Rights! Camera! Action!: Rain in a Dry Land

Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Rain in a Dry Land (82 min.) chronicles the first 18 months of the new American lives of two families finally allowed to immigrate to the United States after over a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp. Beginning with "cultural orientation" classes in Kenya, where they are introduced to such novelties as electric appliances and the prospect of living in high-rise apartment buildings, the film follows the families as they learn that the streets in America are definitely not paved with gold. The families' sponsors—Jewish Family Services in Springfield, Massachusetts, and World Relief in Atlanta—have pledged six months of support, which makes for a daunting learning curve as the families settle into their new homes.

A discussion with director Anne Makepeace and Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, will follow.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

A Worthy 100 Years

Date: Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Tim Pyatt, 919-684-8929 or tim.pyatt(at)duke.edu

William Preston Few

On November 9, 1910, William Preston Few was inaugurated as the sixth president of Trinity College. Few accepted the presidency of Trinity College promising "to keep the future worthy of the past." This would be no hollow promise as, over the next three decades, he would transform the strong and growing liberal arts college into a major research university.

To celebrate this pivotal moment in the history of Duke University, Michael Schoenfeld, Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Affairs and Stephen Nowicki, Dean of Undergraduate Education, will give brief remarks on Few’s legacy and lasting impact. University Archivist Tim Pyatt will introduce members of the Few family attending and talk about the materials documenting Few’s life and presidency that will be on display.

Congratulations to the 2010 Middlesworth Award Winners!

On Friday, the RBMSCL celebrated with students and parents at one of our favorite events of the year: the Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize Reception.

Given annually, the Middlesworth Awards recognize the authors of the best undergraduate and graduate student papers based on research in the collections of the RBMSCL. Funding for the awards has been generously provided by Chester P. Middlesworth (A.B., 1949) of Statesville, NC.

2010 Middlesworth Award winners Adrienne Niederriter, Bonnie Scott, and Hannah Craddock.

Undergraduate student winner Adrienne R. Niederriter plumbed the depths of the Hartman Center's Ad*Access image database for her paper, "Speak Softly and Carry a Lipstick: Government Influence on Female Sexuality through Cosmetics during World War II."

Undergraduate student winner Hannah C. Craddock received her award for her senior honors thesis, "'A New Self-Respect and a New Consciousness of Power': White Nurses, Black Soldiers, and the Danger of World War I.” Craddock's study focused upon the Ann Henshaw Gardiner Papers and the Samuel Loomis Hypes Papers.

Graduate student winner Bonnie Scott's paper began at the heart of Duke's West Campus, as she compared sermons preached in the Duke Chapel to those preached by North Carolina minister Kenneth M. Johnson during the Civil Rights Movement.

Their papers will now become part of the RBMSCL's collections.

We know that great papers are being researched and written this semester as well. If you are a Duke student, submit your paper and we might be toasting you next fall! Details about submitting your paper can be found here.

Rights! Camera! Action!: Brother Towns

Date: Monday, 1 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Carolina Theatre
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Brother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos (59 min.) is a story of two towns linked by immigration, family, and work: Jacaltenango, Guatemala, a highland Maya town, and Jupiter, Florida, a coastal resort town where many Jacaltecos have settled. The docunmentary film chronicles how and why people migrate across borders, how people make and remake their communities when they travel thousands of miles from home, and how people maintain families despite their travel. To learn more, visit the film's website.

This screening is part of the Latin American Film Festival sponsored by the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Carolina Theater and will be followed by a panel discussion (panelists TBD).

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

In Conversation: Michael Cuscuna

Date: Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Regulator Bookshop
Contact Information: Jeremy Smith, 919-660-5839 or jeremy.smith(at)duke.edu

Grammy Award winning record producer Michael Cuscuna (Blue Note Records, Mosaic Records) will discuss his work producing the recordings of jazz pianist Horace Silver.

Silver was one of the leading composers and pianists of the hard bop era of jazz, and his music will be the focus of a concert by the SFJAZZ Collective the following evening at Page Auditorium.

SFJAZZ Collective

This event is co-sponsored by Duke Performances and the Jazz Archive.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Click to enlarge.

On Friday, library staff members and UNC SILS students gathered for an impromptu gallery talk for our new exhibit, "Book + Art: Artists' books from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture," led by curators Christine Wells and Kelly Wooten and exhibits coordinator Meg Brown. For more pictures from the gallery talk, visit the Bingham Center's Flickr photostream.

And remember: book artist and photographer Bea Nettles will be speaking tomorrow at 5:30 PM in the Rare Book Room as part of this fall's Book + Art series of events!

