Renovation Prep: Fascinating Finds in the Stacks

My part in the preparation for the Rubenstein’s upcoming renovation is to assist in making sure that all of our beloved materials have accurate records before the move. Imagine when you have moved to a new house or dorm room and realized you just can’t find that book from that library that’s overdue. Now multiply that scenario by thousands of volumes and the importance of our task becomes clear!

Rows of books checked by the Holdings Mgmt Team
Rows of books checked by the Holdings Management Team

Our Holdings Management Team members are going through the stacks systematically, checking records and barcodes on periodicals, reference items, pamphlets, and many, many sets of books. Out of the 13,000 volumes I personally have checked, over 2,000 needed to be fixed in some way. Our way of keeping track of various interdepartmental progress? Multi-colored post-it notes line the ends of shelf rows (ours are blue).

Roald Dahl's signature inside one of our books
Roald Dahl's signature inside one of our books

It is always interesting to open a book and see the owner’s signature or personal bookplate. Today, I found a Roald Dahl book that was signed by the author in 1988. Once, I found a book on proper housekeeping that was signed to a friend on my birthday (except 200 years before I was born).  I’m excited for the next 13,000 volumes!

Cullen Cornett is a Holdings Management Assistant in the Rubenstein Technical Services Dept.

Black Feminist Filmmaking: The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye

Black Feminist FilmmakingDate: Thursday, April 19, 2012
Time: 5:00 PM **Please note new time!**
Location: FHI Garage, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse, Duke University
Contact: Kelly Wooten, kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Cheryl Dunye’s work as a Black lesbian filmmaker has challenged, transformed and sometimes even stood in for a conversation about race, feminism, lesbianism, the archive and the practice of contemporary film.

This program will include a screening of selected shorts from the often neglected early work of Cheryl Dunye followed by a panel discussion featuring local Black lesbian and queer filmmakers Yvonne Welbon, Katina Parker and Julia Roxanne Wallace, moderated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. This program coincides with the public launch of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind‘s new Black Feminist Film School. Light refreshments will be served.

Co-sponsored by African and African American Studies, the program in Women’s Studies, the program in the Study of Sexualities, the program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

A Decidedly Feminist Taxonomy: Meredith Tax Comes to the Sallie Bingham Center

Meredith Tax, taken by Miriam Berkeley
Meredith Tax, taken by Miriam Berkeley

The personal and professional papers of writer, organizer, and leading women’s movement activist Meredith Tax came to the Sallie Bingham Center in 2010. To celebrate the acquisition of this extensive collection the Center will host a symposium in Tax’s honor on April 13 and 14 called Acting Across Borders: The Future of the Feminist 1970s. Along with Meredith Tax, distinguished African scholar and activist Patricia McFadden will present the keynote address of an event that aims to grapple with how the interventions and methodologies of the women’s liberation movement inform current and future social justice movements. In anticipation of her trip to Duke, Meredith took a few minutes to share her reasons for putting her papers here and to give a sense of what people can expect to learn at the symposium.

Why did you decide to put your papers in the Bingham Center?

I investigated several feminist archives and chose the Bingham Center because it had a much more energetic and activist approach to archival work than I saw elsewhere. I want my papers to be used not only by scholars but by young people who want to learn from the history of earlier social movements. Because the Bingham Center does outreach to inform students about its collections and gives fellowships for researchers to work in its archive, I think my papers will be most accessible there.

What would you tell students about the upcoming symposium celebrating your work?

We are at the dawn of a period of increasing political activism. Attendees at this symposium will learn from the life stories of people who shaped the women’s movement here and internationally. Speakers will talk about their own work and life experiences. They will discuss the way issues of race and class impacted the relationship between feminism and the left, the development of ecofeminism and international women’s movements, and the centrality of questions of sexuality, gender, and LGBT rights. Feminists from Southern Africa, Algeria, and India will discuss their own rich and complex confrontations with sexism, nationalism and religious fundamentalism. These stories will show that, contrary to the right wing myth that feminists are white middle class women who are just out for themselves, feminists in the US and elsewhere have always grappled with issues of race and class, war and peace, nationalism and the environment, and that these efforts continue from one generation to the next.

Frances Ansley and Meredith Tax at a Bread & Roses-organized protest in 1970. Ansley will also speak at the upcoming symposium.
Frances Ansley and Meredith Tax at a Bread & Roses-organized protest in 1970.

What are some of the topics you plan to address in your keynote speech at the symposium?

I will tell the story of my life, from a childhood shaped by the sexism of the 50s to the early days of the Boston women’s movement, battles within the left and my own struggle to overcome the ignorance resulting from class and race privilege, my participation in the reproductive rights movement, and my work in International PEN (Postsecondary Education Network International) as part of a global movement for women’s human rights which must go on in this new period to link the struggle for social and economic justice and sustainability with the fight against all forms of fundamentalism.

