Acknowledgment from a Strochlitz awardee

Posted on January 5, 2015 by

Dr. Craig J. Peariso, a Strochlitz awardee from a few years ago, has had his book Radical theatrics: Put-ons, politics and the Sixties published by the University of Washington Press. Focusing on left-wing political activism of the 1960s, Dr. Peariso argues that “these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse” (jacket flap). Having done exhaustive research in the Archives’ Hoffman Family Papers, Dr. Peariso writes in his acknowledgement: “Archivists at numerous libraries have also played a key role in the completion of this work. Specifically, I would like to thank Terri Goldich and the staff at the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. Their award of a [Rose and] Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant and their assistance in navigating the Hoffman Family Papers were vital at the earliest stages of my research.” Thank you, Dr. Peariso, for confirming for us how valuable the Strochlitz grants are in support of academic research and scholarship.

Encountering the Hand, the Ephemeral, the Unexpected in the Archive

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Louis Goddard is a PhD candidate in English at University of Sussex and describes his research experience during a visit in September as recipient of a 2014 Strochlitz Travel Grant. Travel grants are awarded bi-annually to scholars to support their travel to and research in Archives and Special Collections at the University of Connecticut.

My PhD project focuses on the prose writings of the contemporary British poet J.H. Prynne. As well as at least thirty volumes of poetry, Prynne has, over the half-century course of his career, produced a wide range of prose work, including reviews, essays, lectures and commentaries. Perhaps his most favored outlet, however, has been in correspondence. The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center holds hundreds of letters written by Prynne, the vast majority to the American poets Charles Olson and Ed Dorn, making a two-week trip to the University of Connecticut a vital part of my research as I head into the second year of the PhD.

Having read quotations from the letters in a number of existing scholarly works – notably those by my supervisor at the University of Sussex, Keston Sutherland – I thought I had a fairly good idea of what to expect from the archives: letters full of clear opinions about art and poetry, both Prynne’s and other people’s – almost crib sheets for the poems themselves, though this is an attitude that Prynne himself would certainly not endorse. Many of the letters did indeed conform to my expectations; Prynne writes to Olson, in particular, in an at times shockingly direct style, revealing his profound hopes for what, in the early- to mid-1960s, he conceived as their shared poetic project, and his equally profound disappointment when Olson began to withdraw from the correspondence as the decade progressed.

Even more interesting, however, were the aspects of the letters that I hadn’t anticipated. As part of my research, I recently completed a paper on a number of ‘little magazines’ of the 1960s, looking particularly at the legacy of Gael Turnbull’s seminal Migrant (1959–60). One of the beneficiaries of this legacy was the Cambridge-based Prospect (1959–64) – no relation of the current political magazine of the same name – which Prynne edited for its much-delayed final issue in 1964. Prynne’s opening letters to Olson and Dorn are both typed on Prospect-stamped stationery, with the younger poet tentatively soliciting work to be published in the forthcoming issue. As the correspondence progresses, the reader gets a sense of the practical and financial obstacles confronting any would-be little magazine publisher in the early ’60s, and is given insight into to the decisions which led Prynne to change the format for Prospect‘s final issue, making the magazine physically larger, removing all advertisements, and ultimately giving it away for free to interested parties.

Another aspect of the letters which struck me was the frequency of comparisons between the British and North American poetry scenes at the time, and Prynne’s efforts, both poetic and practical, to bridge the Atlantic gap. Though I had visited California and Florida as a child, arriving at Storrs involved a certain amount of ‘culture-shock’ – situated near the seaside town of Brighton, Sussex barely has an on-campus supermarket, let alone a hotel, a high school and a dairy farm (though, being British, it does have the advantage of its own dedicated railway station). I can only imagine this as the reverse of what Ed Dorn must have felt when, partly as a result of Prynne’s ministrations, he was offered a teaching post at the new University of Essex in 1965, an institution whose campus was at that point only half-built.

