Honickman First Book Prize in Photography Reception and Artist’s Talk

gaskinDate: November 7, 2013
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 W. Pettigrew Street, Durham, NC 27705
Contact: Kirston Johnson, kirston.johnson@duke.edu

Please join us on November 7 at 5:30pm for an artist’s talk and reception for the book and exhibit Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene photographs by Gerard Gaskin.  The event will take place at the Center for Documentary Studies and is co-sponsored by the Archive of Documentary Arts.

Gerard H. Gaskin is the winner of the 2012 Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. Renowned curator and photographer Deborah Willis chose Gaskin’s longtime project for the prestigious biennial prize: color and black-and-white photographs that document the world of house balls, underground pageants where gay and transgender men and women, mostly African American and Latino, celebrate their most vibrant, spectacular selves as they “walk,” competing for trophies based on costume, attitude, dance moves, and “realness.”

The exhibition, in the Juanita Kreps Gallery at the Center for Documentary Studies, is on view from November 4, 2013, through Februrary 22, 2014.  The photographs will then be placed in the Archive of Documentary Arts in Duke University’s Rubenstein Library.

Gaskin’s book, Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene, published in Fall 2013 by Duke University Press in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies, will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

For more information about the prize and to see images from Legendary: firstbookprizephoto.com

Learn more about the Archive of Documentary Arts.

Reading by Jonathan Katz, 2013 WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award Winner

the-big-truck-that-went-by-how-the-world-came-to-save-haiti-and-left-behind-a-disasterDate: November 6, 2013
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Location: FHI Garage at the Smith Warehouse, Bay 4
Contact: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski@duke.edu

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Duke University have named Jonathan Katz’s book The Big Truck that Went by: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as the winner of the 2013 WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award.

On November 6 at 5:00pm, Katz will be in Durham, North Carolina to do a reading of his book at the FHI Garage at the Smith Warehouse, Bay 4. An award presentation is planned for March 2014 in Washington, DC.

Katz, who currently lives in Durham, NC,  was a correspondent for the Associated Press on January 12, 2010, when the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere struck the island nation of Haiti. The Big Truck that Went By recounts Katz personal experience when the earthquake hit, and—drawing on his groundbreaking reporting during the period that followed—traces the relief response that poured from the international community and where those efforts went tremendously wrong.

Award judge Roger Atwood states that “Katz’s book brings together everything a winner of this award should have: brave and groundbreaking research, lucid writing, freshness in both form and content, and (best of all) genuine policy applications.”

Describing the book, Dr. Kathryn Sikkink—a member of the 2013 judging panel and winner of the 2011 WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award—says that “Katz has written a gripping, well-written book, full of moving stories of the people of Haiti and the tragedies and triumphs of their life during the adversity of the earthquake and the cholera epidemic, and vivid cameos of the very mixed bag of foreigners who seemed compelled to try to make things better there.”

According to Leonor Blum, the chair of this year’s award judging panel and emerita professor of history and political science at Notre Dame of Maryland University, explains that “[Katz’s] easy style, his dramatic presentation of  Haiti’s devastating earthquake, his deep understanding of Haiti and its problems, his willingness to criticize Haiti’s governments as well as the international governmental and non-governmental community, all make The Big Truck that Went By worthy of the WOLA/Duke prize.”

According to judge Holly Ackerman, Librarian for Latin America and Iberia at Duke University Libraries, “The book is a crucial case study of what is wrong with current NGO process and international donor councils. It offers lessons on what is happening with aid/investment but, most important, it unplugs myths for the general public who sent their dollars to the Red Cross and similar organizations at the time of the quake and naturally ask, “Why is Haiti not progressing despite so much aid?”

The judges also listed an honorable mention for Kimberly Theidon’s Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.

About the Award:

Started in 2008, the WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award is a joint venture of Duke University and WOLA, a leading advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The award honors the best current, non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy, and social justice in contemporary Latin America. The books are evaluated by a panel of expert judges drawn from academia, journalism, and public policy circles. The 2013 judging panel included:

Holly Ackerman, Librarian for Latin America and Iberia, Duke University
Roger Atwood, Journalist, Author, and Former Communications Director, WOLA
Leonor Blum, WOLA Board Member and Emerita Associate Professor, History and Political Science, Notre Dame of Maryland University
Robin Kirk, Faculty Co-Chair, Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
Kathryn Sikkink, Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota

Previous WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award recipients include: Hector Abad for Oblivion: A Memoir in 2012; Katherine Sikkink for The Justice Cascade in 2011; Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, with Jorge Enrique Botero for Hostage Nation in 2010; Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz for The Dictator’s Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet in 2009; and Francisco Goldman for The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? in 2008.