Stories of SNCC

Date: Sunday, 24 October 2010 
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Durham County Library Auditorium, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Contact Information: Will Hansen, 919-660-5958 or william.hansen(at)duke.edu

To celebrate the publication of the essay collection, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, editor Faith S. Holsaert (whose papers are held by RBMSCL) and contributor Margaret Herring will speak along with Nia Wilson, Executive Director, and Mya Hunter, member of SpiritHouse, a local grassroots organization that supports the empowerment, transformation, and self-determination of marginalized communities of color.

In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women—northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina—share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. Along with these stories, participants in the panel will discuss the legacy and continuing work of women for civil rights and equality.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the North Carolina Collection at Durham County Library, and The Regulator Bookshop.

"To Keep the Future Worthy of the Past"

Date: 14 October-3 January 2011
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Tim Pyatt, 919-684-8929 or tim.pyatt(at)duke.edu

William Preston Few, undated

"'To Keep the Future Worthy of the Past': The Legacy of William Preston Few" celebrates the centennial of Few’s inauguration as President of Trinity College on November 9, 1910.

Few accepted the presidency of Trinity College promising ". . . to keep the future worthy of the past." This would be no hollow promise as, over the next three decades, he would transform the strong and growing liberal arts college into a major research university and help shape James B. Duke’s transformative gift.

Memorabilia from the inauguration, as well as documents and images pertaining to the growth of Trinity College into Duke University, will be on display in this exhibit.

The Duke University Archives will also commemorate the anniversary of President Few's inauguration with a special event on Tuesday, 9 November 2010 at 4:00 PM in the Rare Book Room. Watch The Devil's Tale in the coming weeks for further details about this event.

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist.

Book + Art

Date: 13 October 2010-9 January 2011
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

During your next visit to Perkins-Bostock Library, be sure to stop by the Perkins Library Gallery to see the eclectic selection of artists’ books on display in "Book + Art: Artists' Books from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture." Or if you can’t visit in person, you can enjoy the online exhibit!

R & J: the txt msg edition. Elizabeth Pendergrass. J. Hastings, 2006.

So what exactly is an artists’ book? In the most general terms, it is an original work of art that that incorporates or innovates upon the book form in some—often dramatic—way. These books combine traditional arts, such as graphic design, printmaking, and bookbinding, with the full spectrum of contemporary art practice and theory, expanding and redefining the form. In this exhibit, you’ll see books in the form of a cell phone, a grandmother clock, women’s underwear, and even the traditional paperback book structure. The themes highlighted in this exhibit and in the Bingham Center’s artists’ book collection as a whole reflect the strengths of our broader collection of print and manuscript materials documenting women’s lives: motherhood and family, the domestic sphere, women’s bodies, sexuality, and women’s health.

This exhibit is part of this fall's Book + Art series, part of a semester-long celebration of book arts in collaboration with UNC Libraries. In the coming weeks, the Bingham Center will be sponsoring several events about the book arts:

Aging Gracefully. Bea Nettles, 2002.

Bea Nettles, Book Artist and Photographer
Date: Thursday, 21 October 2010
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room

Bea Nettles is a book artist and photographer whose work addresses issues of family relationships, the body, and the ways in which personal identities reflect political and social realities. She will give a lecture with book signing and light reception to follow. For more about Bea Nettles, visit her website.

Careers in Book Arts
Date: Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Time: 9:30 AM
Location: Room 217, Perkins Library

Panel discussion about making a career out of a love of book arts, featuring Laurie Corral, founder of Asheville Bookworks, Dave Wofford of Horse and Buggy Press, and Meg Brown, Duke conservation librarian and exhibits coordinator. Moderated by Beth Doyle, Duke conservation librarian.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women's History and Culture.

Filmmaker James Longley: Portraits from the Middle East

Date: Friday, 29 October 2010
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
Contact Information: Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Join the Archive of Documentary Arts for an evening with documentary filmmaker James Longley. Known for his intimate and poetic portraits of individuals and families caught in the political turmoil of Iraq, the Gaza Strip, and Pakistan, Longley was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2009. His Oscar-nominated film, Iraq in Fragments, won the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 2006. Arts advocate, author, and accomplished television interviewer Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel will facilitate the discussion.

This event inaugurates the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Filmmaker Series, established by Duke University with generous funding from the Diamonstein-Spielvogel endowment fund. The series will feature artists whose work addresses significant contemporary topics of social, political, economic, and cultural urgency. Filmmakers chosen to participate will have a recognized body of work and show promise of future contributions to documentary filmmaking. Visiting filmmakers will be invited to Duke for a two-day residency.

The Diamonstein-Spielvogel series is unique in its exclusive attention to documentary filmmakers with a global perspective. By giving Duke faculty and their students an opportunity to explore the films of socially-engaged filmmakers and discuss the work with them, this new series hopes to inspire and encourage the next generation of young documentarians.

