Leap Before You Look @ICAinBoston: National Exhibition of Black Mountain College Arts and Artists

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

The teachers and students at Black Mountain College came to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains from around the United States and the world. Some stayed for years, others mere weeks. …They experimented with new ways of teaching and learning; they encouraged discussion and free inquiry; they felt that form in art had meaning; they were committed to the rigor of the studio and the laboratory; … They had faith in learning through experience and doing; they trusted in the new while remaining committed to ideas from the past; and they valued the idiosyncratic nature of the individual. But most of all, they believed in art, in its ability to expand one’s internal horizons, and in art as a way of living and being in the world.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 is the first comprehensive museum exhibition on the subject of Black Mountain College to take place in the United States. Featuring works by more than ninety artists, from painting and sculpture to photography and ceramics, the exhibition will be accompanied by a robust program of music, dance, performance, lectures, and educational programs. The exhibition had its premiere on Saturday at the ICA/Boston and will be on view from October 10, 2015 to January 24, 2016.

Archives and Special Collections is thrilled to be a part of the exhibition, where items from the literary collections are on display together with works loaned from archives and museums throughout the United States and Europe. Items on loan from Archives and Special Collections include a painting by poet and artist Fielding Dawson titled “Cy Twombly.” Dawson, whose papers reside here in the archives, was a student at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s along with fellow students Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Dan Rice. Rare documents, manuscripts and “This” (pictured) a poetry broadside by Charles Olson printed at Black Mountain College are also on view in the exhibition. Charles Olson’s archive of manuscripts, letters, diaries, photographs and books resides here at the Dodd Research Center. A rich document of the poet’s life and work, the archive includes a variety of materials from his time at Black Mountain College where he began teaching in 1948 and assumed the role of rector (formally) in 1954. Olson’s poetics were very much influenced by the artists, faculty, students and atmosphere of experimentation that he encountered at Black Mountain College, and that in turn influenced a generation of writers that were later associated with, according to the New American Poetry editor Donald Allen, the “Black Mountain School.”

Organized by Helen Molesworth, the ICA’s former Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with ICA Assistant Curator Ruth Erickson, the exhibition argues that Black Mountain College was an important historical precedent, prompting renewed, critical attention to relationships between art, democracy, and globalism. The college’s influence, and its critical role in shaping many major concepts, movements, and forms in postwar art and education, can still be seen and felt today.

Tonight Live on the Radio! American Blues Music and the Life of Samuel Charters

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

At 5:00pm (EST) today, tune in to WHUS Radio 91.7 FM to hear music produced and recorded by poet, novelist, and renowned scholar of the blues, jazz, and musical culture of the African diaspora Samuel Charters. Featuring our own Kristin Eshelman, Archivist for The Samuel and Ann Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture at the University of Connecticut in Archives and Special Collections, the much-anticipated radio program is a tribute to the friendship, life and legacy of Samuel Charters. Samuel Charters died in March of this year at the age of 85.

Walking A Blues Road is a radio program engineered by Ken Best at WHUS, UConn’s Sound Alternative. The playlist can be tracked here for this special program.

Archives At Your Fingertips: Teaching with Archives and Special Collections

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Introduce your class to primary sources from Archives and Special Collections, UConn’s only public archive that offers students opportunities to explore and experience original letters, diaries, photographs, maps, drawings, artists books, graphic novels, student newspapers, travel narratives, oral histories, and rare sound recordings to illuminate a given topic of study. With over 40,000 linear feet of materials – located in the center of campus at the Dodd Research Center – the Archives welcomes all visitors to its Reading Room, a quiet space to contemplate potentially transformative resources.

Students are encouraged to drop in for their class project, First Year Experience credit, or simply for their own personal enrichment.

Faculty, teaching assistants, and other instructors are invited to design and schedule an instruction session with staff archivists as early as possible in the academic semester. For examples of class sessions taught recently by staff archivists, see the list outlined below.