Contact:

Kelly McLaughlin, WOLA
202-797-2171
kmclaughlin@wola.org

Patrick Stawski, Duke University Libraries
919-660-5823
patrick.stawski@duke.edu

The African Americans: Rubenstein Recap

Last Tuesday, PBS premiered the first episode of the six-part series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Written and narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the documentary traces African American history from the shores of West Africa to the election of Barack Obama. Join us as we feature documents from our Rubenstein Library that resonate with the previous week’s episode.

Episode 1: The Black Atlantic (1500 – 1800) began with the complicated routes of the transatlantic slave trade connecting ports across three continents from Africa to the West Indies, London to South Carolina. The dehumanizing conditions of the Middle Passage and the capital made from human bondage were just some of the factors that made the institution of slavery in the western world so different from any other in world history.

A list of slave ships from the 1790s, detailing the number of slaves that died in route to the western world. (l to r, name of Ship, number of slaves dead, special cause of death):

 William Smith papers, 1785-1860., Box 3, Miscellaneous Papers, Printed Material “Pilgrim - 18 slaves died”
William Smith papers, 1785-1860., Box 3, Miscellaneous Papers, Printed Material “Pilgrim – 18 slaves died”

 

Arguments for the continuation of the African slave trade:

Resolutions West Indies Planters & Merchants, 1789 of why slave trade should be continued (arguments for property rights, capital reasons, European “constitutions” not be adapted to clearing agricultural land), William Smith Papers, Box 3, Folder (Printed Material, 1788 - 1822)
Resolutions West Indies Planters & Merchants, 1789 of why slave trade should be continued (arguments for property rights, capital reasons, European “constitutions” not be adapted to clearing agricultural land), William Smith Papers, Box 3, Folder (Printed Material, 1788 – 1822)

 

Episode 1 concluded by contextualizing the importance of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. The rhetoric of liberty and freedom at the heart of these movement ignited the entire Atlantic world in the late 18th century, especially the lives of enslaved African Americans, slaves wanted some of that freedom for themselves. This letter from the Edward Telfair papers details an incident where Telfair accuses a white man from British Antigua of “enticing” his slaves away with promises of freedom. Telfair fails to understand that the 3 slaves had reasons enough of their own, especially with liberty in the air.

Edward Telfair Papers
Edward Telfair Papers, Box 2, Folder 1780 – 1783, Letter on Aug. 13, 1782 from N. Brownson & E. Walton: “Mr. Telfair then said that some persons had been seducing from his service, not only those three negroes, but a number of others, enticing them on board the flag vessel, by promises of freedom in Antigua. Mr. Jarvais denied his having any thing to do in it, and that he did not believe the officers or crew of the vessel had; and proposed going down to examine them: but Mr. Telfair observing that if they had villainy enough to commit an act of that kind, they would be at least handy enough to deny it.[…] [Mr. Telfair] forbade Mr. Jarvis from meddling with or harbouring his negroes, and told him if he lost any of them by those means, he would look to him for indemnification. Mr. Jarvis said, ‘to be sure.’

Post contributed by Karlyn Forner, John Hope Franklin Research Center Graduate Student Intern and John Gartrell, John Hope Franklin Research Center Director

Playing Around

For several months now, I have been working my way through several thousand acetate negatives transferred to the University Archives from the Sports Information Office.

Dinkey and Jap reenact William Tell.
Dinkey and Jap reenact William Tell.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about finding negatives of women students playing baseball, which was an unexpected, yet welcomed, find. Today I came across another unexpected image, seen above. Described as “football miscellany,” it features football players, Leonard “Dinkey” Darnell and Jasper “Jap” Davis, in an iconic archery pose, dated July 1939. I wish I knew the story behind this image. Was it from a physical education class on archery? The Women’s Athletic Association had an archery season. Maybe the men joined them one afternoon for a bit of fun? I hope you enjoy the image as much as I do.

Post contributed by Kim Sims, Technical Services Archivist for University Archives.

