Hidden Gems in the UConn Archives, Post 2

Posted on by
Reply

Written by Jonathan Trinque, Research Services Coordinator, UConn Archives & Special Collections

The UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections holds over 1000 archival collections. Some of these collections are well known and are used all the time for research, while others may not have been accessed since they arrived at the archives. Because of this, I thought it would be fun to spotlight some collections that I have come across that seem interesting, and that researchers have not used much or simply do not know that they exist.

Here are some other collections that I have come across that piqued my interest. I hope you find them as interesting as I do, and maybe reading about them will spark your next research project!

Nonny Hogrogian Papers

Original Artwork from Nonny Hogrogian’s The Contest (1976). Nonny Hogrogian Papers, Box 1, UConn Archives & Special Collections.

Nonny Hogrogrian was a critically acclaimed Armenian American author, illustrator, and designer of children’s literature.

Hogrogian grew up in an artistic family; her parents were amateur painters, and her sister went on to become an interior designer. Hogrogian began painting at a very young age. She always had a love for folktales and fantasy, as well as poetry, which is clearly shown in her body of work. Hogrogian is known for intricate illustrations and attention to detail that capture the personalities of her various characters. She has also been attributed to bringing multiculturalism into children’s literature by incorporating her Armenian heritage into her books.

Hogrogian studied fine art at Hunter College, earning herself a B.F.A in 1953. She freelanced as a book-jacket designer for William Morrow after graduation. Hogrogian continued her studies at The New School for Social Research where she studied life drawing. While at the New School, Hogrogian learned the art of woodcutting from Antoni Frasconi. Shortly after graduating from her master’s program in 1957, Hogrogian became a production assistant at Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in 1958. At Crowell, she illustrated her first published children’s book, King of the Kerry Fair. Hogrogian eventually moved on to work for Holt & Co. as an art director. Her work at Holt earned her first Caldecott Medal in 1966 for her work with Leclaire G. Alger (also known by the pen name, Sorche Nic Leodhas) on Always Room for One More. Hogrogrian won another Caldecott in 1972 for her self-illustrated book One Fine Day, and a Caldecott Honor Award in 1977 for The Contest, a retelling of an Armenian folktale.

I wanted to spotlight this collection because Nonny’s work is extraordinary but is often overshadowed by other big names that she has collaborated with. I resonate with her love of folktales and fairytales, and the beautiful illustrations that often accompany such stories. I also found her background and how she charted her career through various educational institutions and jobs in the publishing industry to be important and inspiring for early career professionals in children’s literature trying to break into the industry.

I strongly recommend experiencing Nonny Hogrogian’s collection in-person in our reading room and giving this underutilized collection the attention it deserves.

Related Resources:

Nonny Hogrogian Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections

David Kherdian Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections

Michael Rumaker Papers

Michael Rumaker in Sausalito, 1956. Photograph by Jonathan Williams. Western Regional Archives. Asheville, North Carolina.

Michael Rumaker was an American author known for his semi-autobiographical novels that document his life as a gay man from his early life in the 1950s to his death in the 2010s.

Rumaker was born in South Philadelphia and grew up in a small town in New Jersey. He went on to attend Rider College in Trenton where he majored in journalism, but after hearing Ben Shahn’s enthusiastic praise of Black Mountain College, he applied and was accepted.

Rumaker was granted a work scholarship where he worked seven days a week in Black Mountain’s kitchens. During his time at Black Mountain College, Rumaker studied writing under the tutelage of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. Rumaker’s breakthrough work was his short story “The Truck.” He originally wrote in one of Olson’s writing classes in 1954 and sent it to Robert Creeley to be published in the Black Mountain Review. This was a very encouraging experience for Rumaker that led to his writing of three additional stories during his winter break that followed, including “Exit 3” and “The Pipe,” both of which were eventually published.

In 1955, Rumaker graduated from Black Mountain with an honors degree with Robert Duncan as his outside examiner. He was one of very few students to have graduated during the college’s final years. After graduation, Rumaker worked various jobs during the day and worked on his writings at night. He worked in Philadelphia at an advertising agency. He eventually quit and hitchhiked all the way to San Francisco where he found work as a clerk for a steamship company. He continued writing in his spare time and stayed with friends from Black Mountain. From then on, his life continued to intersect with other artists from the Beat Generation.