The collections offer ample source materials for interdisciplinary research and instruction in such fields as art history; nineteenth and twentieth century American history, social movements, music, literature and book arts; blues music and African American musical culture; Latin American history and culture; children’s literature and illustration; nursing history; human rights; and Connecticut history.

The repository’s collection of personal papers animate the experiences, activities and creative processes of writers, activists, artists, political figures, and UConn faculty and students through time, and are critical for studying the communities and networks in which these individuals worked and thrived.

Popular with students, the Alternative Press Collection, graphic novels, artists books, Comix, Fanzines, science fiction, Socialist/Communist Pamphlets, and other special collections offer a variety of materials for exploring diverse discourses in and across contemporary events and social issues. Publications and ephemera from non-mainstream political movements (Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, and other Radical Politics), Black Power and non-white activism and social justice organizations, Women’s Liberation/Feminist movements, presses and organizations, and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer organizations and movements can be found in the Alternative Press Collection.

Classes that visited Archives and Special Collections for an instruction session last year include the following:

Advanced Photography

African American Experience in the Arts

American Landscapes, Walden and Thoreau

Art of China

British Literature: The Tudors

Children’s Literature

Communication Design

Connecticut Soldiers and the Civil War

The Historian’s Craft

History of Women and Gender in the United States

Introduction to Creative Writing

Irish History

Little Magazines and the Mimeo Revolution

Mexico and Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives

The Literature(s) of Medieval Iberia

Spanish Literature and Film

Trauma and History

United States and Human Rights

Word and Image: Early Illustrated Books

If you are a faculty member, visit Archives and Special Collections during public hours, Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 4:00pm. Or contact the archives staff today to discuss a prospective viewing of materials, instruction session or class visit. We look forward to hearing from you!

New York Times letter to the editor, by J. W. Swanberg

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Laura Smith

We enjoyed reading a May 23 letter to the editor, “History and Safety on the Railroad,” in the New York Times by our railroad friend, supporter and donor J.W. (Jack) Swanberg, where he explains that historically the railroads in the United States have had to build their own stations and right-of-way without any kind of public support, unlike public roads and the airline industry. Jack certainly writes from his own personal knowledge of railroad history, as the author of New Haven Power, a history of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad’s engines and other motive power, and numerous articles in railroad magazines on a myriad of railroad history topics.

1881, Housatonic Railroad locomotive and crew

Winners of the Archives & Special Collections prize for Connecticut History Day

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Laura Smith

Victoria Farrell and Kayla Gobar

Congratulations to Victoria Farrell and Kayla Gobar of New Britain High School, winners of the Archives & Special Collections of the UConn Libraries special prize for projects on Connecticut Leaders and Leadership, which they won at the May 9, 2015, Connecticut History Day contest held at Central Connecticut State University. The girls won the prize for their project “Nathan Hale: Connecticut’s State Hero.” We are very happy such an interesting topic was awarded the prize, which is a gift certificate to the UConn Bookstore.

Archives in Action: Reading Shakespeare Today – on Display at the Homer Babbidge Library

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a flower struck by Cupid’s bow is instantly imbued with magical powers. A touch of the nectar from the flower, a wild pansy, to the eye of the sleeping fairy queen Titania causes her infatuation with Bottom and the ensuing chaos that follows in the play. Plants, flowers and herbs figure prominently in several of Shakespeare’s plays, most notably A Midsummer Night’s Dream and A Winter’s Tale. During Shakespeare’s time, the wild pansy was known by many names including “Heartsease,” “Love-lies-bleeding,” and “Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me”. Botanicals in medieval Europe have long cultural histories and symbolic meanings derived from their use as curatives and medicine through time. When characters such as Oberon and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream mention flowers and herbs, it can be assumed that Shakespeare drew from these deep histories and intended for the audience to understand the associations that each flower represented.

