable materials, including correspondence from the Panama Canal, Civil War portraits, and artifacts from her childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama. Professional materials include everything from correspondence, teaching files, and organizational records to drafts and research materials from her most famous published works, Memoir of a Race Traitor (1994) and My Mama’s Dead Squirrel (1985).

The largest section of the papers document Dr. Segrest’s wide-ranging activism, especially her work with North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence (NCARRV), a public interest organization she co-founded in 1983 that rallied citizens against an epidemic of hate violence in this state. NCARRV files contain public communications as well as materials documenting strategy for on-the-ground activism in which she played a central role.

Dr. Segrest’s papers are a great testament to her long-standing commitment to education. Her teaching career started in 1971 when she accepted a position at Campbell University while working on her Ph.D. dissertation (earned at Duke University in 1979). Dr. Segrest has also taught courses at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke. She taught at Connecticut College from 2002 to 2014 where she was the Fuller-Maathai Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies. Most recently Dr. Segrest has taught at both Emory University and Georgia College while researching the history of Georgia’s state mental hospital in Milledgeville.

mabsegrest2 — Mab Segrest, feminist activist, writer, speaker, and educator

There is a good deal of connection among the different dimensions of this collection. In particular, it is impossible to separate Dr. Segrest’s work as an activist from her many academic accomplishments as these parts of her life have informed and shaped one another. When processing a person’s papers, it is impossible not to feel connected to them in some sense. I’m moved by Dr. Segrest’s enormous resolve and courage, and my time with her papers has increased my appreciation of her work and her dedication to activism and social justice.

The Mab Segrest Papers are an incredibly deep and rich resource within the Bingham Center and the Rubenstein Library. It has been a privilege to work with this collection and it is exciting to imagine the scores of students, scholars, and others whose work will be informed by these materials.

Post contributed by Rachel Sanders, intern for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Exhibits, Featured

Celebrating the 13th Amendment

December 4, 2015 Kate Collins 1 Comment

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

December 6, 2015, marks the 150^th anniversary of the ratification of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment ended slavery in the United States and marked the first substantive change to America’s conception of its liberties since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Its passage permanently freed four million African Americans (almost a third of population of the Southern States) from involuntary bondage.

David M. Rubenstein (T’70) has loaned a manuscript copy of the amendment to the Duke Libraries, and it will be on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room in the Rubenstein Library until December 13, 2015.

The 13th Amendment as part of our “Dreamers and Dissenters” exhibit

On the day the amendment was passed by Congress, several Congressmen had clerks engross souvenir copies, which were then passed around for the signatures of those who had voted for its approval. This is one of those copies, and it was signed by 34 Senators and 93 Congressmen. In the confusion of the moment, several of them signed the page more than once.

The 13^th amendment was the first of three amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War that significantly expanded American civil rights. The 14^th amendment (1868) granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” including those recently freed from slavery. The 15^th amendment (1870) declared that no man could be denied the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Featured, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen, Students and Interns

Boston Apple Pudding (1823) – Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen

December 4, 2015 Kate Collins

The Cook’s Oracle was a bestseller when it was first published in 1817. Its author, William Kitchiner (1775-1827), was a household name in England at the time, and was known for being an atypical host to his dinner guests – he prepared the food rather than his staff and even did the cleaning up as well. In addition to being an avid cook and successful cookbook author, Kitchiner was also an optician and inventor of telescopes, which perhaps explains why this particular cookbook is in the History of Medicine Collections here at Duke.

In the United Kingdom, the origin of the potato chip is attributed to Kitchiner, with The Cook’s Oracle including the earliest known recipe. The recipe, “Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings,” instructs readers to “peel large potatoes, slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping.”

Other notable entries include eleven recipes for ketchup – including two types each for walnut, mushroom, and tomato ketchups – and the recipe for wow-wow sauce, which is parodied (though retains the same name) in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. [Ed. note: Earlier this year, one of our cooks made Kitchiner’s Shin of Beef Stewed with Wow Wow sauce, complete with mushroom ketchup.]