There is still much more to Michael Rumaker’s interesting life and career that I could not include in this already-too-long blog post. I really wanted to spotlight his collection and published works as I feel together they really capture the life of someone who was a writer and creative to his very core and was so deeply dedicated to his craft. Reading about how hard he worked for his education, going from a kid in a small town to being a well-regarded published author, was inspiring and encouraging.

There is so much untapped research potential in this extensive collection, and if my enthusiastic review of it has not persuaded you to check it out, maybe George Butterick’s words will finally sell you on it.

According to George Butterick, who began reading and collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1974, “Rumaker has proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”

Related Resources:

Michael Rumaker Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections ArchivesSpace

BMC Yearbook Biographies | Michael Rumaker

Merrill Gillespie Papers

Merrill Gillespie photograph included with student application. Western Regional Archives. Asheville, North Carolina.

This small but important collection features correspondence from Michael Rumaker to his long-time friend and former partner, Merrill Gillespie, documenting the pair’s early relationship in the mid-1950s while they both attended Black Mountain College.

Gillespie was born in Kewanee, Illinois and attended Black Mountain College from Spring 1949 – Fall 1952 pursuing his studies in music composition. He attended with composer David Tudor, artist Herb Roco, poet Marie Tavroges Stilkind, and of course Michael Rumaker. At an early age, Gillespie contracted an ear infection that made him hard of hearing for most of life. Despite this, he followed his passion for music studying under Lou Harrison during his Black Mountain College years, and David Garner during the last 25 years of his life. Over the course of his life he composed many works including several chamber works and three orchestral works.

I wanted to draw attention to this small collection because it complements Michael Rumaker’s collection and is easy to overlook. I think through the letters included in this collection you can really get a sense of each of them as individuals, their relationship with one another, and what their lives were like while attending Black Mountain College. I think these collections work together to accomplish one of the main goals of an archive; to give the fullest picture possible of an individual, the life they lived, and the context in which they existed.

Related Resources:

Merrill Gillespie Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections ArchivesSpace

BMC Yearbook Biographies | Merrill Gillespie

Merrill Gillespie Obituary | 1931 – 2017 | Daly City, CA

If any of these collections have piqued your interest, you are always welcome and encouraged to view them in-person in our reading room or by accessing them remotely through reproductions. To learn more about how to access our collections, please visit our website: https://s.uconn.edu/asc

Citations:

Photograph of Michael Rumaker in Sausalito, 1956. Photograph by Jonathan Williams. Western Regional Archives, Asheville, North Carolina. Retrieved on February 17, 2026. https://bmcyearbook.org/bio/michael-rumaker  

Photograph of Merrill Gillespie included with student application. Western Regional Archives, Asheville, North Carolina. Retrieved on February 17, 2026.  https://bmcyearbook.org/bio/merrill-gillespie  

Original Artwork from Nonny Hogrogian’s The Contest (1976). Nonny Hogrogian Papers, Box 1, University of Connecticut Library, Archives & Special Collections

The New Haven Railroad during World War II: Mexican Braceros Come to the Rescue

Posted on by
1

On January 3, 1944, 300 men from Mexico arrived in Connecticut after a journey of 3700 miles which started six days earlier in Mexico City. They were hired as Braceros, or manual labor, to work on the New Haven Railroad for a term of six months through a diplomatic collaboration between the United States and Mexico which provided needed workers for the nation’s railroads during World War II. 

Bracero workers wave at a New Haven Railroad engineer in the cab of a locomotive, 1944

The Bracero program had its origins as far back as the 1880s, when Mexican workers were recruited in building the vast network of railroads in the United States. Although later better known as a program for agricultural workers, the Bracero program was an important means to alleviate the shortage of American workers in the railroad industry. 

America’s railroads had a crucial role to play during World War II, transporting war materiel from industries that switched production to provide arms, ammunition, and other goods, to transporting soldiers to training camps and points of embarkation. Shipping slowed due to the threat of German submarines off of the U.S. east coast, thus the demand for moving oil and coal fell on the railroads. Civilian passenger service was up due to the rationing of gas for private automobiles. Just at the time the railroads needed more employees to handle this surge in service, they were left short-handed when many of their workers left for the armed forces. 

