Unpublished Seuss manuscripts rediscovered

Random House announced yesterday that it will publish What pet should I get? which features the brother and sister from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.  The manuscript and sketches were found in a box along with the original materials for at least two other books.  Random House will announce the publication dates for the other new releases later.

(The cover of a previously unknown Dr. Seuss book titled, What Pet Should I Get?)

Dr. Seuss’s widow, Audrey Geisel, set the box aside after her husband’s death in 1991, during a renovation of their home.  She and a longtime friend recently rediscovered the box, explaining in a statement to Random House:  “Ted always worked on multiple projects and started new things all the time — he was constantly drawing and coming up with ideas for new stories.”

ABC’s Good Morning America announced the story this morning as well as USA Today. 

What fantastic news for fans of Dr. Seuss.

 

Man, Woman, Machine: Gender, Automation, and Created Beings

We welcome intern Giorgina Paiella, an undergraduate student majoring in English and minoring in philosophy and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. In her new blog series, “Man, Woman, Machine: Gender, Automation, and Created Beings,” she will explore treatments of created and automated beings in archival materials from Archives and Special Collections.

We love stories of animation. Over the centuries, humanity has certainly not tired of works that engage with creation, artificiality, and the relationship between animator and animated. It’s in our myths, our movies, our television shows, and our literature—from children’s narratives to infamous novels. As a writing intern in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center this semester, I plan to examine technology magazines, the children’s literature collection, alternative press giorgina2publications, and other archival materials that explore the rise of automation and various iterations of automata and reflect upon how these representations can inform inquiries about gender, humanity, personhood, and our increasingly intimate relationship with technology.

For my first post in this blog series, I’m going to explore the trend of incorporating issues of gender into a discussion of scientific discoveries, which I have identified in several early technology publications. I read the second issue of the science and science fiction magazine Omni, a publication that founder Kathy Keeton created in 1978 with the intention of exploring “all realms of science and the paranormal, that delved into all corners of the unknown and projected some of those discoveries into fiction.” As I searched for themes that would be relevant to my research objectives, I was fascinated by the frequency at which language relating to second-wave feminism contributes to the dialogue about scientific and technological discoveries.

This is not entirely surprising, especially considering that the issue was published in November 1978, an era of burgeoning feminist activity. Some of these references were more explicitly linked to women’s issues than others. One article describes the computer revolution as “computer lib,” a clear nod to the women’s liberation movement, commonly referred to as “women’s lib.” A short news headline details the development of a birth control pill for dogs, so “fido can have sex without fear.” The description that follows reads like a parody of the female birth control pill introduced in the 1960s: “this planned parenthood for pups is dispensed by veterinarians for about five cents a day and is claimed to be 90 percent effective in stopping estrus (heat) in bitches of all sizes and descriptions.”

Another article within this issue of Omni discusses papers and novels that speculate on the scientific and cultural possibilities of a longevity pill, including Jib Fowles’s “The Impending Society of Immorals” and Albert Rosenfeld’s Prolongevity, which cites over 500 scientific papers in its bibliography. The article also describes an assignment given to thirty-one students at the University of Houston in the department of future studies to predict how a longevity pill would alter society. Their collective prediction utilizes the same alarmist dystopian rhetoric adopted by opponents of the birth control pill:

One year after the introduction of the antiaging pill, traditional religions warn against death control a campaign similar to the earlier crusade against birth control; the economy is destabilizing as employees desert their jobs; government has moved in to monopolize distribution of the pill; and the divorce rate is increasing. Ten years later, organized religion is disgraced and disbanded, virtually everyone is taking the pill, divorce rates soar, the economy is staggering because of an increase in absenteeism, and all dangerous sports are phasing out as people everywhere reorient themselves to the quest for physical immortality.

The concept of life extension is, in fact, a centuries-old trope, but this article demonstrates the way in which existing gender debates became interwoven into discussions about technological advances. Continuing on the topic of longevity technology, the author explains that “until now it was necessary for post-menopausal humans to die and get their bodies off the scene to make room for the new arrivals.” giorgina3Of course, we’re not simply talking about post-menopausal humans, but rather post-menopausal women. The objectification of women’s bodies is also far from a new phenomenon, but notice the language: they must “die and get their bodies off the scene” to make way for “new arrivals.