As well as scheming to secure fellowships and teaching positions for his American correspondents, and even offering to put up visiting poets in his rooms at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, the young Prynne was active in promoting new American work to mainstream British publishers. Writing to Dorn in October 1963, having received an encouraging letter from Calder Publishing about Dorn’s novel The Rites of Passage, Prynne jokes about ‘the lit. agency which I seem (& am more than pleased, as you know) to be running.’ Dorn, for his part, was skeptical – as he more or less correctly predicted in a note to Olson the previous month, ‘Prynne writes from england that he sent the novel to John Calder and go [sic] back a very favorable letter. But I’m not that dumb that I don’t dig that in 3 months I’ll get a letter from him saying they almost took it.’ When further efforts were made to place the novel with André Deutsch, not only was it again rejected, but the typescript was lost in the post, setting off a chain of increasingly irate letters from Prynne to Diana Athill.

The letter from Dorn to Olson quoted above is part of a collection that I hadn’t originally planned to consult when applying to visit the Dodd Center, but which turned out to be one of the most fruitful aspects of the trip. Having spent some time mastering the two poets’ near-impenetrable handwriting, it was fascinating to switch from letters by Prynne to letters about him, revealing a certain ambivalence in both Olson’s and Dorn’s attitudes to the reception of their work in Britain. Similarly instructive were references to Donald Davie, the British poet formerly associated with ‘the Movement’ who played a crucial role in supporting Prynne’s early academic career and served as head of the Literature Department at Essex when Dorn first came to England. In one particularly opaque letter to Olson, Dorn shifts from an assessment of Davie – often referred to, tellingly, by his initials, ‘D.A.D.’ – to the following ambiguous statement: ‘I can’t but think of the English interest in our things other than interesting, and for myself unseful [sic], because I need to think there with them.’ Whether he meant to type ‘useful’ or ‘unuseful’ is difficult to determine, even in context.

When reading correspondence fifty or more years down the line, short notes and other apparent ephemera often turn out to be more interesting than long, deliberate letters. This was certainly the case with the letters from Helene Dorn (née Buck), Ed Dorn’s first wife. In her letters to Olson, I came across a pressed rose picked not far from where I grew up in East Anglia, carried across the Atlantic, then posted to Olson’s house at 28 Fort Square, Gloucester, MA. Dorn’s two-way correspondence with Valarie Raworth, meanwhile, could have served as the basis for an entire PhD thesis on the unenviable position of ‘poet’s wife’ in a ’60s artistic scene no less patriarchal for its avant-garde credentials. Dorn often writes to Raworth with a real weariness about her day-to-day tasks, typing up her husband’s work from near-illegible manuscripts while simultaneously looking after the children and keeping their house in Pocatello, Idaho.

During my time in Storrs, I was lucky enough to stay at the Altnaveigh Inn, where there were few such household obligations to distract me – dating from 1734, the inn is known locally for hosting Olson while he taught a course at the university in the autumn of 1969. Writing this account back in London, I could wish for at least another two weeks at UConn, exploring letters from the less famous members of the Dorn-Olson correspondence nexus. But as Lytle Shaw of New York University pointed out when I met him briefly at the Dodd Center, working in archives is a bit like shopping – even if you arrive with a fixed plan, you’re as likely as not to leave with something completely unexpected.

– Louis Goddard

Janet Lawler’s final post: It’s all about story.

Posted on December 1, 2014 by

IT’S ALL ABOUT STORY

When I began my research on the relationship between text and art in picture books, I was hoping to uncover the “secrets” of some of the author/illustrators whose work is housed in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection archives. I studied a number of different collections, and I am leaving with many ideas of how to improve my craft. My writing process will now include consistent creation of picture book mock-ups (dummies), and I have a greater understanding of specific approaches to writing text that “leaves room” for an illustrator.

Interestingly, though, I conclude my research with one overriding thought. The very best picture books—whether written by an author and illustrated by someone else, or created by an author/illustrator—have at their heart a good story. So authors and author/illustrators have equal opportunity to begin their creative picture book journeys in the same place – at the deep well of great stories we each have within us, stories about memorable characters who change as they solve problems or encounter conflict.

Revising text plays an important role in refining such stories (although the author/illustrator also revises art to strengthen his or her work). But always, it is the story that is the starting point. I will share a fine example:

WINGS: A TALE OF TWO CHICKENSby James Marshall

The kernel of this story appears to have been James Marshall’s vision of an old, hungry fox trying to outwit foolish fowl to find a meal. A preliminary sketch shows the disguised fox tricking a chicken into a bag.

When two silly geese sisters offer to help transport the heavy bag, the fox says, “This is too good to be true.”