The New Haven Railroad, which provided passenger and freight service throughout southern New England, noted in their 1944 annual report that as of May 1944 over 5500 of their workers left for the armed services; that number rose to 7200 by the war’s end. Although the railroad was able to hire women to make up some of the lost workers, they relied on the Bracero program for the unskilled labor they needed to clean ash pits and fires, load coal, shovel sand, remove snow from tracks, and many other manual labor jobs. 

Beginning in Spring 1943 the Bracero program recruited over 100,000 Mexican men to work for thirty railroads throughout the United States. While most of the men were recruited for railroads in the Midwest, South and West, over the two-and-a-half-year period of the program the New Haven Railroad received approximately 1000 workers. 

The Mexican men, with an average age of 28, were dispersed among several locations in the New Haven Railroad area; in Connecticut they worked at engine houses and railyards including Cedar Hill in New Haven, East Greenwich and Guilford. The contracts drawn up between the U.S. and Mexican governments stipulated that the men would receive the same rate of pay as American workers and work a ten-hour day, six days a week.  

In an article that ran in the February 1944 issue of the railroad’s employee magazine, Along the Line, it was noted that the men were given warm clothing suitable for hard industrial work in cold climates. They were housed in a dormitory in North Haven and chefs were brought from Mexico to accommodate the men’s eating preferences. Priests were brought in for Sunday services. It was also noted that most of the men sent their pay back to their families in Mexico. 

The men were given a warm welcome by the railroad, with the acknowledgement in Along the Line that “…it takes plenty of courage voluntarily to break off home ties, to leave families three thousand miles away, in an endeavor to improve their living conditions. It was the same spirit which in earlier years guided immigrants to America and resulted in the building of our great nation. We salute our Mexican friends, as fellow employees, thank them for their cooperation in coming, and express the hope that they will enjoy their stay with us. Bien Venido, Amigos!” 

By the end of the war, with the return of almost 90% of the New Haven Railroad’s workforce from the armed forces, the contracts for the Mexican Braceros expired and the men returned home.

Please Reduce Racism at UConn: The December 3, 1987 Incident

Posted on by
Reply

The exhibit is available at Homer Babbidge Library Plaza Level, from April 2 until May 5, 2024.

An exhibit created by Edward Junhao Lim, the Business & Entrepreneurship Librarian of the UConn Library, and a member of the Association for Asian American Faculty and Staff (A3FS).

Target Practice was a comic strip published in the Daily Campus illustrated by Chris Sienko ’88 (SFA). This bigotry – depicting Asian teaching assistants as illiterate and stupid because of their accent or English language ability – reflected the sentiment in many American university campuses in the 1980s-1990s. This was published in the October 7, 1987, issue, p. 13.
The Target Practice comic strip on Asian teaching assistants sparked off a series of letters to the editor published in the October 12 & 14, 1987 issues of the Daily Campus. The Vice President of the UConn Korean Club defending Asian T.A.s, two letters suggesting that Asian T.A.s are poor in communicating in English, and even the comic artist (Sienko) defending and denying its racist intent.

December 3, 1987, was a significant marker for the Asian American movement at the University of Connecticut. Eight Asian American students boarded a bus at Belden Hall to attend an off-campus semi-formal dance at the Italian American Club in Tolland. Belden and Watson Hall sponsored the semi-formal.

The written statement to the UConn Department of Police about the bus incident by Feona Lee ’87 (CLAS, BUS) – one of the eight victims – dated December 12, 1987. She describes how the perpetrators – a group of white, drunken students, some of whom were chewing tobacco – spat on her and her friends and making racist remarks.

During the 45-minute bus ride, they were spat upon and subjected to racial slurs and physical intimidation from a group of UConn football players. Even at the dance hall, one of them continued harassing the group, including indecent exposure. The victims asked one of the Resident Advisors for help and permission to leave but were denied and asked to stay away from the troublemakers. The female victims hid in a closet until the threat of violence had seemed to pass.