A rare text on the medicinal properties of plants and other botanicals from the collections of Archives and Special Collections is currently on display in the exhibition The Plays the Thing: Shakespeare at UConn in the Homer Babbidge Library plaza level gallery. Flore Medicale [Medicinal Plants] is a catalog of plants and hand painted illustrations produced by Francois-Pierre Chaumeton, a French botanist, physician, surgeon, and eventual pharmacist. He lived from 1775 to 1819 and practiced for most of his professional life at the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris. Chaumeton translated medicinal texts from Latin, Italian, French and other languages and compiled the 8 volume Flore Medicale. The set was first published in 1814 and contains over 360 hand-painted illustrations of plants in total.

The exhibition features commentary from several UConn faculty members on different facets of Shakespearean scholarship. Associate Professor F. Elizabeth Hart discussed Shakespeare’s allusions to Queen Elizabeth I in plays such as Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Winter’s Tale; Professor Pamela Allen Brown provides examples of “The Advent of the Actress and Shakespeare’s All-Male Stage”; and Professor Gregory Semenza provided samples of Shakespearean influence in modern culture in the form of comic strips, graphic novels, and video games.

Though the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death will be recognized in 2016, it is unlikely that students and scholars will ever come to a complete understanding of William Shakespeare and the influence that his work has had on the English language. In The Play’s the Thing: Shakespeare at UConn, Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s (CRT) Managing Director Matthew Pugliese and Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts Lindsay Cummings show the creative work of the students and artists of the Department of Dramatic Arts and Connecticut Repertory Theatre. The exhibition is on display until June 15, 2015.

– Lauren Silverio

Lauren Silverio is an English and Psychology major and student employee in Archives and Special Collections.

Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers: From online access to scholarly production

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Marisol Ramos

Page of Correo de las Damas (title page)

Correo de las Damas (title page) First issue, 1804

Have you ever wondered what happens after a researcher uses one of our archival collections available online or as a digital surrogate? Sometimes online or remote users are hard to track and most of the time we are unaware of how they end up using our materials but sometimes we are lucky and they will contact us and share their work with us.

I am happy to report about three scholars (one from Japan and two from Spain) who shared their works and their thanks for giving them access to our collection of Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers.

From Japan

In 2009 we got a request to scan a copy of all the issues of the newspaper, El Ebusitano, the first weekly newspaper (1846-1847) in the island of Ibiza, one of the Balearic Islands, Spain. Hirotaka Tateishi, professor and chairman of the Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, was tracking down this rare newspaper which was not available either in Ibiza or in Spain’s National Library, to clarify the real beginnings of this publication (who was the first editor, how long was published, where it was published, etc.). Professor Tateishi mentioned in his publication that he had found many references to the existence of the newspaper in old reference books, but always with the caveat that the author(s) had never been able to see the originals. Fortunately for Prof. Tateishi, the Archives and Special Collections was able to provide a digital surrogate of this newspaper title for his research since we had acquired this collection around the 1970s–a collection amassed by one of the most famous bibliophiles in Spain, Juan Pérez de Guzmán y Boza, Duque de T’ Serclaes. In 2010, Prof. Tateishi published his findings, ” “El Ebusitano”: el primer periódico de Ibiza en los fondos de una biblioteca americana” in an open access journal, Mediterranean world, published by the Mediterranean Studies Group at Hitotsubashi University,

From Spain

Beatriz Sánchez Hita and María Román López are scholars and collaborators from the University of Cádiz, Spain. Their research focus on the role of women in the shaping of the nascent printing culture (in the form of newspapers) in Spain during the 19^th century. One of the newspapers that they were looking to have access to was El Correo de las Damas (1804-1808). Until recently this newspaper was very difficult to access by Spanish scholars since there are no copies available in any of their main libraries, including Spain’s National Library. We got a request from them in 2009 to photocopy all 15 tomes for this newspaper but we could not do so at the time because of preservation concerns. Instead, I decided to apply for a library grant to digitize all the tomes for this title, which became the beginning of our Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers digital collection, which not only comprised of a selection of women’s magazines, but also includes a selection of 18^th and 19^th century magazines (mainly literary) from this collection, for a total of 39 digitized titles.