Looking through our copy of The Cook’s Oracle, I was drawn to the recipe for Boston Apple Pudding. It seemed like a simple recipe, and I was curious to know what apple pudding would be like.

As I was gathering ingredients, some things were unclear. How does one determine what constitutes “one dozen and a half good Apples”? I ended up buying a five pound bag of apples and peeling all of them with the help of a friend.

The apples actually cooked down pretty quickly – it probably took less than thirty minutes in total. I didn’t know what “moist sugar” is, but it turns out it is actually a thing. Because we already had brown sugar, that’s what I used to sweeten the apples.

Next, it was time to strain the apples through a hair sieve. You can see a hair sieve at the British Museum here – but as it turns out, I don’t have one! We first tried to pass the apples through a fine-mesh sieve, to no success. Next we went out and bought some cheesecloth to try and pass it through that. Again, no luck! Finally, I used my colander to press the apples through.

We mixed in the butter, eggs, and lemon zest. For the crust, I used a sheet of puff pastry, but since puff pastry is square, I used some of the other sheet of puff pastry to fill in the missing pieces. As you can see below, it ended up looking like a giant flower!

The recipe only says to bake for 30 minutes, so this part required a little finagling. First, I set the oven to 350 degrees and baked for 30 minutes, but the pudding didn’t seem to be setting up, so I added on another ten minutes. It was really unclear what the final product would be like, but even after an additional ten minutes, it still didn’t seem quite right. At this point, I turned off the oven, propped the door open with a large slotted spoon, and left it for a final fifteen minutes. At this point, I was worried about burning the crust, so I accepted the pie as is.

The final pudding was really interesting. It wasn’t quite what I think of as a pudding, but it definitely wasn’t a pie either. The crust added a nice variety to the texture, and the apples had a really robust flavor – cooking them with the lemon peel really made a difference.

To see this recipe and others in The Cook’s Oracle, the book can be found in our catalog here.

Post contributed by Amelia Holmes, History of Medicine Collections Intern

Featured, From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Technical Stuff, University Archives

The Archives of the Library Answer Person

December 3, 2015 Amy McDonald 1 Comment

In September of 1982, a librarian at Duke set up a simple loose-leaf binder suggestion book in the lobby of Perkins Library. Each page in the book had a spaces for three suggestions/questions and three answers. In October of that year, the first group of pages with written suggestions and questions were removed, taken home by that librarian and answered in long-hand, then typed up by an administrative assistant directly onto the original pages and placed back in the book for anyone to read. This was the beginning of the Perkins Library Suggestion/Answer Book, a popular tradition that would live on, in more than one form, for more than twenty years.

At first, the binders were available in the Reference area after the pages filled up; then photocopied versions were bound into volumes and included in the Perkins and Lily Library stacks. In 1993, a “best of” selection was printed in a limited run in-house. But now, the original pages—with accumulated detritus of organic material, white-out, pen and pencil scribbling, and water damage—have at last come to the University Archives for preservation and long-term storage. Some pages are missing and the binders were exposed to water at some point; the lovely people in Conservation have already dealt with some inert mold and the pages are now being rehoused in acid-free folders.

The pages are fascinating. The suggestions and questions are signs of the times, demonstrate student engagement with the library and the University as a whole, and show students being students: curious, angst-y, angry, grateful, silly, and thoughtful. In return, the Answer Person is both serious and facetious, deflecting offensive questions with jokes, omitting names, giving in-depth answers from outside sources, taking constructive suggestions and compliments to heart, and generally being a librarian (often instructing suggest-ers and questioners where they can find their answers instead of simply providing easy answers for them).