This photograph published on the May 16, 1988 issue of the Hartford Advocate featured two of the eight victims of the December 3, 1987 bus incident: Marta Ho (left) and Ronald Cheung ’89 (CLAS, BUS) (center). Accompanying them is Maria Ho ’88 (CLAS) (right), sister of Marta. Both sisters played an important role in the founding of the UConn Asian American Association student group in January 1988, formed as a response to the bus incident.

The inability of both local law enforcement and university officials to address and remedy the situation led to eighteen months of struggle, protest, and examination. No one seemed willing to help at the beginning: the UConn affirmative action office could not interfere because it did not involve faculty and students; the UConn campus police claimed no responsibility since it happened off campus, and three other local police departments (Vernon, Stafford Springs, and Tolland) claimed to have no jurisdiction since the incident started on campus.

Paul Bock was the Professor Emeritus of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Connecticut. He pitched a tent on the Student Union lawn at Storrs campus and conducted a hunger strike to call attention to their demands. He obtained seven hundred signatures on a petition to bring about an investigation of the incident. He chose the window between the end of the summer session and the beginning of the fall session in August 1988 to avoid disrupting classes. This photograph by Rick Hartford was published in the Hartford Courant as an update a decade after the bus incident on May 17, 1998.

The perseverance of the victims eventually led to the identification and prosecution of only two from a group of attackers. One was suspended for one year. The other was barred from living on campus but continued to play for the UConn football team until his graduation.

This exhibit seeks to raise awareness about the incident on December 3, 1987, against Asian Americans at the UConn. This incident was a catalyst for change at UConn, leading to the establishment of the Asian American Cultural Center (AsACC), which provides resources to enhance the University’s diversity commitment through its recruitment and retention efforts, teaching, service, and outreach to the Asian American community on campus.

Through personal narratives and historical documents, the exhibition will explore this event’s origins and immediate consequences on the Asian, Asian American and broader campus communities. The day after the incident, Homer Babbidge Library was where Marta Ho told her sister Maria Ho what had happened. Maria insisted on reporting the incident to the police.

Archives Exhibition Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Black Student Sit-In at Wilbur Cross Library in 1974

Posted on by
3
Anthropology Protest, Nutmeg 1974

Please Respond Personally: Commemorating the 1974 Black Student Sit-In 

March 11th – December 13th, 2024, Schimmelpfeng Gallery, Monday – Friday, 9-4pm 

Dodd Center for Human Rights, University of Connecticut 

Exhibit Opening Event: March 28th, 3-5pm @ Archives & Special Collections, Dodd Center

Opening to the public Monday, March 11th, 2024, the UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections will mount a 50th Anniversary Exhibition commemorating the direct action taken by Black and Brown students on the Storrs campus to challenge structural racism in higher education by sitting in at the Wilbur Cross Library on April 22nd 1974.  This historic event of activism, where roughly 370 students occupied the library at varying times across 3 days, was the culminating event during a semester long campaign of student organizing to demand representation and resources for students of color at the University of Connecticut.  Through curated documents this exhibition will feature the perspectives of the student organizers, the Afro-American Cultural Center, the University and its administration to portray this campus-wide call to action which resonates to our present day.  This 50th anniversary is also an opportunity to highlight approaches to student activism and the centrality of the library as an institutional setting both for democracy and also one vulnerable to upholding systems of oppression. 

This exhibition draws from the experiences of alumni Rodney Bass (’75BA/’76MA) who read the demands during the sit-in and was co-chair of the Organization of African American Students (OAAS). The archives podcast d’Archive produced an interview with Rodney about Black student organizing in the mid-1970s on the Storrs campus which is revealing in understanding their approach to making demands upon the university for their representation in the student body.

There’s Something About an Aqua Velva Man: the J.B. Williams Company, Connecticut’s Maker of Men’s Toiletries

Posted on by
Reply

[slideshow_deploy id=’10202′]

An exhibit of historical records and items manufactured by the J.B. Williams Company, shown on the Plaza Level of Homer Babbidge Library through March 2024.

The exhibit shows photographs, advertisements, and historical documents from the J.B. Williams Company Records, but includes a special component — almost 80 collectible items manufactured by the company.

All of the collectibles shown in this display are from the collection of Boyd and Melissa Williams, residents of Franklin, Tennessee.