The series is co-sponsored by the RBMSCL, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Center for Documentary Studies.

Screen / Society will screen several of Mr. Longley's films in the weeks leading up to his visit. Check the Screen/Society Fall 2010 schedule for additional details and contact information:

Iraq in Fragments **TONIGHT!**
Date: Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University

Sari’s Mother and Gaza Strip
Date: Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University

Special Screening of The Ants

Date: Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: White Lecture Hall, East Campus (map and directions)
Contact Information: Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Cine-East: East Asian Cinema and Screen/Society present The Ants (Ari no Heitai), winner of the Humanitarian Award (Documentary) at the 2006 Hong Kong International Film Awards. Kaoru Ikeya’s documentary tells the story of Waichi Okumura, one of over one thousand Japanese soldiers (the "ants" of the title) to remain in China after the conclusion of World War II, ostensibly to "incubate new military cells" but really to be used by the Chinese Nationalists in the battle against Mao’s forces.

This special presentation is made possible by the Full Frame Archive, part of the RBMSCL's Archive of Documentary Arts, and will be introduced by Tanya Lee, Full Frame Archive intern.

The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies are co-sponsors of the screening.

Honoring Jean O'Barr

Date: Thursday, 30 September 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Duke Women's Center (map and directions)
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Professor Jean O'Barr. Photo by Eleanor Mills.

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture and the Duke Women's Center invite you to a gathering in celebration of Professor Jean O'Barr, founder of Duke's Women's Studies Program and co-founder of the Bingham Center.

Professor O'Barr will be honored with the University Medal for Distinguished Meritorious Service at this year's Founder's Day Convocation, which will follow this reception at 4:00 PM in Duke Chapel.

Treasures of the TCHS

Date: Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room and Perkins Library Gallery
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

Piece of Wood, undated. From the Trinity College Historical Society Collection.

Ever wonder how the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library got its start? When faculty started using primary sources in their teaching? Why the University Archives keeps a seemingly random chunk of wood in its collections?

Find out all this and more as the co-curators of "'As Far As Possible from Forgetfulness': The Trinity College Historical Society" lead a gallery tour and talk about this popular exhibit, on display in the Perkins Library Gallery through October 10.

University Archivist Tim Pyatt will start the celebration with a brief history of the TCHS. Then co-curators Meghan Lyon, Amy McDonald, and Kim Sims will lead a tour of exhibit in the Perkins Library Gallery, sharing some of the stories behind the artifacts in the cases and the people who collected them. A reception in the Rare Book Room will follow their remarks.

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist.

Duke Jazz Ensemble Celebrates Frank Foster

Date: Friday, 1 October 2010
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: Baldwin Auditorium (map and directions)
Contact Information: Jeremy Smith, 919-660-5839 or jas5(at)notes.duke.edu

Frank Foster, ca. 1970s. From the Frank Foster Papers.

The Duke University Jazz Ensemble, led by John Brown, presents a concert celebrating living jazz legend Frank Foster.

This concert will include Foster's new arrangements of compositions by North Carolina musicians, completed to commemorate his association with Duke University. Duke Jazz Studies Program alums and past guest artists will join the performance with the Duke Jazz Ensemble.

Foster's papers were recently acquired by the RBMSCL's Jazz Archive. A Grammy Award-winning composer and saxophonist, Foster was a member of the Count Basie Orchestra,  and lead the group from 1986 to 1995. In 2002, he was presented with a Jazz Master Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more details, including information about purchasing tickets, visit the Duke Department of Music's event webpage.

Rights! Camera! Action!: After Innocence

Date: Thursday, 23 September 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series begins its fall season with this screening of After Innocence, the compelling story of seven men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and finally exonerated after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The men—including a police officer, an army sergeant, and a young father—are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion featuring recently-exonerated Shawn Massey and Theresa Newman, co-chair of Duke School of Law’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

Opening Reception for "Deena Stryker: Photographs of Cuba, 1963-1964"

Date: Thursday, 16 September 2010
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

A café and store in Birán, Fidel Castro’s home town, Holguín Province, December 1963. From the Deena Stryker Photograph Collection.

Photographer and journalist Deena Stryker brings her reminiscences of the Cuban Revolution to this opening celebration for "Deena Stryker: Photographs of Cuba, 1963-1964," on display through 12 December 2010 in the Special Collections Gallery.

Following Stryker's remarks, exhibit curators Holly Ackerman and Heather Settle will lead a panel of several local experts on Cuba in discussing the photographs and placing them in their historical context. Panelists include:

• Lars Schoultz, William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Monika Gosin, Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, Duke University
• Linda Howe, Department of Romance Languages, Wake Forest University

A reception and gallery tour, led by Stryker, will follow.