Some concerns are clearly timeless: why is the library so cold, why aren’t the printers working, more bathrooms, more food, more lights, please restock the toilet paper:

Some other entries are very much of their time, like the suggestion about types of cigarettes for the vending machines (smoking in the library! This archivist is horrified):

While others are somehow a combination of both, as with this plaintive cry (the very first Library Answer Person question) for space to write and do work on one’s own machine (substitute typewriter with laptop), or this detailed discussion of a current television show (substitute Twin Peaks with Game of Thrones or Man in the High Castle – I mean, whaaaaaat?!):

Many discuss the library and how it could be improved or where it is doing nicely, showing a community engagement with the library that is as strong as it is critical. Also, people really loved the red-haired Reference Librarian and Stuart the Government Documents Librarian:

Then there are the ones I giggled over, the ones that are just people being people, weird and silly:

The sports fans:

The studious:

The romantics:

People developed a relationship with the Suggestion/Answer Book, and frequently referred back to earlier questions and answers, coming back to see if their own questions had been answered, and responding to the answers and other peoples’ comments. Frequently, there are multiple commenters on a given entry. This kind of discussion led to some deep discussions on controversial or difficult topics, such as the nature of modern art and race in the Duke community (the page with the question #1346A is responding to is unfortunately missing):

And finally, there are the poignant departures:

These pages are a tangible window into the Duke student body’s engagement with the Library, with the University, and with each other. Like a proto-Internet comments page, there is a smorgasbord of humanity here: anger, plentiful curse words, sexism, racism, homophobia, compliments, intelligence, optimism, gratitude, tolerance, joy, and well-wishes. Plus a bag of grits.

To give away a decades-old open secret, the Perkins Library Suggestion/Answer Book Person was John Lubans, Public Services Librarian and Assistant University Librarian, here at Duke from 1982-2001 and the donor of these pages to the University Archives.

Post contributed by Tracy Jackson, Technical Services Archivist for the Duke University Archives.

Bingham Center, Events, Featured, Readings and Talks

Zine Scholar Janice Radway at the National Humanities Center, December 10th

December 1, 2015 Kate Collins

“From the Underground to the Archive in Ten Years: Girl Zines, Feminist Networks, and the Politics of Memory” – Janice Radway, Northwestern University
Thursday, December 10, 6:00 p.m.
National Humanities Center, 7 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC
Register

In the early nineties, a certain cohort of dissident, non-conforming girls turned to self-publishing to express their deep dissatisfaction with conservative reaffirmations of normative femininity. Calling themselves “Riot Grrrls” after several influential all-girl punk bands, they crafted handmade publications known as “zines” in order to voice their disaffection and to think through alternative ways of being in the world. Despite their own fairly small numbers and the fact that they reproduced their zines in limited fashion, these young women quickly caught the attention of the mainstream media, cultural commentators, and a range of academics and librarians alike. Within ten years, at least three major collections of girl zines had been collected at places like Smith College, Barnard College, and Duke University. This lecture will explore the significance of girls’ self-publishing efforts, the complex reasons for their zines’ quick assimilation into legitimate cultural institutions, and the political benefits and drawbacks to this kind of memorialization.

Janice Radway is the Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies and a professor of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. She is also Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University. This year, as the Founders’ Fellow at the National Humanities Center, she is working on a book project, Girls and Their Zines in Motion: Selfhood and Sociality in the 1990s.

Featured, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, Students and Interns, Technical Stuff

Seeing a bit of home while far away: discoveries in the World War II Propaganda Leaflets

November 23, 2015 Katrina Martin

Working in an archive, you can come across a lot of exciting material and constantly learn something new. When the Rubenstein recently augmented its collection of World War II propaganda leaflets, we took the occasion to reorganize the whole collection. The collection now contains about 270 leaflets as well as some examples of propaganda magazines (most of the non-English documents include English translations). The material was disseminated between 1941 and 1945 with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the occupied countries. The collection includes examples of German and Japanese propaganda, aimed at Allied soldiers. Included also are German-language leaflets that were dropped over Germany by a clandestine British intelligence body—the Political Warfare Executive (PWE)—, as well as French-language leaflets, prepared by the French exile government in London and dropped over Vichy France (calling on the French population to not collaborate with the German occupiers or the Vichy regime).