Melissa and Boyd Williams, 2023

About eight years ago Mr. and Mrs. Williams were in an antique store and found a J.B. Williams Company shaving soap box. Knowing nothing about the company, with no connection to Connecticut, they purchased the box on the basis that the company’s name was theirs as well. After that, they perused antique shops and Ebay for other company items and slowly amassed their collection of about 150 items, which they display in a vacation cabin they own.

The focus of the collection is solely on items that indicate that they were produced in Glastonbury, 1960 and earlier.

In June 2023 Mr. Williams contacted the UConn Archives asking for information from the J.B. Williams Company Records about their products, to supplement his knowledge of the company. When the archives staff learned about the Williams’ extraordinary collectible collection, the couple generously agreed to loan the items for this display.

About the J.B. Williams Company:

James Baker Williams was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1818 and worked at a general store in Manchester beginning at the age of 16. When he was 22 he began to experiment with soaps to determine which were best for shaving, and developed Williams’ Genuine Yankee Soap, the first manufactured soap for use in shaving mugs.

In 1847 Williams opened his soap company on Williams Street in Glastonbury, where he continued to manufacture shaving soap and other products.

By the early 1900s the company was known throughout the world for its line of shaving creams, talcum powder, toilet soaps, and, later, for Aqua Velva, Lectric Shave, and Skol. After 1950 the company, in mergers with other businesses, became known for producing Conti Castile Soap, Kreml Hair Tonic, and Kreml Shampoo.

In 1957 a New York based conglomerate, Pharmaceuticals, Inc., acquired the J.B. Williams Company and moved the headquarters to New Jersey. In 1971 the company was sold to Nabisco.

The plant in Glastonbury was taken over by former Williams Company employees and became Glastonbury Toiletries, producing shaving soaps, bathroom soaps, aerosol shaving creams, body lotions and shampoos. This company closed in 1977. The original 1847 factory was converted to condominiums and, in 1983, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The company records were donated to the UConn Archives in 1967.

In Memoriam: Norman Finkelstein

Posted on by
Reply
Norman Finkelstein

The UConn Archives is sorry to hear about the death of one of our donors, Norman H. Finkelstein, on January 5, 2024. He was an author of over 20 non-fiction books for young readers, a retired school librarian for the Brookline (Massachusetts) Public Schools and teacher of history for the Prozdor Department of Hebrew College. Among his writing honors are two National Jewish Book Awards, the Golden Kite Honor Book Award for Nonfiction and a “highly recommended” award from the Boston Author’s Club.

In an interview with Contemporary Authors published in 2011 Finkelstein remarked, “Readers often want to know what keeps me going as a writer. When I asked the late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt to share a memory of Edward R. Murrow, about whom I was writing a biography, Kuralt responded: ‘Beginners need confidence; of course, I never had the nerve to ask Murrow for advice directly, but if I had, I believe he would have said, “Become good at what you do, and everything else will take care of itself.”‘ I couldn’t have said it better myself. I would, however, add two more words, persistence and patience.” (Source: “Norman H. Finkelstein.” Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2011. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.http://gale.com/apps/doc/H1000112338/GLS?u=22516&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=2702ce1e. Accessed 9 Jan. 2024.)

Norman Finkelstein’s work as an author is preserved at the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Connecticut. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/374

In Memoriam: Laurie S. Wiseberg

Posted on by
Reply

Laurie Sheila Wiseberg, of Montreal but also of the world, passed away on October 11th, 2023, at the age of 81. Dr. Laurie S. Wiseberg was known as a human rights educator, defender, and advocate.

In 1971, Laurie and Harry began a 17-year collaboration on human rights. They created a documentation center and international network of NGOs called the Human Rights Internet (HRI). Laurie was HRI’s Executive Director from 1976 until 2000.

In 2000, Laurie left HRI and joined the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as NGO Liaison Officer for the World Conference Against Racism (Durban, South Africa, 2001). In March 2002, she took up the position of Head of the sub-office for OHCHR in Podgorica, Montenegro; and subsequently, as acting Head of Office in Belgrade, for Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo.