For more information on Meredith Tax, check out her website. And be sure to register here to come to the Acting Across Borders symposium on April 13 and 14, 2012. Registration is free and open to the public!

New Acquisition: Panko Playing Cards

When you hear the word “Panko,” do you think of Japanese bread crumbs?

Box cover for Panko, or, Votes for Women: The Great Card Game
Box cover for Panko, or, Votes for Women: The Great Card Game

I did, until the Sallie Bingham Center acquired this deck of Panko playing cards. It’s named for the leader of the British suffrage movement, Emmeline Pankhurst  (1858-1928), and pits opponents and supporters of suffrage against each other in a game similar to rummy. The advertisement for the game claimed, “Not only is each picture in itself an interesting memento, but the game produces intense excitement without the slightest taint of bitterness.”

Pank! Pank! Pank! for Emmeline Pankhurst
Pank! Pank! Pank! for Emmeline Pankhurst

This translation of the women’s suffrage movement into card games, and also board games, helped bring the message of the cause into domestic circles where more overt forms of propaganda might not have been welcomed. These cards were designed by the well-known Punch cartoonist E. T. Reed, and published by Peter Gurney in 1909.

Votes for Women.
Votes for Women, say the suffragettes.

These particular playing cards are owned by only three other libraries and are an important, rare piece of suffragette memorabilia that joins a number of other decks of cards held by the Bingham Center that explore issues related to women and gender. Check out the Panko catalog record here!

Post contributed by Megan Lewis, Technical Services Archivist for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

“From Blackface to Blaxploitation”

Dates: 2 April- 30 July 2012
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu

African Americans have had a long and rather complex history in the American motion picture industry. The exhibit “From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Representations of African Americans in Film” seeks to explore the ways in which “Blackness” has been portrayed in films during the 20th century.

This exhibit features selected items from two collections in the Rubenstein Library’s John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American History and Culture: the African Americans in Film Collection and the Thomas Cripps Film Collection. If you can’t make it to the Library, an online exhibit is also available (with added bonuses!).

To celebrate, we’ve created a poll to determine the best tagline from the films featured in the exhibit.  Vote for your favorite below!

Acting Across Borders: Celebrating the Meredith Tax Papers

Date: Friday, April 13- Saturday, April 14, 2012
Location: Friday: White Lecture Hall, East Campus; Saturday: Gothic Reading Room, Perkins Library
Registration  and Schedule:  http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/bingham/borders
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, (919) 660-5967, kelly.wooten[at]duke.edu

Meredith Tax, writer and political activist since the late 1960s, has founded or co-founded a series of feminist and social justice organizations starting with Bread and Roses, an early socialist-feminist group in Boston. Her 1970 essay, “Woman and Her Mind: The Story of Everyday Life,” is considered a foundational text of the U.S. women’s liberation movement. “Acting Across Borders” will focus on the main questions Tax explored in this essay and throughout her work as a feminist: race, class, and internationalism.

This fifth symposium of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture will feature notable feminist activists, writers, and scholars:

Meredith Tax, writer and political activist

Patricia McFadden, radical African feminist, sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher

Anissa Helie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Ann Snitow, Director, Gender Studies Program, Eugene Lang College

Mandy Carter, National Coordinator, Bayard Rustin Centennial 2012 Project, National Black Justice Coalition

Amber Hollibaugh, Interim Director, Queers for Economic Justice

Mia Herndon, Executive Director, Third Wave Foundation

Gita Sahgal, Women’s and Human Rights Activist; former head of Amnesty International’s Gender Unit

Ynestra King, Writer and Eco-feminist

Jaclyn Friedman, Writer, Activist, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Women, Action & the Media

Free and open to the public.  Co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the  Dean of Arts and Sciences, Duke University Libraries, African and African American Studies, Franklin Humanities Institute, the Program in Women’s Studies,  the Women’s Center, David M.  Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture. Part of the Future of the Feminist 70s series hosted by the Program in Women’s Studies.

Edward Halperin on Slave Medicine

Date: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Time: Light buffet supper at 5:30 PM; lecture begins at 6:00 PM
Location: Duke Medical Center Library, Room 102
Contact information:  Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Please join the Trent History of Medicine Society/Bullitt History of Medicine Club for its next speaker series event on Tuesday, April 10, 2012.  Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA, FACR, will be discussing “Slave Medicine and the Banality of Evil.”

Dr. Halperin received his undergraduate degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine, and a masters’ degree in Liberal Studies from Duke University.  He served on the faculty at Duke University for 23 years where he held endowed chairs in radiation oncology and medical education, and served as chairman of the department of radiation oncology and vice dean of the School of Medicine. In 2006, he was named Dean of the Medical School at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and Vice Provost of the University. As of May 1 this year, Dr. Halperin will begin as Chief Executive Officer and Chancellor for Health Affairs, Professor of Radiation Oncology, Pediatrics, and History, at New York Medical College and Provost for Biomedical Affairs at Touro College and University.

