My favorite kinds of materials in archives are the ones we might describe colloquially as “well-loved,” where you can tell that someone—or perhaps more than one someone—spent hours writing, reading, and thinking about a topic.
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March 29, 2021Posted in: Special Collections -
March 25, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsSometime between 1795 and 1826, Lady Jean Skipwith made an account of the flora on her property. [i] A pocket-sized notebook, now in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), contains her handwritten list of plants. -
March 23, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsWritten by graduate student assistant, Erna Anderson. This exhibit is on view in the Swem Library lobby through April 1, 2021. [[Content warning: This post discusses blackface and gender impersonation.]] -
December 2, 2020Posted in: Special CollectionsA common and complex practice within Tibetan Buddhism is the millenia-old, slow and careful creation of sand mandalas. -
May 14, 2019Posted in: Special CollectionsThe Reverend Curtis W. Harris is best known for his role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Civil Rights organization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., though he has not been studied closely by historians. -
February 27, 2019Posted in: Special CollectionsLandrum passport, Grace Warren Landrum Papers -
May 9, 2018Posted in: Special CollectionsThe quotation in the title of this post is from a letter about an 1890 revolution in Buenos Aires known as The Revolution of the Park. -
April 11, 2018Posted in: Special CollectionsAs an Exhibit Apprentice in Swem’s Special Collections, I had the opportunity to curate a World War I centennial exhibit. -
December 20, 2017Posted in: Special Collections -
November 22, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsDown in the belly of Special Collections sits a mysterious blue velvet box. Its contents are simultaneously mundane and bizarre, important for the study of language in Spain, and remarkably unremarkable. The box bears the inscription Matxin de Zalbaren Gutuna, La Carta de Machin de Zalba, 1416. What is it? Why do we have it? What makes it both special and ordinary?