In April 2006 she joined a new UN inter-agency program, ProCap (Protection Capacity), intended to strengthen the capacity of UN agencies to deliver human rights protection in emergency situations. In the role of human rights advisor, Laurie worked in over 20 countries, until COVID forced her very reluctant retirement in 2018. These locations included: Kashmir, Pakistan; Darfur, Sudan; Juba, Southern Sudan; Amman, Jordan; Kathmandu, Nepal; Kabul, Afghanistan; Dili, Timor-Leste; Kotido, Uganda; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Lilongwe, Malawi; Mindanao, Philippines; Libya; Northern Iraq; Southern Turkey; the Solomon Islands; and Nigeria.

Laurie and Harry’s work for HRI has been preserved since 2004 as the Laurie S. Wiseberg and Harry Scoble Human Rights Internet Collection at the University of Connecticut Archives & Special Collections to advance human rights research, educate students, and maintain this important and relevant history of the past century.

Laurie’s final works include an unpublished memoir: A Girl from St Urbain Street – Part 1: Fleeing the Nest, and a cookbook 25 years in the making: Food from the Field: Laurie’s Cookbook, A Modest Contribution to the Struggle Against Racism.

RE:Reference Exhibit

Posted on by
Reply


May 19 – August 11, 2023
Archives & Special Collections
Dodd Center for Human Rights
Curated by Graham Stinnett, Archivist


On display is the creative work of David Sandlin (b.1956), comics artist and printmaker. His multi-volume Guggenheim Fellowship project, 76 Manifestations of American Destiny, charts a dreamlike interstellar course from the Big Bang to the present historical moment. Volume 1 of this series depicts iconic references which continuously appear throughout each volume as specters of a disembodied past. In Sandlin’s work, America’s presidents, military icons, and cultural trademarks wreak havoc on the psyche of the family (the artist’s own) caught between cultural performance and the dead weight of its umbilical living past.

Additionally on display are monographs and artist’s books drawn from Archives & Special Collections which illustrate the source material for an artists’ interpretation and the proliferation of ideas through varying degrees of enculturation in print. Featured are early printed pamphlets of President George Washington’s farewell address from 1796 (a character featured prominently in Sandlin’s 76 series), as well as other art forms like poetic interpretations of the Declaration of Independence, and children’s books relating to the science of the Big Bang, the founding fathers, and histories of the Western frontier and the myth-making they engendered. Featured across from Sandlin’s work is the Artists’ Book author Mike Taylor (b.1976) who similarly explores the current state of politics in America through the historical record of presidential speeches, congressional documents, and their foretelling of a dystopian future.

Starting in 2021, Archives & Special Collection’s acquired 76 Manifestations of American Destiny Volumes 1-4 and will add the final volumes to the collection as they are completed.

The d’Archive 50

Posted on by
Reply
Logo by Melica Stinnett

The UConn Archives & Special Collections podcast d’Archive will release it’s 50th episode on April 24th, 2023 with a live broadcast at 10am EST on 91.7fm WHUS. Beginning in August of 2017, the Archives staff began expanding its outreach program to the airwaves by training on sound engineering and radio protocols in order to effectively bring its collections to new audiences. Since then the radio program and podcast has featured weekly episodes drawing from countless collections held by the Archives & Special Collections and amplifying the expertise of over 60 collaborators ranging from past and present archives and library staff, artists, journalists, curators, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, high school students, visiting fellows and international students, activists, alumni, collectors and donors, family, and friends.

Continue reading →

Celebrate American Archives Month with Archives & Special Collections at an Open House on October 12, 2022

Posted on by
Reply

Dodd Center for Human Rights from 4:00-5:30pm

Join us for a curated celebration of American Archives Month, behind-the-scenes tours, zine-making, giveaways, refreshments, and more!  

Free and open to the public. All are welcome. 

American Archives Month gives archives around the nation the opportunity to highlight the importance of records of enduring value. At UConn Archives we believe that archives reveal by enabling people to examine and better understand the past, that archives inspire by being useful for many purposes, and that archives are for everyone! 

This is also the closing event for the exhibition Days and Nights of Prints and Punk in the Schimmelpfeng Gallery, providing your last chance to see the evolution of the punk rock scene over 4 decades. 

October 12 is also #AskAnArchivist Day. 