The rise of mechanization and speculations on new technological possibilities amplified ideas regarding the mind/body dualism and the disposability of bodies—particularly female bodies. Another article, “The Changing Shape of Women,” recounts findings from a study conducted by Berlei, the leading manufacturer of women’s undergarments in England at the time. The company describes changing trends in female body measurements, with a sample of over 4000 British and American women revealing taller frames on average, smaller breasts and hips, and thicker waists, more generally described as a “straightening of their curves.” Berlei cites poor eating habits and hormonal abnormalities from food additives as potential giorgina4explanations, but whatever the cause, “the traditional hourglass shape is no longer symbolic of today’s women.” When tasked with describing their average customer, the company states, “something rather like a thick-ended broomhandle…one might even say they’re becoming man-shaped.”

So what does this have to do with created beings like automata, cyborgs, and robots? Existing cultural views often inform the characteristics and treatment of these beings, and attitudes toward embodied human females can therefore provide insights into female technological portrayals, and vice versa. For example, a female automaton can reveal something that would perhaps not be readily apparent about the expected appearance, behavior, and roles of human women. Similarly, the body of a female cyborg can call attention to attitudes regarding female bodies and their biological processes. I aim to keep these blurred boundaries between man and machine—or perhaps more accurately, woman and machine—in mind as I continue to work through the archives.

– Giorgina Paiella

Rollin Charles Williams, UConn’s first African-American professor

Faculty and staff at UConn's School of Social Work, ca. late 1950s

The first African-American professor at the University was Dr. Rollin Charles Williams, who was served as a professor in the School of Social Work from 1957 to his retirement in 1985.

Born in 1922 in Kansas City, Missouri, Dr. Williams was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, graduating from high school as its valedictorian and solo violinist in its orchestra. He graduated from Howard University and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he earned the rank of sergeant major. He earned his master’s degree in social work from Boston University and then worked as a medical and psychiatric social worker for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Williams was the first psychiatric supervisor at Norwich State Hospital. Soon after that he was recruited by UConn to do field training for the School of Social Work, and asked to join the faculty in 1957.

Upon his retirement in 1985 Dr. Williams returned to his first love – music, particularly classical and operas. When he died in September 2012, at the age of 90, UConn President Susan Herbst wrote that he “exemplified the highest ideals of service, scholarship and integrity, and [left] a legacy that we can all strive to emulate.”

This photograph, from the late 1950s, shows Dr. Williams third from the right. The man who is third from the left is Harleigh Trecker, dean of the School of Social Work from 1951 to 1968.

Account Books and the stories they tell

lmwdbk_136.137-220x279Rich with information, account books can reveal nuanced social and economic relationships in American communities of the 18th and early 19th centuries.  Today scholars and students use accounts books to track the economic development and behavior of individuals and families and to expose the wider network of exchange of which they were a part. Once transcribed and analyzed, layers of information recorded in account books can help to answer historical questions regarding changes in standard of living, distribution of wealth, and the role of “the poor” in local, regional, and global communities, according to Kathryn Tomasek, Professor of History at Wheaton College.

Join us on Thursday, February 12, 12:30-1:30pm in the Scholars’ Collaborative, Homer Babbidge Library, Level 4 for a talk by Kathryn Tomasek, Director of the Wheaton College Digital History Project, a teaching project in which students transcribe and markup primary sources from previously hidden archival collections. History students in Tomasek’s courses have been transcribing and marking up the day book of Laban Morey Wheaton, a member of the family that founded Wheaton Female Seminary in the 1830s. In this talk, Tomasek discusses both the teaching assignments and the research that has emerged from them.  Details about this talk and others in the series can be found at Conversations in Digital Scholarship.

Harrison Fitch, the first African-American basketball player at Connecticut State College

Harrison "Honey" Fitch, the first African-American basketball player at the Connecticut State College, 1934

Harrison B. “Honey” Fitch was a basketball standout at his high school in New Haven, and in 1932 enrolled as a freshman at the Connecticut State College (the name changed later to the University of Connecticut).  He was a strong member of the CSC basketball team yet endured racism and harassment at times from the players of opposing teams, most notably in a game, on January 27, 1934, against the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London.  The Academy refused to play the game if Fitch was on the court, arguing, as Mark Roy wrote in the February 2, 2004, UConn Advance, that “because half of the Academy’s student body was from the southern states, they had a tradition ‘that no negro players be permitted to engage in contests at the Academy.'”