Tok-Pisi-front — Leaflet with text in Tok Pisi

A large portion of the leaflets were aimed at the Pacific area and dropped by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the U.S. Army Forces. Most of them area are in Japanese. Some of them, however, are written in less well-known languages like Tok Pisin and Burmese. A creole language spoken throughout Papa New Guinea, Tok Pisin is commonly known in English as New Guinean Pidgin or Melanesian Pidgin. By trying to identify the languages of the leaflets, I learned that the New Guinea Campaign from 1942 to 1945 was one of the major military campaigns in the Pacific War and that leaflets in Tok Pisin—the most widely spoken language in New Guinea—were dropped by the Allies in order to encourage the population not to collaborate with the enemy. Likewise, material in Burmese was dropped over Burma (since 1989 Myanmar) in 1944 and 1945 during the Burma Campaign—the Allies’s fight against the Empire of Japan, which was supported to some degree by Thailand, the Burmese Independent Army, and the Indian National Army.

Burmese-front (2) — Leaflet in Burmese dropped during the Burma Campaign, 1944-1945

Burmese-back (2) — Leaflet in Burmese (back)

Finally, one might discover personal connections and be reminded of very familiar places, even when far from home. I am from Kiel, the capital of the state of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. I spent many vacations and weekends in Laboe, a little town at the coast of the Baltic Sea, right at the outskirts of Kiel. Kiel/Laboe was one of the main naval bases and is the location of the Laboe Naval Memorial, a memorial for the deaf of World War I built from 1927 to 1936. As such, it was a natural target for propaganda against the German marine like the leaflet found in our collection shows. Imagine my surprise to see a leaflet showing such a familiar sight while processing! The naval memorial still stands today and attracts many tourists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboe_Naval_Memorial).

Laboe-front — Leaflet depicting Laboe Naval Memorial (front)

Laboe-back (2) — Leaflet depicting Laboe Naval Memorial (back)

If you want to know more about this collection, visit the collection guide: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/wwiiprop/.

Post contributed by Sandra Niethardt, Rubenstein Tech Services intern and graduate student in Germanic Languages & Literature.

Featured, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, Radio Haiti, Technical Stuff

“Radio Haiti, You are the Rain. If You Didn’t Fall, We Could Not Bloom”: Repression and Remembrance on November 28

November 20, 2015 Katrina Martin

On November 28, 1980, the Duvalier regime unleashed a campaign of violent repression on the independent press and human rights activists, destroying the Radio Haiti station on Rue du Quai in downtown Port-au-Prince. The crackdown was not unexpected: in October of that year, Jean-Claude Duvalier had decreed on the National Radio station that only state media would be permitted, that “the party is over” (“le bal est terminé”) for independent Haitian media. In response, Jean Dominique composed his prophetic (and beloved) editorial Bon appétit, messieurs, in which he sardonically declares, “gentlemen, journalists of the official press — the country is yours and yours alone from now on. And all will be beautiful, all will be peaceful, all will be idyllic, all will be pink and wonderful!” and warns these “official journalists” of what will befall Haiti when the independent press is silenced. Ronald Reagan’s triumph in the US presidential election that November meant decreased international pressure on Duvalier’s government – which was largely dependent on US aid – to respect human rights. And so, on November 28, the inevitable crackdown occurred. More than a dozen of Radio Haiti’s journalists were imprisoned, tortured, and expelled. The regime issued an order to kill Jean Dominique on sight; he escaped to the Venezuelan embassy and later went into exile with Michèle Montas in New York. In the years that followed, resistance to the regime spread throughout the country, as economic conditions worsened for the majority of Haitian citizens while the Duvalier family’s lifestyle grew more ostentatious, lavish and dissipated.