Archivists around the country will take to Twitter to answer your questions about any and all things archives. This day-long event, sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, will give you the opportunity to connect directly with archivists in your community—and around the country—to ask questions, get information, or just satisfy your curiosity.  No question is too silly . . . 

#AskAnArchivist Day is open to everyone—all you need is a Twitter account. To participate, just tweet a question and include the hashtag #AskAnArchivist in your tweet. Your question will be seen instantly by archivists around the country who are standing by to respond directly to you.  Have a question for a specific archives or archivist? Include their Twitter handle with your question.  

Top 10 Tips for Navigating Archival Research

Posted on by
Reply

[slideshow_deploy id=’9702′]

The process of conducting archival research can be daunting and seem confusing, especially for those who are new to working in an archive. UConn Archives & Special Collections wants to help demystify the research process by providing you with our top 10 tips for doing archival research, which should help with increasing research efficiency and productivity during your visit.  

Here are some strategies and suggestions for working in the archives from our experienced team of staff and student workers. From planning your visit, to navigating the archive, to processing your research when you are home, we hope that this information will help guide you on your research journey, wherever you may be. 

For more information on researching from home, check out this post!

Days and Nights of Print and Punk

Posted on by
Reply
Design by Melica Stinnett

Exhibition on view August 30 – October 16, 2022

Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m

Schimmelpfeng Gallery, UConn Archives & Special Collections

Virtual Zine Workshop September 29, 12:30-1:30pm

Closing Event & Archives Open House October 12th, 4 – 6 pm.

The UConn Archives & Special Collections presents Days and Nights of Print and Punk, showcasing the roughly four decades of punk rock aesthetic documented through the Alternative Press Collection. From the 1970s punk rock of bad attitudes and discontent in England and the U.S., seeds were sown to propagate a unified front of thumbed noses to the status quo. Those same attitudes of youth rebellion were reinterpreted from problems into solutions by each successive generation drawing from positive mental attitude, feminism, DIY socioeconomics, animal rights, and anti-racism. Through show flyers, riot grrrl and skate zines, t-shirts, stickers, vinyl, cassettes, and posters, the evolution of the scene has demonstrated its adaptability for youth movements from the late 1970s to the present day. This exhibition also features selections of performance photographs from the traveling exhibition Live at The Anthrax from the Joe Snow Punk Rock Collection. Joe photographed the thriving Connecticut Hardcore Punk (CTHC) scene in the late 1980s during the final years of The Anthrax club in Norwalk, CT (’86-’90).  Shot on 35mm black and white Kodak film, these images represent historical documents that bring the viewer as close to the action as possible, providing an intimacy into this subcultural space from 35 years ago.  The photographs were selected and reprinted with the intent to highlight the primacy of analog at that time as well as the aesthetics of the not-so-distant past illuminated by a sweat tinted flash bulb. 

This exhibition is drawn from the following archival collections:

Andrews Punk Rock Collection, Fly Zine Collection, Kauffman Zine Collection, King Alternative Press Collection, Noelke-Olson Button Collection, and Snow Punk Rock Collection.

This exhibition is programmed in conjunction with the William Benton Museum of Art exhibition Wild Youth: Punk and New Wave from the 1970s and 1980s running concurrently.

D-I-Y Zine Basics September 29, 12:30-1:30pm via Zoom
Zines are DIY publications that have served as modes of expression as well as communication for underrepresented subcultures and social movements, including punk. They are analog and use a collage aesthetic to combine image and text in visually engaging ways. In this virtual workshop, learn about DIY publications with Archivist Graham Stinnett and Metadata Librarian Rhonda Kauffman to get started making your own zines. Held in conjunction with the exhibitions, Days and Nights of Print and Punk at UConn Archives’ Schimmelpfeng Gallery and Wild Youth: Punk and New Wave from the 1970s and 1980s at the William Benton Museum of Art.

Suggested materials list: • 1 sheet of letter sized paper • Magazines, newspapers, stickers to collage with, preferably images with high contrast. • Glue stick or tape • Sharpie fine and ultra fine permanent markers • 1-inch and ¾ inch alphabet stickers in various colors • Patterned Washi tape

Level Up materials list: • Label maker • Plastic bone folder • Alphabet stamps w/ink pad • Long arm stapler • Typewriter • Photocopier