Fitch’s teammates threatened to leave the basketball court if he was not allowed to play, and Fitch joined them in warming up for the game, while the officials argued and delayed the start of the game for several hours.  Although the Coast Guard relented, and CSC won the game 31 to 29, the team’s coach, John Heldman, inexplicably kept Fitch on the bench the entire game.

Fitch left CSC at the end of the 1934 academic year and transferred to American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts.  He then worked in research for the Monsanto Corporation, married in 1939 and had two sons, and died in the early 1990s.  His son, Brooks Fitch, told Mark Roy that his father told him he had a good experience as a student at the CSC and was always a fan of UConn basketball.

Dr. Kate Capshaw launches new book

Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (University of Minnesota Press).

Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (University of Minnesota Press).

From Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Ph.D., Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Associate Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies:

 

On February 12, 2015 (at 4 PM) the UConn Co-op (in Storrs Center) will be hosting a book launch for Kate Capshaw’s recently published book, Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (University of Minnesota Press). What follows is a brief description of the book and a link:

Civil Rights Childhood explores the function of children’s photographic books and the image of the black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography and popular historical narratives to coffee-table and art books, Katharine Capshaw shows how the photobook-and the aspirations of childhood itself-encourage cultural transformation.  (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/civil-rights-childhood)

Katharine Capshaw

Dr. Katharine Capshaw

 

This event is sponsored and hosted by the University Co-Op. For more information, please feel free to contact Cathy Schlund-Vials (cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu<mailto:cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu>).

 

Archives in Action: Little Magazines and Artists Books

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.  

littlemags01The archives buzzed with excitement last night as Archivist Melissa Watterworth Batt led a short class on little magazines and artists books for the students who are editing and designing the 2015 issue of UConn’s literary and arts journal, the Long River Review.

The visit began with a short tour of the stacks and an overview of the archives. Students scanned the littlemags06leather- and paper-bound spines lining the shelves on the main floor as Melissa described the wide variety of materials that are housed and preserved in the archives –
books, journals, newspapers, photographs, art, ephemera – and exchanged smiles when they learned that even the UConn Basketball trophies are held in the university’s archives.  Though the students shivered in the climate-controlled stacks, they were attentive and eager to begin looking at the material that Melissa had assembled from the collection.

Melissa set up the tables in the reading room so the material was organized roughly by time period and technique.  Literary magazines from as early as 1912, comics and graphic magazines, and magazines on cassette were set up along the outside of the reading room.

littlemags03littlemags02

Examples of work from the low-budget “Mimeograph Revolution” of the 1960’s and 1970’s were grouped together next to a table of the more typical magazines of the same time.

littlemags04Another table was dedicated to the 1980’s, a time when computer printing and colored print was becoming more popular.

Still other tables held examples of beautiful, one-of-a-kind art magazines with unique methods of printing and assembling the work. These pieces challenge traditional assumptions of what it means to imagine and produce a book or magazine.

Students circulated around the tables for about an hour, pouring over the material and taking notes on their favorite pieces, design inspirations, and manifestos. Melissa guided the students through what they were looking at and was able to answer questions that arose about the time period in which a certain journal was created, the processed used in the production, the historical significance of the magazine, and more. littlemags07littlemags08

The visit to the Dodd Research Center provided the students with the opportunity to see, hold, and read some of the earliest issues of influential magazines, such as bleb and The Paris Review, as well as the opportunity to learn about publications that never quite made it to the mainstream, such as Black Box and Ker-bloom!.  As a student and the Editor-in-Chief of the 2015 Long River Review, I can speak honestly about the importance of exposure to past literary and art magazine and the boundless inspiration that comes from holding old issues in your hand.

littlemags10My classmates and I are grateful that the Dodd Research Center is able to house so many incredible pieces of literary history and grateful that we have been allowed to explore them so personally.   I am eager to see where our new thoughts take the LRR.