On November 28, 1985, five years to the day after the 1980 crackdown on the independent media, protests broke out in Haiti’s third-largest city, Gonaïves. Three high school students — Jean-Robert Cius, Mackenson Michel, and Daniel Israël – were gunned down by Duvalier’s forces. In photos, they are heartbreakingly young – boys, not yet men. The teenaged martyrs were christened the “Twa Flè Lespwa” (Three Flowers of Hope), and their deaths catalyzed outrage and resistance to the regime, both within Haiti and in Haitian communities abroad.

Flier for Brooklyn protest against Duvalier and the killing of the Twa Flè Lespwa. Radio Haiti Archive.

In January 1986, Jean Dominique co-authored a short op ed in Newsday with lawyer and human rights advocate Arthur Helton, discussing the deaths of the Twa Flè Lespwa, the grassroots agitation provoked by their murders, and the United States’ complicity in supporting the Duvalier regime.

“Haiti No Longer Suffers in Silence” by Jean L. Dominique and Arthur C. Helton. Newsday, January 27, 1986. Radio Haiti Archive.

They warn, perhaps cautiously: “Discontent grows and a fundamental conflict is looming.” The conflict was indeed looming, but it was not yet clear how imminent it might be.

Le Petit Samedi Soir, Haitian independent magazine, for February 1-7, 1986. Radio Haiti *Archive.*

But on February 7, 1986, just over a week after Jean Dominique’s and Arthur Helton’s editorial was published, it happened: Jean-Claude Duvalier and his family boarded a US Air Force cargo plane and fled to France. On March 4, Jean Dominique and Michèle Montas returned to Port-au-Prince, where many thousands of people – “une masse en délire,” a delirious crowd, according to the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste – received them at the airport and nearly carried them to the old Radio Haiti station on Rue du Quai.

Photocopy of Nouvelliste story on return of Jean Dominique and Michèle Montas to Haiti. March 5, 1986. Radio Haiti Archive.

The station had been ravaged, their equipment smashed. But the recordings, miraculously, had survived. J.J. Dominique – Jean’s eldest daughter, who became the station manager after 1986 — explains: “We always said, ‘The Macoutes, they may destroy, but they don’t know the true value of so many things’… They didn’t think, they didn’t understand that the most valuable thing at the station was the work contained in the station’s archive.”

With assistance from the Haitian people – many of whom, though very poor, gave what little money they could afford — the station reopened in 1986. On November 28 of that year, Radio Haiti held a day-long commemoration of November 28, 1980 and November 28, 1985. It included tributes to the Twa Flè Lespwa and to station manager Richard Brisson who had been killed in 1982.

Radio Haiti’s November 28, 1986 special programming. Radio Haiti Archive.

The archive also contains many pages of poetry written by Radio Haiti’s listeners, in Haitian Creole and French, on the Twa Flè Lespwa, the reopening of the station and the return of the journalists. The heartfelt, earnest intensity of these poems (these love letters, really) evinces the public’s devotion to Radio Haiti. For Radio Haiti’s listeners, the station was more than a station; it was a symbol of liberty, grassroots democracy, and freedom of expression. For Radio Haiti’s listeners, the journalists were more than journalists; they were heirs to the revolutionary legacy of Haitian heroes who had fought against French colonizers and US occupiers. For me, as the project archivist, finding these poems is a reminder of how irreplaceable and beloved Radio Haiti was and still remains, and how important this archive is.

poem2 — Un Jour Comme Aujourd’hui” by Elmate Parent. Radio Haiti Archive.

A day like today

Under the sorrowful sky of November 28 in the year ‘80

Haiti’s sun went out

Sending these brave men, these heroes,

Fruit of the body of Dessalines, of Charlemagne Péralte

Fighting with courage,

For nothing more than the liberation of Haiti,

Upon the claws of assassins cruel

With hope they suffered and toiled

All for the same cause.

