Take Back the Night, the Day, the Street, the Home…

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Wednesday, April 17th is Take Back the Night on the University of Connecticut campus.  An event recognized across North America in response to violence against wimmin.  Since its inception Take Back the Night has been about reclaiming space beyond the physically passive act of recognition and observation.  Wimmin, the disproportionate victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and harassment, have found solidarity through the action of speaking out and mobilization en masse against this violence.  It’s sister mobilization, Slutwalk, has also achieved support across the broad spectrum of wimmin who experience patriarchy in the streets, an intended social space for interaction in work, transit and play.

The Alternative Press Collection (APC) in the Archives contains numerous publications on wimmin-positive theory and praxis in response to gender violence since the 1960s.  Of note is the feminist publication Aegis: Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women published in 1978 by the Feminist Alliance Against Rape.  Defined by the magazine’s statement of purpose, the movement to build solidarity through information was seminal in establishing wimmin’s resources in regions where silence was (is) the normative response to gender violence:

The purpose of Aegis is to aid the efforts of feminists working to end violence against women.  To this end, Aegis provides practical information and resources for grassroots organizers, along with promoting a continuing discussion among feminists of the root causes of rape, battering, sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women.

Depicted in the image below is the cover of the September/October 1979 issue, portraying the advocacy debate around wimmin’s rights to self defense.

Aegis

In addition to our extensive APC collection of periodicals is a recently acquired special collection art installation about building solidarity and non-violence amongst wimmin through art therapy.  In this case, pulping panties into paper!  From the Peace Paper Project comes another alliterative piece, Panty Pulping!  The installment consists of loose pieces of paper made from mulched wimmin’s underwear that has been forged anew through storytelling and constructing the foundations of a new page for which a narrative can be written about wimmins voices together.

To view these pieces or any materials about wimmin’s rights and radical feminism, please contact the curator.

 

‘Eyes Open, Perhaps Screaming’: Poetry of the Now

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Maps No. 1 1969
Celebrate National Poetry Month by exploring today’s poets and poetry available from our friends at the living-breathing heart of the now: poetry portals. These sites bring to the 21st century a tradition of independently curating, collecting and publishing poetry that existed during the mimeograph revolution of the 20th century. Kin to the muscular-yet-short-lived little magazines that thrived in the 1960s and 1970s, they are realms of the extraordinary, offering what the poet John Taggart in Number 1 (1969) of his little magazine Maps, describes as

…Poems [that] are not on the furthermost borders of the avant-garde. They are of the now in the continuum sense of ‘being’ – eyes open, perhaps screaming, but not leaping out of the present, and occasionally, they are of the past as renovated by those open eyes.

Archive of the Now

PennSound

UbuWeb

VerySmallKitchen

[A Post for April Fool’s Day] — Telephone Operators Trained to Repair Lines

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Southern New England Telepyohe Operators Practicing their Skills for High Wire Work

Southern New England Telephone Operators Practicing their Skills for High Wire Work

Telephone operators employed by the Southern New England Telephone Company fulfilled an important role for the company with their courteous and efficient service at the switchboards, but it is a little known fact that for a short period of time, from 1934 to 1937, many of the operators were also trained to work on the wire crews with the men.  This was done as a precautionary measure by the company, so that in case of times of disaster, such as floods or hurricanes, ample staff was available to repair downed telephone lines.  Shown here are operators Jeannette Pascal and Eleanor Hennypenny demonstrating their prowess on a catwalk the company strung between their headquarters in Hartford to an adjacent building.  Operator Pearl Carpenter, who worked for SNET from 1931 until her retirement in 1968, reported to the archives on a recent visit that during the Flood of 1936, when operators were called to assist the men in line repair, she scaled a forty foot telephone pole in heels and stockings, successfully restoring telephone service to thousands in the Greater New Haven area.

[April 3:  If you didn’t realize already, this post, from April 1, was an April Fool’s Day joke.  As far as we know operators were not trained to scale the telephone lines, and we know of none who may have done so in heels and stockings.  The real story is this: this photograph was taken in March 1936 when flood waters covered 1/5 of the city of Hartford.  The streets were so flooded in front of the SNET headquarters that workers were unable to enter the building through the street level entrances, so this catwalk was erected to connect the headquarters building with an adjacent building and operators had to traverse the catwalk to get to the switchboards. We don’t actually know the names of the two ladies in the photograph — I thought the ruse would be more believable if I could pin names to women — and no operator by the name of Pearl Carpenter ever paid us a visit.]

Through the Lens of an Anthropologist: Campus Unrest

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April 26, 1968 Student Strike, University of Connecticut

April 26, 1968 Student Strike, University of Connecticut


Carey MacDonald is an undergraduate Anthropology major and writing intern. In her blog series Through the Lens of an Anthropologist, Carey analyzes artifacts found in the collections of Archives and Special Collections.

Students’ actions at the University of Connecticut during the Vietnam War era were charged with radical and idealistic electricity. At a time when the student population was smaller, quieter, and only a third of the size that it is today, the on-campus presence of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) helped mobilize individuals who either did or did not associate themselves with the group. One action that took place on campus during this era was the ten-day long demonstration of December 1968. Producers A.H. Perlmutter and Morton Silverstein of National Educational Television captured this demonstration on film and turned it into the 1969 black and white production Diary of a Student Revolution.

The film suggests that the reason for that December’s unrest was that many students were strongly opposed to the principles of the companies conducting job recruitment interviews on campus. One such company was the DOW Chemical Company, the maker of both Saran Wrap and Napalm, a chemical weapon whose rampant usage in the Vietnam War became highly controversial in the U.S. in the late sixties. Students demonstrated against the university’s permission of DOW recruitment by first occupying the office of President Homer D. Babbidge in November 1968. SDS continued to garner support from some students and faculty and called for the student government to join their side on December 8, 2012. This was just the beginning of that December’s ten-day period of unrest.