Prepare for Terror: Haunted Library Screamfest II

Halloween4blogDate: October 31, 2013
Time: 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Location: Perkins Library, Room 217
Contact: Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Stop by for a special Halloween “eeeks”-ibit and open house featuring some of the creepiest and most macabre items from the shadowy depths of the Rubenstein Library’s vaults. Will you dare to:

  • Gaze in awe at a box full of glass eyeballs?
  • Feel your head spin as you read letters describing the case that inspired The Exorcist (from the Parapsychology Laboratory Records)?
  • Quoth nevermore after experiencing Gustave Doré’s illustrations for The Raven?
  • Steel yourself to view a medieval amputating saw?
  • Cackle frightfully at seventeenth-century accounts of witchcraft?
  • Sink your teeth into images of vampires, werewolves, the living dead, and Frankenstein’s monster?

These and many other spook-tacular books, photographs, comics, diaries, letters, artifacts, and more will be on display!

Oh, and did we mention that there will be free candy?

A man holding his own flayed skin will be there. Will you? (From Juan Valverde de Amusco, Anatomia del Corpo Humano, 1560, in the History of Medicine Collections.
A man holding his own flayed skin will be there. Will you? (From Juan Valverde de Amusco, Anatomia del Corpo Humano, 1560, in the History of Medicine Collections.)

 

 

Heschel Highlights, Part 3

(Un)obsequiously Yours: An Out-of-the-Blue Letter from the Spiritual Master Alfred R. Pulyan

Welcome to the third post in a series documenting the processing of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Papers.

One of the most intriguing features of the Abraham Joshua Heschel collection is its ability not only to shed light, by virtue of the abundance and diversity of the materials it contains, on his intellectual biography, private persona, and scholarly and political work, but also to comment widely on a variety of issues related to the contemporary public and private sphere in the United States. Among such issues are certainly the socialization of the function of secular and religious thinkers and the material importance of correspondence in the establishment and furthering of social networks and intellectual affinities.

More particularly, in the case of as prominent and publicly exposed a figure as Heschel, it is interesting to notice the recurrence with which individuals of different persuasions, professions and social standing, struck by the reading of his works, spontaneously set out to address him letters. They often did so in order to offer their perspective on an issue they deemed dear to him, expose their views about various religious problems, or simply secure an opportunity to meet him in person. The particular sub-genre emerging from these “first letters,” in which an awkwardly deferential act of addressing turns into a self-conscious emergence from anonymity, may yield some insights into the relationship that links writing, and particularly epistolary writing, to the processes of subjectivation.

One exceptional, aberrant instance of such messages-out-of-the-blue genre can be cited. It is a neatly-penned and beautifully-styled letter, spanning five columns and three sheets of paper, addressed to Heschel by Alfred R. Pulyan, one of those figures whose relative notoriety derives in part by the respectable legitimacy with which the adjective “obscure” can be attached to their names. Writing to Heschel in 1964, ostensibly about Cardinal Augustin Bea’s draft of the declaration Nostra aetate (but really about Judaism, Christianity, the awakening, and the sense of existence), Pulyan, a spiritual teacher based in South Kent, Connecticut, by the end of his letter makes no mystery of his intentions: to turn the Polish-born rabbi into one of his pupils.

Processing Intern Emanuel works with the Heschel Papers.
Processing Intern Emanuel works with the Heschel Papers.

The esoteric teacher seems aware of the unlikelihood that his proposition hit its mark: “In your [i.e. Heschel’s] case,” he writes, “the rejoinder I judge will be neglect or rejection (the great “no” of [Constantine P.] Cavafy), unless you childishly fear I am trying to edge you into Christianity by a back door.” Whether or not the lures of Pulyan’s coquettishly uncompromising tone did indeed fall flat is difficult to tell, in the absence (for the time being) of other messages from this tough-sounding enlightened master. What the reader is left with is the charm of an unpredictably effective hortatory prose and, as is often the case with this collection, an indecipherable piece of archive, through whose very recalcitrant oracularity a glimmer of a whole universe of meaning is revealed.

Post contributed by Emanuel Fiano, processing intern for the Abraham Joshua Heschel Papers in Technical Services.

A “Surprise Box” from Judy Malloy

MalloyBoxOpenWhile the staff here at the Rubenstein Library often travels to bring collections back to Durham, we also receive a great many packages from around the world.  For us, there’s nothing like opening those newly arrived boxes to assess the contents’ research value and find their place within the context of the collection to which they belong, and within our holdings as a whole.