A day like today

The skies of Haiti wept,

And her tears, borne of pain,

Allowed life to germinate.

You, brave patriots, true offspring of the people,

You have suffered such humiliation

And endured physical torture.

You left your families

Your country and your friends

To go and live under another sky

Where you were strangers

All of this for nothing more than the deliberation of Haiti

Your native land…

A day like today

In the heavens over Gonaïves,

Three brilliant stars burned out

They gave their light

To reveal crimes

And their blood to fertilize

The arid soil of Haiti

Whereupon shall sprout and grow

The tree of freedom.

Mackenson Michel, Daniel Israël, Jean Robert Cius

Will your famous names,

Be erased from our thoughts?

Today, 28 November ’86…

“Men bèl ti paròl yo” by Emmanuel St. Louis. Radio Haiti Archive.

“Men bèl ti paròl yo” (“Some lovely little words”) draws on metaphors of nature and harvest befitting Jean Dominique, a man who was, after all, an agronomist before he was a journalist and activist. The poet touchingly explains that he “spent all night thinking about Radio Haïti-Inter” before setting pen to paper.

If the sun didn’t shine, plants would not give fruit

If the rain didn’t fall, drought would never stop dancing,

If the rain didn’t fall, there would be no springs

Springs would not give rise to rivulets

Rivulets would not become streams

Streams would not become rivers,

Rivers would not become the sea…

Radio Haiti, you are the sea, we are the fish

If you were to dry up, we could not live.

Radio Haiti, you are our rain,

If you didn’t fall, we could not bloom…

Radio Haiti, be encouraged! Sow! Plant!

God will bring it to fruition.

Let us weed, even if the thorns are many,

The pruning shears of the Holy Spirit will aid us always.

“Ayiti Intè ou se manman liberasyon won” by Gueline Alexis. Radio Haiti Archive.

From “Haiti-Inter, You are the Mother of Liberation”:

Yes, you are the mother of liberation

Because when the children of your womb were suffering

You never closed your eyes to it

You stood bravely to defend the people

Just as a mother hen would do

If a vulture came to devour her children…

Now the idol of the Haitian people

Has returned to continue

The wonderful work it began

Beautiful mama, hold on tighter

Stronger – courage — never give up.

Post contributed by Laura Wagner, PhD, Radio Haiti Project Archivist.

The Voices of Change project was made possible through a generous grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities.

Bingham Center, Featured, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen

19th Century Maple Ice Cream – Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen

November 20, 2015 Kate Collins 2 Comments

A manuscript (i.e. handwritten) cookbook can tell us a great deal about its creator. What foods were available to her? How would her family have celebrated holidays and birthdays? Was she an elite woman with a cook who could prepare elaborate dishes, or a farm wife who had to prepare simple, hearty fare and preserve her harvest to feed her family? Do the recipes reflect a particular ethnic or religious background or geographical location? As is the case today, routine meals do not require a recipe. It is the special occasion recipes, especially those that require careful measurements to work properly, that are recorded for future reference.

We know, based on the ingredients, that Rubenstein Library’s New England Manuscript Recipe Book, [ca. 1860]-[1900] comes from the northeastern United States. It is no surprise that the little book includes a page of maple recipes, since maple is such a distinctive regional product.

I was intrigued by the Maple Ice Cream Recipe, in part because I am the proud owner of a fancy electric ice cream maker, so much easier than the hand-crank models that would have been available when the recipe was recorded. There is also the nostalgia of tasting maple: Santa always left a maple sugar woman in my Christmas stocking.