Although the immediate cause of the December action was students’ opposition to recruiters on campus, interviews with students reveal the underlying moods and motivations advancing the demonstration. One individual stated, “Power, you know, is at the top; it’s held by a corporate elite. And the country is organized to protect the corporate elite.” Another student claimed that “this system cannot be tolerated and must be destroyed.” This severe distrust of American government and industry existed at a time when the Vietnam War was becoming more and more brutal and thus unpopular, and when social and civil rights activists like Abbie Hoffman and Martin Luther King, Jr. were at the forefront of the media.

In response to students’ and SDS’s call for a moratorium on recruiting starting on Tuesday, December 10, 1968, President Babbidge stated in a campus-wide announcement that, after great deliberation, there would be no moratorium on recruiting. Needless to say, that Tuesday saw the height of the action; people demonstrated against Babbidge’s announcement outside an off-campus building where recruiting was taking place. 67 students and faculty who weren’t formally associated with SDS were arrested by state police. The film shows that many of those individuals wished to be arrested to symbolize their dedication to the cause.

Contrarily, in an impromptu interview conducted in a lecture hall, a non-acting student called the acting students a “minority”, and one student claimed that the activists should be arrested and suspended. When a small number of SDS members entered that lecture hall to arouse their fellow students while the cameras were filming, a group of non-acting students shouted at them, “Keep the status quo, keep the status quo!” This debate would continue on until 1971, even after this specific period of action began to collapse on its ninth day.

The film also reveals President Babbidge’s tribulations during the demonstrations. Viewed by radical students as part of America’s ‘corporate elite’, Babbidge actually appears more conflicted and concerned than anything. We ultimately know from documents found in the President’s Office Records that Babbidge, too, believed in the same causes as the students, including racial, educational, occupational, and economic equality and justice. But he believed in pursuing different means to those ends. This can be seen in a statement he made on May 10, 1970 in response to another student action: “I can honestly say that I believe I understand the foundation causes of the student strike, I support many of them…but I cannot support the strike.”

The events of 1968 at the University of Connecticut indicate that the community struggled locally with issues that originated from society at large. Our university community continues to do the same today.

Carey MacDonald, writing intern

The UConn White Caps

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White Caps Scrapbook 1944

White Caps Scrapbook 1944

The School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut was established in 1942 and accredited the following year.  The first students received their caps in 1944, an event commemorated in a scrapbook created by the “White Caps,” the nursing student club.  The capping ceremony took place on the evening of October 12, 1944 at the Community House situated near the Storrs Congregational Church.  Dr. Albert Jorgensen provided the welcome and Dean Carolyn Widmer spoke, reminding “the girls to keep up high ideals in their future years of nursing.  Mrs. Widmer then capped each girl, after which Miss Dolan, assistant to Mrs. Widmer, lit each girl’s Florence Nightingale candle.  The newly capped girls then took the Cadet Nurses’ Pledge, as all are entering the Cadet Nurse Corps.” [Connecticut Campus, October 1944]  The members of the first class in the University of Connecticut School of Nursing included Rhoda Grodin, Marijane Johnson, Selma Mag, Marilyn Olsen, Barbara Payne, Anne Pickett, Elaine Raymond, Shirlee Weinberg and Ann Winchester.

In November 2012, the University opened the Carolyn Widmer Wing of Storrs Hall, the long time home of the School of Nursing.  Named in honor of the first Dean of the School, the wing “provides nursing students with a learning environment tailored to the special needs of nursing education and practice” (UConn Today, 11/5/12) underscoring the University’s ongoing commitment to the education and training of nurses symbolized in the capping ceremony so many years ago.

The White Caps’ scrapbook is part of the School of Nursing Records in the University Archives.

Yukon Cap, V. 1, no. 1, November 1944

Yukon Cap, V. 1, no. 1, November 1944

Fifty Years of Anti-Nuclear Power Advocacy: Now Open for Research

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Poster from the Larry Bogart Papers

During a long career of anti-nuclear power advocacy, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, Larry Bogart—and his associates after him—gathered together and distributed an enormous collection of information on the hazards of nuclear power.  Today the archive serves as a chronicle of the struggle against nuclear power and its grass roots origins. The collection is comprised of 42 boxes, amounting to approximately 54 linear feet, and covers approximately 50 years of time, spanning even after Larry Bogart’s death in 1991. In its extent it is more than a life’s work, and now, after a period of about three months of careful work, I am glad to report is completely inventoried!

The collection is comprised of anti-nuclear power publications from many different nationwide organizations—including his own, such as Nuclear Opponents and Energy News Digest—which show his concern for the nationwide problem, rather than merely local concerns. As can be surmised from the vast quantity of newspaper clippings, though, he devoted much attention to stopping power plants in the Northeast, such as Indian Point in New York, Vermont Yankee, and Seabrook in New Hampshire. His correspondence, though rarer, further indicates a deep devotion to the fight against nuclear power—since it is very nearly the only subject discussed—and correspondence written to him at his various organizations such as the Citizens Energy Council, Friends of the Hudson and the Anti-Pollution League—often requests for information or subscriptions to publications—shows his great importance within this advocacy movement.

The Larry Bogart Papers, rather than a direct biography of Larry Bogart, provides students and researchers with ample source materials for studying the movement as well as the specific concerns of scientists and citizens in the early era of nuclear power. Larry Bogart brought countless clippings and publications into one place from people and organizations from around the world, giving us a collection with a very wide scope.  What the collection offers is greater than one person could have produced singlehandedly: a chronicle of fifty years of anti-nuclear advocacy, told in many voices.

Daniel Allie, undergraduate student employee