Can’t visit the exhibit in person? Check out the virtual exhibit, which includes an additional eleven photos from the Deena Stryker Photograph Collection, part of the RBMSCL's Archive of Documentary Arts.

Nell Irvin Painter Reflects

Date: Monday, 13 September 2010
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

Photo by Robin Holland.

With a career that has stretched from top public universities and the Ivy League to institutions in Italy, Ghana, and France, Nell Irvin Painter brings her rich experience to a personal consideration of African American women in academia. In "Alone and Together: One African American Woman's Experiences in the Academy," Dr. Painter will reflect upon her professional successes and challenges, as well as her career-long exchanges with several fellow African American women scholars.

Dr. Painter’s professional and personal papers, which are held by the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, have recently been opened to public research. For more information about her papers, visit the collection inventory or contact special-collections(at)duke.edu.

This program, part of a year-long celebration of the 15th anniversary of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History, is the first in a series of two events co-sponsored by the Franklin Research Center and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.

For more information about the second event, hosted by the Franklin Humanities Institute the following day, please visit the event's webpage.

"Deena Stryker: Photographs of Cuba, 1963-1964"

Date: 31 August-12 December 2010
Location and Time: Special Collections Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Journalist and photographer Deena Stryker’s black-and-white photographs of Revolutionary Cuba open a window into an unsettled time in that country’s history, after the Bay of Pigs and before Che Guevara's departure for the Congo, when Fidel Castro was solidifying his control over the new revolutionary government.

A woman watching a military parade, Havana, January 1964. From the Deena Stryker Photograph Collection.

This new exhibit of thirty gelatin silver prints from the Archive of Documentary Arts’ Deena Stryker Photograph Collection documents this extraordinary change, bearing witness to both the vitality of Cuba's leadership and the optimism of the Cuban people. The exhibit is curated by Holly Ackerman, Librarian for Latin America and Iberia, and Heather Settle, visiting scholar in Cultural Anthropology.

Can’t visit the exhibit in person? Check out the virtual exhibit, which includes an additional eleven photos from the Deena Stryker Photograph Collection.

Keep up with The Devil’s Tale for news about the exhibit’s opening reception on Thursday, September 16th at 4:00 PM in the Rare Book Room. Deena Stryker, the exhibit’s curators, and several local experts on Cuba will come together to discuss the photographs and place them in their historical context.

"'As Far as Possible from Forgetfulness': The Trinity College Historical Society"

Date: 3 August-10 October 2010
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Meg Brown, meg.brown(at)duke.edu

Arrows, Possibly from the Fiji Islands. From the Trinity College Historical Society Collection. Photo by Mark Zupan

The Duke University Archives is home to scores of manuscripts, records, and publications documenting Duke University's history—and a set of fierce arrows possibly from the Fiji Islands; a pair of wooden shoe soles bought by a former slave in 1865; and two cloth-covered buttons from the clothing of Louis XVI.

These and other artifacts—along with manuscripts and historically-significant publications—once belonged to the collection of the Trinity College Historical Society, a student organization established in 1892 to encourage original research in Southern history. Their collection, the precursor to the RBMSCL and the University Archives, forms the subject of our new exhibit, "'As Far as Possible from Forgetfulness': The Trinity College Historical Society."

Pewter Wig Sprayer. From the Trinity College Historical Society Collection. Photo by Mark Zupan.

Assuming the leadership of the Society in 1894, professor of history John Spencer Bassett renewed the Society’s charge to collect manuscripts, books, pamphlets, and objects of enduring historical value, including those artifacts mentioned above. He addressed his undergraduate collectors and historians in 1897, telling them that they would "be doing work for eternity . . . [and] centering the eyes of the centuries on this institution." This exhibit is proof of their legacy.

For more information about the Trinity College Historical Society and its collections, or if you won't be able to visit the exhibit in person, visit the exhibit website. Photos of the exhibit’s installation are available on the RBMSCL's Flickr photostream.

And remember to mark your calendars for a gallery talk with the exhibit's curators on Tuesday, September 28 at 3:30 PM in the Rare Book Room!

Celebrating Feminists of Faith

Date: Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Tibbie Roberts and B Holt at the 75th Anniversary of the NC Council of Churches. Courtesy of Jeanette Stokes.

Please join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture for an afternoon honoring women of faith who have contributed their papers to the Center's growing collection of materials documenting women's religious experiences and activities, particularly personal spiritual struggles and women's involvement in Protestant religious organizations.

We will be celebrating the contributions of Diane Weddington, Bett Hargrave, Bertha "B" Holt, Tibbie Roberts, Nancy Peeler Keppel, and the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South.

This program is sponsored by the Bingham Center and the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. Light refreshments will be served.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women's History and Culture.