Diario de Cádiz (title page). First issue, 1796

Although María Román López visited us at the archives right after we finished the digitization of Correo de las Damas in September of 2009—to study the physical characteristics of this title—the majority of their research was done online. Prof. Beatriz Sánchez Hita benefited immediately with the new access of Correo de las Damas, and later on the Diario de Cádiz, and was able to finish two scholarly articles published in 2009 and 2010, respectively, about the role of women (as writers or as readers of newspapers) in the debates developing in the Spanish press regarding the Constitution of 1812, “Escritoras y Periodistas ante la Constitución de 1812 (1808-1823)” and the War of Independence (from France), “Las escritoras en la prensa de la Guerra de la Independencia vistas por sus colegas : ¿lucha de género o política?“.

More recently, in 2014, Beatriz Sánchez Hita and María Román López finished a massive analytical study (220 pages) titled, La prensa femenina en Cádiz a principios del siglo XIX Aproximación al Correo de las Damas (1804-1808), that focused on the:

…study of the Correo de las Damas (1804-1808), a journal aimed at women that was published in Cadiz as a supplement to Diario Mercantil (1802-1814). It was edited by Joseph Lacroix, Baron of Bruère, and appeared in print with a total of 17 volumes, of which we had access to all except No. 16. The study includes a consideration of the figure of his editor and promoter, in order to proceed with the characterization of this magazine aimed at women, which has often been overlooked in the historiography of journalism, being still a rarity today. It devotes special attention to the description of its contents following their arrangement in teh (sic) pages of the journal (3).

As Sáchez and Román explained about the rarity of Correo de las Damas:

Esto se debe a que no parecen haber quedado colecciones del mismo en las principales bibliotecas españolas, no en vano solo hemos podido localizar este periódico en la colección J. Thomas Dodd, de la Universidad de Connecticut, donde se conservan los tomos 1 a 15 en SPAN PER 16, a los que desde hace poco tiempo puede accederse online (5).

This study is freely available at Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo, http://revistas.uca.es/index.php/cir/article/view/1920

As you can see, making accessible rare archival materials digitally has an immediate impact on the production of new scholarly knowledge as these examples illustrate. It is always satisfying to see how increasing access to these cultural heritage collections benefit not only our local users but the global community of scholars–specially scholars from the country where the records were created. We will continue preserving these invaluable cultural heritage collections and making them more accessible through digitization for many years to come.

Marisol Ramos, Curator of Latina/o, Latin American & Caribbean Collections

The Altered Book: Now on Display

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Altering a book page is a daunting concept; reconstructing and altering an entire book is a formidable test. Even when using cast-off books that are about to be recycled, one is faced with the unnerving sensation of involvement in a destructive rather than a creative act. Through thoughtfully considered and concentrated efforts, repetitive actions such as folding, cutting, scoring, curling, punching, incising, and shredding have altered the book’s original function as an object of information and have transformed it into something new. (Deborah Dancy)

Altered books created by students in Professor Deborah Dancy’s first year studio foundation class will be on display from March 2 to March 20 in the Reading Room lobby of Archives and Special Collections. Come in and allow these altered books to lead you in your own consideration of the form and function of the modern book.

The breadth and variety of works speak to the diversity of interpretations that can be made about the book as an object of information and of art. Students draw inspiration from nature – cascading waterfalls, leaves, feathers, flowers, and rolling seas – as well as from the clean lines of geometry and the rhythm of repetitive shapes.

Some of the students cut into the books, suggesting, perhaps, that to understand the book as information and as art one must immerse oneself into the very substance of the book. Other students chose to alter the books so that they expanded beyondtheir original physical boundaries, transforming the printed page into a three-dimensional sculpture.

– Lauren Silverio

Lauren Silverio is an English and Psychology major and student employee in Archives and Special Collections.