An incomplete, early dummy of this story line shows a “chicken crossing” sign and a fox hiding behind a tree:

The text on this opening page reads:

At a spot where chickens were

frequently known to cross the road,

a hungry fox came to stand and wait.

As he was no longer young

and agile, he had learned

to rely more heavily on his wits.

And for this occasion, he had come

in disguise.

The focus on the fox as protagonist continues in this version of the story, where we see the fox waiting in his chicken disguise:

However, it appears that James Marshall soon decided he could tell a better story from another angle (the incomplete dummy ends on page 6).

The first complete dummy reveals that the plot has taken a very different turn. Marshall completely switches the beginning to focus on two chickens who are close friends (maybe the two silly goose sisters in his preliminary sketches inspired this turn); the fox still plays a key role, but he is no longer a protagonist.

The title of the book, shown on this hand-drawn dummy cover, is:

WINGS

A TALE OF TWO CHICKENS

Two chickens, with parasols, stand side by side at the edge of a precipice, and a fox hides in bushes in the background. The reader immediately knows this is a story of friendship and danger, and the first line of the dummy introduces Edna and Winnie (Harriet and Winnie in the published version) who are “as different as two chickens could possibly be.”

The first page in the published book shows the two good friends sharing tea:

Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens (New York: Viking Kestrel, 3. Photo taken from CLC C38, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Edna (Harriet) loves reading and hobbies. Winnie would “rather swat flies than read” and is easily bored. Marshall sets up this pair of friends immediately, and when the disguised fox appears and offers foolish Winnie a ride in a hot air balloon, Edna (Harriet) fears for Winnie’s safety. A whole series of events follows, with the dastardly fox ultimately outwitted by Harriet, disguised as a fox. The plot twists and understated text are hilarious, and readers cheer for the friends right up until the closing page, when Harriet tucks Winnie into bed.

Marshall revised and refined his text zealously—on the top of the cover of his Sept. ‘85 draft (see above) there is a parenthetical note he wrote to himself in blue pen, “too wordy.” The following pages are replete with red pencil cross outs and revisions, to pare the text of this story. For example:

Marshall clearly thought about pacing and forward movement as he revised. The above page 5 has a crossed-out, bracketed note he wrote to himself: [Some lead in here for story?]. He created that lead-in by penciling in the line spoken by Winnie just before the hot air balloon floats into the garden:

“I wish something wild would happen,” said Winnie.

And the story takes off from there. James Marshall continued to revise his text to strengthen his story and characters throughout that first complete dummy, a second dummy, a final dummy, and various pages of text revised within some of his sketchbooks.

As for character growth? Winnie is at last reading a book— about foxes. She exclaims, “Mr. Johnson was a fox!” Meanwhile, Harriet hasn’t given up on her friend. “Maybe there’s hope for her yet,” said Harriet.

Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens (New York: Viking Kestrel, 32. Photo taken from CLC C38, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

INSPIRATION

I am concluding my research at the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection greatly inspired. For several months, I have been working on a picture book, Chipmunk and Robin, about two close friends who are very different. As I polish and revise this story, I will draw on my new knowledge of how some of the best picture book story tellers (who happen to also be illustrators) craft character, crisis, and resolution into a full and satisfying story arc. Even though it will be a lot of work, the real secret is—it will be a lot of fun!

Louise Menzies: Time to Think Like a Mountain

Posted on October 13, 2014 by

Louise Menzies, a New Zealand artist, has returned to Archives & Special Collections to explore the extensive holdings in the Alternative Press Collection, with the help of curators Graham Stinnett, Melissa Watterworth Batt, and Kristin Eshelman. Ms. Menzies’ new exhibition is a “series of new photographic and paper-based works that merge form and content, raising subtle questions about the values inhabiting certain processes and styles, as seen [in] the predominantly activist and underground press material that comprise the collection.” (Professor Barry Rosenberg). Ms. Menzies will also present a 16mm film from 2013, entitled The Press, Kodak Eastman 5222.

Ms. Menzies gave a gallery talk on Time to Think Like a Mountain on Wednesday, Oct. 8 to an appreciative audience in the Contemporary Art Galleries, Art Building. The exhibition will run through November 21, 2014, For more information contact Professor Rosenberg at 860.486.1511.