 

2014 Youth Media Awards Announced

Congratulations to all of the American Library Association award winners!  The 2015 Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, Feb. 2 during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Chicago.  Several of our friends won major awards.  A donor to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Weston Woods Studio, Inc., received the Andrew Carnegie Medal honoring the most outstanding video productions for children released in the previous year.  The winners are Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard, producers of Me…Jane, the adaption of Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott Honor book for 2012 about Jane Goodall.

University of Connecticut’s Professor Emerita Marilyn Nelson received the Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book Award for How I Discovered Poetry, illustrated by Hadley Hooper and published by Dial Books.  Donald Crews, who participated in the CT Children’s Book Fair in 1997, is the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author or illustrator who had made “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” (ALA.org).

Natalie Lloyd’s first novel, A Snicker of Magic, was a hit at the 2014 CT Children’s Book Fair as was Natalie herself.  The audiobook produced by Scholastic Audiobooks was awarded the Odyssey Award, for being one of the best audiobooks produced in English in the U.S.  Another Book Fair participant from 2003, Ann M. Martin, was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award for Rain Reign.  The Schneider Family honors books embodying “an artistic expression of the disability experience.” (ALA.org).

Mo Willems, another member of the NCLC and Book Fair family, won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award for his Waiting is not Easy! published by Hyperion Books for Children.  Len Vlahos presented at the Book Fair in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 William C. Morris Award, given to a first-time author writing for teens.  NCLC donor and Book Fair participant Emily Arnold McCully was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults for her work Ida M. Tarbell: the Woman who Challenged Big Business-and Won!

For a complete listing of the 2015 Youth Media Awards, visit the American Library Association’s site.  Congratulations, everyone!

 

2015 Youth Media Awards Announced

Congratulations to all of the American Library Association award winners!  The 2015 Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, Feb. 2 during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Chicago.  Several of our friends won major awards.  A donor to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Weston Woods Studio, Inc., received the Andrew Carnegie Medal honoring the most outstanding video productions for children released in the previous year.  The winners are Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard, producers of Me…Jane, the adaption of Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott Honor book for 2012 about Jane Goodall.

University of Connecticut’s Professor Emerita Marilyn Nelson received the Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book Award for How I Discovered Poetry, illustrated by Hadley Hooper and published by Dial Books.  Donald Crews, who participated in the CT Children’s Book Fair in 1997, is the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author or illustrator who had made “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” (ALA.org).

Natalie Lloyd’s first novel, A Snicker of Magic, was a hit at the 2014 CT Children’s Book Fair as was Natalie herself.  The audiobook produced by Scholastic Audiobooks was awarded the Odyssey Award, for being one of the best audiobooks produced in English in the U.S.  Another Book Fair participant from 2003, Ann M. Martin, was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award for Rain Reign.  The Schneider Family honors books embodying “an artistic expression of the disability experience.” (ALA.org).

Mo Willems, another member of the NCLC and Book Fair family, won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award for his Waiting is not Easy! published by Hyperion Books for Children.  Len Vlahos presented at the Book Fair in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 William C. Morris Award, given to a first-time author writing for teens.  NCLC donor and Book Fair participant Emily Arnold McCully was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults for her work Ida M. Tarbell: the Woman who Challenged Big Business-and Won!

For a complete listing of the 2015 Youth Media Awards, visit the American Library Association’s site.  Congratulations, everyone!

 

Alan Thacker Busby, the university’s first African-American student

Alan Thacker Busby, the university's first African-American student, 1990

In 1914 Alan Thacker Busby of Worcester, Massachusetts, enrolled at the Connecticut Agricultural College, the first African-American student to attend what would become the University of Connecticut.  He worked his way through college by milking cows, feeding hogs and cutting ice from the campus pond and was an honor student and a member of the football team his Junior year.  In 1918 became the college’s first African-American graduate. After he graduated from college he served in World War I as a member of the Army’s all-black Field Artillery Unit, which stayed in France months after the war ended. After his military service he was an Animal Husbandry professor at Bordentown Industrial School in New Jersey, Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Alcorn, Mississippi, and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Busby Suites, a dormitory on the Storrs campus, was named in his honor.

This photograph shows Prof. Busby back at the University of Connecticut, when he returned to his alma mater in Fall 1990 to act as Grand Marshall of the Homecoming Parade.