Judy Malloy, the pioneering author of electronic literature such as Uncle Roger (1986), one of the first hypertext fictions, recently sent us a “surprise box” of additions to her papers here.  It was, indeed, full of wonderful surprises!  They included a painted notebook from her work Paths of Memory and Painting, a portrait of Malloy by Irene Dogmatic, and some documentation of recent online works.

The box also contained a couple of Malloy’s early artist’s books, including “up”, from around 1975, which incorporates a computer chip into its design.

MalloyUp
Judy Malloy, “up”, from the Judy Malloy Papers.

Documentation of some of Malloy’s performances and art projects from the 1970s to the 1990s is also included.  A hand-painted sign captures her passion for both the freedom of expression online and the tactile enjoyment of physical artwork.

MalloyCyberLiberties
Sign from a Cyber Liberties event at the University of California, circa 2004.

We look forward to many more surprises, both from Judy Malloy and other authors of electronic literature and from the many other boxes we crack open every week!

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

“Soul & Service”: The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, 115 Years and Counting

MutualJohnMosesAveryBlogExhibit Dates: October 24-December 20, 2013
Opening Reception: October 24, 2013, 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
Location: The Porch of the Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 West Pettigrew Street, Durham (directions)
Contact: John B. Gartrell, john.gartrell(at)duke.edu

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture and North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company present, “Soul & Service,” a historical exhibition celebrating the 115th anniversary of North Carolina Mutual. This Durham institution is the nation’s oldest and largest insurance company with roots in the African American community. The photos and documents featured in the presentation were drawn from the North Carolina Mutual Company Archives, jointly held by the Rubenstein Library and the University Archives and Records Special Collections at North Carolina Central University. “Soul & Service” will be on display of the porch of the Center for Documentary Studies from October 24-December 20, 2013.

Jeremy Greene to Lecture on History of Pharmaceutical Trademarks

faculty-jeremy-greene blogsizeDate: Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Room 217, Perkins Library, Duke University
Contact: Rachel Ingold, (919) 684-8459 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Join the History of Medicine Collections for our fall Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event to be held on Wednesday, October 23, 2013, in Room 217 of Perkins Library on Duke University’s West Campus. Jeremy Greene, M.D., Ph.D., will be presenting “The materiality of the brand: Form, function and the pharmaceutical trademark.”

Dr. Greene’s talk will explore the limits of patents and trademarks in the sphere of pharmaceutical intellectual property, and illuminate a century of controversy over the clinical, public health, and financial value of “look-alike drugs,” generic drugs that imitated their brand-name counterparts down to exact parameters of size, shape, and color. His historical analysis addresses thorny questions about which qualities of a brand-name drug are considered private property and whether parts of a drug other than its active ingredients (e.g., pill color) can affect its clinical function.

Dr. Greene is Associate Professor, Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for the History of Medicine. His broader research interests focus on the history of disease, the history of global health, and the relationship between medicine and the marketplace. Dr. Greene also practices internal medicine at the East Baltimore Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He has published on a wide variety of topics and his most recent book with Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is, Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Please note Dr. Greene will also be giving a talk at noon on October 23 on Imitation and Innovation: A Brief History of ‘Me-Too’ Drugs. This talk will be held from 12:00-1:00 pm in the Great Hall of the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education at the Duke University Medical Center.

Sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections, the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine.

New Look for our Homepage

[Update, October 15: Our new website (slated for launch yesterday) isn’t quite ready, but is coming soon.]

As you may have heard and will certainly notice, the Rubenstein Library’s website is getting a new look!  As part of a library-wide website redesign, a new version of Rubenstein Library’s homepage will be launching today.

New Rubenstein Library Homepage

 

What’s changed?

  • Updates to the tabbed search box on our homepage:
  • Catalog: Search our catalog for both archival collections and print materials
  • Collection Guides: Formerly known as Finding Aids, but you’re still able to search our 2,000+ collection guides which provide provide in-depth descriptions of our archival collections
  • Digitized Collections: Now you can search our digitized collections right from our homepage
  • New location for logging in to your special collections request account and for getting in touch with one of our librarians, both in the upper-right hand corner of our homepage:log in and ask

  • You’ll also find that content throughout our website has been updated to be more current and easier to read.
  • Getting to our homepage from the Duke University Libraries’ main homepage is a little different now too.  Look for us in the header under the “Libraries” dropdown menu:

Main Library Homepage

 

What hasn’t changed?

  • Requesting Materials.  We’re still using the same online request system that we implemented a year ago that lets you place requests online to use material in our reading room.  Though we do have improved directions for registering as a researcher and requesting material on our new site.

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