This is an extremely simple recipe, with just three ingredients: eggs, maple syrup, and cream:

I made a couple of changes. Given concerns about salmonella, I was not comfortable leaving the egg whites uncooked. I was also worried that mixing the eggs and syrup and boiling the mixture would result in curdled eggs. Instead, I boiled the syrup for about ten minutes to reduce it slightly, thereby intensifying the flavor. In a separate bowl, I beat the whole eggs. Then I slowly dribbled in about a cup of hot syrup, whisking the egg mixture constantly before whisking the egg mixture into the pot of hot syrup. Then I brought the mixture to 170 degrees, turned off the heat, and stirred in the cream.

Finally, I strained the mixture through a sieve to remove any solids and chilled it overnight before freezing, emptying into a plastic container, and leaving it in the freezer for a few hours to firm it up. The result: an absolutely luscious and elegant frozen dessert.

How did it taste? I brought in the whole container to share with my Rubenstein colleagues and it got rave reviews. It is very rich (note the quart of heavy cream!), but delicious.

Intrigued by the annotations (1896, Mrs. Kimber Thomas, Ladies Uplift Club), I did some searching and found a Morrisville, Vermont Uplift Club in The Register of Women’s Clubs (1922). I wondered whether Mrs. Kimber Thomas was given the recipe for Maple Ice Cream in 1896 and contributed it to an Uplift Club fund-raising cookbook and was thrilled to find a reference to this 53-page cookbook: Tried and Proven Recipes from Many Households. Morristown, Vt. : Ladies of the Uplift Club. The one known copy is in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Staff have dated it to 1921, based on advertisements printed in the cookbook. As I write this, I am waiting for scans that I hope will confirm my hunches about the Maple Ice Cream recipe’s provenance. The tradition of noting the source and date of a recipe is a lovely way to link culinary creations to a vast network of friends, family, community, and history. The additional information would also allow us to more precisely identify the origins of this precious little cookbook.

Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian

Events, Featured, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

John Hope Franklin: The Global Scholar

November 16, 2015 Katrina Martin

Join us Wednesday, November 18th for a talk by John Gartrell, Director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Featured, From Our Collections

Rob Amberg: Forty Years in Appalachia

November 10, 2015 Kate Collins 2 Comments

Joyce Chandler, Joe Ross Chandler’s wife, 1976.* Copyright, Rob Amberg — Joyce Chandler, Joe Ross Chandler’s wife, 1976.*
Copyright, Rob Amberg

Rob Amberg journeyed to the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina during the height of the back-to-land movement. It was a time when hippies and artists took John Prine’s advice and “blew up [their] TVs, threw away [their] papers, went to the country, and built [them] a house.” All kinds of folks retreated to the mountains back then, and Amberg arrived in 1973 with the suspicious title of documentary photographer.

Tillman Chandler’s barn and tobacco crop, 1975. Copyright, Rob Amberg — Tillman Chandler’s barn and tobacco crop, 1975.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

I say suspicious because Appalachia has been a favorite testing ground for ambitious artists for more than a century. These artists, documentarians, and musicologists act as arbiters and preservationists for what they view as culturally interesting and valuable, and Madison County in particular, where Amberg found himself and where I grew up, is not always portrayed in a nuanced light.

Joe Ross Chandler and Bobby Cantrell, 1977. Copyright, Rob Amberg. — Joe Ross Chandler and Bobby Cantrell, 1977.
Copyright, Rob Amberg.

It’s easy though for artists to fall into the trap of reproducing certain convenient and sometimes sensational tropes. My personal favorite is the proliferation of snake handler portraits. A recent comment on a Vice Magazine series called “Two Days in Appalachia,” a series that provoked much conversation and criticism, pointed out that “poverty porn” has been a long standing tradition of documentary artists creating work from the Appalachian region. So, yes, I think it’s fair to initially approach any stranger with a camera in the mountains with suspicion.