Archives in Action: Ragtime, Minstrelsy, and Illustrated Sheet Music

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

How was popular music in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries distributed and heard? Prior to the advent of the home radio, music was performed at home or in public spaces and songs were published and distributed in the form of sheet music. In 1870, 1 out of every 1,540 Americans bought a new piano; in 1890, 1 out of every 874; and in 1910, 1 out of every 252, according to Nicholas Tawa in his book The Way to Tin Pan Alley: American Popular Song, 1866-1910. By the turn of the century, music publishers began to distinguish themselves. And if you wanted to hear music, you had to make it yourself.

Students in Professor Robert Stephens’ course Afrocentric Perspectives in the Arts gathered in Archives and Special Collections for the opportunity to view and explore illustrated sheet music from the Samuel Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Music. Archivist Kristin Eshelman presented students with examples of published sheet music popular in the 1890s, ragtime music. Ragtime, a style of piano music, is characterized by a steady, regular bass line and an irregular or “ragged” melody. One of the most famous ragtime pieces, which nearly all of the students recognized immediately upon hearing it, is Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”. Many of the ragtime recordings in the Charters Archive are from concerts, conventions, and meetings hosted by the Maple Leaf Club.

In her presentation to the class, Kristin referred to the role of minstrel shows in the dispersal and popularization of music from the 1840’s to the early 1900’s. As depicted in the Ken Burns film Jazz. Episode One, Gumbo (writer, Geoffrey C. Ward), “these shows served to codify the first body of popular American music and culture through performances all over the country.” The standard minstrel show included three parts: “the walkaround,” the “cakewalk,” and “the olio,” a variety segment including singing and dancing, novelty acts and a stump speech (Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult and Imitation in American Popular Culture). Early minstrel shows were put on by white men in blackface and, later, black men pretending to be white men in blackface; the shows were evidence of a time where black and white Americans were constantly interpreting and misinterpreting one another.

The illustrations on the covers of the sheet music functioned much like a book cover – to draw attention to the piece and entice the viewer to purchase the music. As they examined the material, students began to key-in on the visual imagery. What is immediately apparent to the modern viewer is the prominence physical and racial stereotypes that exoticize and exaggerate aspects of essentially all non-white races.

Teaching assistant Marisely Gonzalez asked students to analyze the imagery, composition, content and song titles on the sheet music that were used to promote minstrel shows and ragtime music, and to compare the sheet music with an art piece from the 21^st century, in either visual arts, film, theater, music or dance, by an minstrel3 African American artist. What is the artist trying to communicate? She then asked students to discuss the historical context of both pieces and respond in an essay paper to the questions: what was the cultural meaning and significance of each piece? Did it provoke a public response then, and does it do so today? In March, students will present their theses and images from the assignment in class.

Archives in Action highlights how archives are being used today. Series author Lauren Silverio is an English and Psychology major and student employee in Archives and Special Collections.

Archives in Action: Kuo Hsi Masterpiece on View

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Early Spring, a masterpiece painted by Kuo Hsi in the year 1072, stands as a lasting testament to the infinite beauty of pressure and ink on silk. The scroll painting, originally painted as two, depicts a mist and tree-covered mountain and is produced in a style that Kuo Hsi developed after studying the work of Chinese master Li Ch’eng. Kuo Hsi held a high position in the Imperial Painting Academy and wrote a treatise on landscape painting. Through the diligent work of his son, Kuo Ssu, Kuo Hsi’s work was consolidated into a family collection which, though seldom seen by individuals outside the family, was preserved and treasured.

As Chiang Chao-shen notes in an introduction to the scroll,

The silhouette of the rocks and boulders is delineated with a heavy touch, the fog-washed trees with a light one. The washes work in harmony to express a complete idea of nature’s forms under these seasonal conditions – with the treetops disappearing imperceptively into the vapor, their trunks still vigorously etched in darker ink.

The original scroll is housed in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Republic of China. The fine art facsimile held at the Dodd Research Center, made by Nigensha Publishing Company of Japan, was on view for students in Dr. Yan Geng’s East Asian Painting class on Wednesday, February 18. It will be unrolled again on Monday, February 23, 2015. The piece was acquired specifically for use in the classroom.