Mad Men Madness, Part II

Hartman Center 20th Anniversary LogoDate: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Time: 5:00 PM reception, 6:00 PM talk
Location: Gothic Reading Room, Perkins Library
Contact information: Jacqueline Reid Wachholz, 919-660-5836 or j.reid@duke.edu.

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University celebrates its 20th Anniversary in 2012 with a lecture series of advertising luminaries.

Please join us next Tuesday for the second talk in the series. Charlotte Beers, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs will talk about women, leadership and advertising. She will also sign copies of her new book, I’d Rather Be in Charge, which will be available for purchase. The event is free and open to the public.

Cover of "I'd Rather Be in Charge" by Charlotte BeersFor more information, visit the lecture series website.

The 20th Anniversary Lecture Series is sponsored by the Duke University Office of the Provost, Fuqua School of Business, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Markets & Management Studies, Duke Marketing Club, Alpha Kappa Psi, American Advertising Federation-Raleigh Durham, Association of Women in Business, Baldwin Scholars, and the Duke Administrative Women’s Network.

Post contributed by Jacqueline Reid Wachholz, Director of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History.

New Day Films Events at Full Frame to Celebrate Rubenstein Library Acquisition

The founders of New Day Films. Back row:  Amalie R. Rothschild, Julia Reichert, Jim Klein.  Front: Liane Brandon
The founders of New Day Films. Back row: Amalie R. Rothschild, Julia Reichert, Jim Klein. Front: Liane Brandon

The Rubenstein Library is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the New Day Films Collection. The collection includes the founding films and organizational records of New Day founders Liane Brandon, Jim Klein, Julia Reichert, and Amalie R. Rothschild. Documenting a pioneering film distribution company and collective, the first to distribute feminist films in the early 1970s, the New Day Films Collection is an important record of both New Day’s formation and the Feminist Movement.  New Day Films is a thriving organization, celebrating 40 years in 2012 as a participatory democratic filmmakers’ cooperative with 120 members and 250 titles. The Rubenstein is committed to preserving the New Day Films Collection for future generations to make this record of the evolution of progressive independent American filmmaking available for teaching and research.

In celebration of New Day coming to Duke, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will screen New Day’s founding films—Anything You Want to Be (Brandon), Betty Tells Her Story (Brandon), Growing Up Female (Klein, Reichert), and It Happens to Us (Rothschild)—on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 4:50pm.   There will be a panel conversation with all four founding members about New Day’s exceptional history on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 9:30AM.

Film still from Growing Up Female, Jim Klein and Julia Reichert

For more information on the New Day Films Collection at the Rubenstein, see: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/documentaryarts/events/

For more information on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, including a complete schedule and ticket information, see:  http://www.fullframefest.org/

For more information on New Day Films, see:  http://www.newday.com/

 

The Peacocks’ Gift

Ethel Carr Peacock Memorial Collection Bookplate
An Ethel Carr Peacock Memorial Collection Bookplate

Last fall, The Devil’s Tale posted “What’s in a Name,” where readers were asked to vote on their favorite name from a list accumulated from across our collections. The winner (although votes are still being accepted!) was Dred Peacock.

Peacock graduated from Trinity College (now Duke University), married the daughter of a Trinity professor, and eventually became President of the Greensboro Female College. Peacock and his wife, Ella, created an immense library which they established at the Greensboro Female College in memory of their daughter Ethel, who’d died at a young age. The Peacocks stipulated that should the College close, they could remove their collection and establish it elsewhere. Years later, when it appeared the College would in fact close its doors, the Peacocks moved their library to Trinity College, which by this time had moved from Randolph County to Durham.

We recently uncovered several scrapbooks created by the Peacocks. They contain clippings, programs, and invitations from the late 19th century and largely relate to events and news regarding Greensboro Female College and Trinity College. One clipping that caught my eye highlights the professions of Trinity graduates by 1887: 275 graduates went into the ministry, 49 went into law, 66 went into teaching, 20 went into medicine, 11 went to the quill, and the rest to merchandising and agriculture. Of its alumni, 5 were judges, 7 were solicitors, 11 were either presidents or professors of leading colleges, 49 were members of legislatures of different states and territories, and several were in congress from 2-8 years.

Pages from the one of the Peacock Scrapbooks
Pages and Loose Programs from the one of the Peacock Scrapbooks

Curious about the other fascinating items contained in the scrapbooks? They are now available for use in the Rubenstein Library’s reading room. Check out the online finding aid for more details about the scrapbooks1

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

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