The first picture I made of Junior, 1975. Copyright, Rob Amberg — The first picture I made of Junior, 1975.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

All of this is to say that Rob Amberg has created a complex, beautiful, and compassionate body of work. Of the many aspects of his work that I find remarkable, I will mention two here: first, when he moved to Madison County in 1973, he came to stay. His photographs, whether documenting the small community of Sodom Laurel, the expansion of I-26, or the continual influx of new people, follow long-term changes in the landscape, a landscape that he calls “ShatterZone.” Amberg defines ShatterZone this way:

Shatter zone is an 18th-century term that refers to an area of fissured or cracked rock that forms a network of veins that are often filled with mineral deposits. The phrase took on new meaning after World War II when anthropologists and political scientists began using it to speak of borderlands. In this modern definition shatter zones are places of refuge from, and resistance to, capitalist economies, state making, and state rule. Appalachia and Madison County have always fit that definition.

At Cricket’s birthday party, Big Pine, 2011. Copyright, Rob Amberg. — At Cricket’s birthday party, Big Pine, 2011.
Copyright, Rob Amberg.

I-26 at Buckner Gap, Madison County, N.C. 2008. Copyright, Rob Amberg. — I-26 at Buckner Gap, Madison County, N.C. 2008.
Copyright, Rob Amberg.

For four decades, Amberg has acted as a witness and interpreter of both the visible and invisible fissures of a changing landscape, and he has captured moments that could not be experienced, let alone appreciated, by someone who was merely passing through. When viewing his photographs, I often ask myself, how did he get there? He got there because he has dedicated the majority of his life to being in Madison County.

J.D. Thomas walking away from his burning home place, Sprinkle Creek, Madison County, N.C., 1997. Copyright, Rob Amberg — J.D. Thomas walking away from his burning home place, Sprinkle Creek, Madison County, N.C., 1997.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

The second aspect of his work that greatly interests me, which is related to the longitudinal nature of his project, is Amberg’s own increasingly entangled role in the community. Once, over lunch, Amberg and I talked about all the goings on in Madison County, and it became clear that he knew more about the land and the people than I did. I was born and raised there, but I left when I was sixteen and now live in Hillsborough. As I have become more of an outsider to the community, Amberg’s intimacy with the land and people continues to grow. And as this intimacy grows, he becomes more implicated in the narratives that he weaves, in the lives that he portrays. And, curiously, as his subjects view his work, they are informed and changed by the stories he tells. All is changing as the work goes on.

Ben Amberg, Rob’s son, with Dellie and Junior, 1982. Copyright, Rob Amberg — Ben Amberg, Rob’s son, with Dellie and Junior, 1982.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

Junior playing with my daughter Kate, 1992. Copyright, Rob Amberg — Junior playing with my daughter Kate, 1992.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

To me, Amberg’s photographs are one continuous conversation. I keep going back to them; they keep speaking to one another and to me. It’s an amazing time to be able to view his work, in medias res. In fact, I’ve never quite had this kind of experience with an artist, one who so profoundly shapes my view of the place I grew up. It’s my hope that he continues to work for many years, and I am excited to follow his efforts as he contributes his photographs and papers to the Rubenstein Library.

Isaac Gunter’s tobacco bed and cemetery, 1982. Copyright, Rob Amberg. — Isaac Gunter’s tobacco bed and cemetery, 1982.
Copyright, Rob Amberg.

Migrant farmworker cutting and spudding tobacco, 1993. Copyright, Rob Amberg — Migrant farmworker cutting and spudding tobacco, 1993.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

New condominiums at the Wolf Ridge Resort. Upper Laurel, Madison County, N.C., 2007. Copyright, Rob Ambger — New condominiums at the Wolf Ridge Resort. Upper Laurel, Madison County, N.C., 2007.
Copyright, Rob Amberg

As an addendum, I should mention that Amberg’s photographs reach well beyond Appalachia, and you can follow his current projects on his blog: http://robamberg.com/. Also, you can view the collection guide to learn more about the Rubenstein Library’s holdings.

*I have kept Amberg’s original captions, which reveal a glimmer of how he views the photographs, the people, and the land.

Post contributed by Laurin Penland, Research Services Assistant.

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