Janet Lawler’s Blog Post 2: Looking at Layers

Posted on September 26, 2014 by

Looking at Layers

A picture book starts with a great story told in words (and in the sound of words read out loud). Illustrations accompany the author’s story. In the best picture books, the illustrations actually expand the story. The adult reader, as well as the child listening, feast visually on these layers that enrich the text in delightful and often unexpected ways.

As a picture book author, I focus my drafting and revision efforts on the story I want to tell. An illustrator’s considerable contribution to the final product most often comes long after I am done with my personal revision process (and any revisions guided by an acquiring editor). The publisher’s editor and art director usually select, guide, and supervise the artist. So the illustrator’s role seems a bit remote to me as I ply my craft. But remembering that layers can and should be added via art will help me create opportunities for an illustrator to deepen and expand my stories.

As I study the NCLC author/illustrator archives, I am examining the layering of art in picture books created by author/illustrators, whose creative talents allow them to tackle the words and art together. Author/illustrators don’t forget to leave room for layers—they create them as the picture book progresses in a unified way. They revise both words and illustrations to create balance and get it “just right.”

What does one find in the layers added to a picture book by illustration? Here are some thoughts, based on examples from author/illustrator archival material.

Emotion

Anita Riggio writes and illustrates from the heart. Emotion is the starting point for her wonderful stories. In Smack Dab in the Middle, Rosie Roselli is “smack dab in the middle” of her large, busy Italian family. Her many joyful accomplishments at school are ignored when she tries to share them at home, and she starts to wonder if maybe she isn’t the center of her loving family universe after all.

As I reviewed Anita’s process for Smack Dab in the Middle, I studied the text and illustrations on each spread, comparing what each separately communicates to readers. A particularly touching spread contains these words on page 20:

Rosie Roselli

really needed a hug.

She needed a hug

right this minute,

but her mother’s arms

were full of Rosie’s sister.

Rosie Roselli couldn’t wait.

She stepped up close.

She breathed in.

Talcum powder

and lavender water.

It smelled like a hug.

But it didn’t feel

like one.

Then and there,

Rosie Roselli decided

just want she

must do.

Anita’s evocative words tell us of Rosie’s need; they give the reader an expanded sense of story by dwelling on the scents (which can’t be illustrated) that she associates with her mother.

The related illustration (see below) shows Rosie’s mom’s back turned; she is attending to Rosie’s sister. Rosie’s head is bowed, her eyes are closed. The text doesn’t say, “Rosie felt disappointed, ignored, and rejected.” Those emotions are flowing from the illustration, creating a strong emotional layer to add to and support the text. (Even Anita’s placement of text and art emphasize Rosie’s loneliness here; the text snakes down the left page of this spread; there is empty space continuing onto the right page, where mom is facing away, almost out of the picture at the far right margin.)

Riggio, Anita. Smack Dab In the Middle! (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2002), 21. Photo taken from CLDC776, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Plot expansion

Sometimes, illustrations take readers to places not even mentioned in the text. In Mabel the Tooth Fairy and How She Got Her Job, Katie Davis had some ideas about what might happen to a tooth fairy who works in the dark. The starting point for such an opportunity (to take the reader places) is text that is spare and full of possibilities. Here are three variations of a line of text Katie entertained (the third is final text):

After a few false starts, Mabel was considered an expert in the field.

After a few false starts, Mabel got to really like her work.

Working in the dark presented its own challenges.

All text versions support the three scenes shown below, although the final version perhaps is the funniest, with its spare understatement. The illustrations show the tooth fairy being accosted by the household mutt, slipping and falling on spilled “marbles,” and making noise by stepping on a toy horn.

The pictures transport the reader; the text does not say, “The dog of the house attacked me. I stumbled over a jar of spilled eyeballs…” Another whole layer of action/plot (with humor—the marble jar reads, “Slimy Eyeball Game”) has been added to the story through these illustrations.

Davis, Katie. Mabel the Tooth Fairy and How She Got Her Job (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2003), 16. Photo taken from CLCD1438, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Humor

Author/illustrator Tomie dePaola also shares humor via his illustrations. His creative process for Strega Nona Meets Her Match began with a handwritten story accompanied by parenthetical notes to his editor. In this picture book, Big Anthony (Strega Nona’s loyal lunk of an assistant) “defects” to work for the competition, Strega Amelia. When Strega Amelia is away and Big Anthony is left in charge, he messes up the magic big time. Tomie’s earliest draft includes pertinent text (italicized) as well as his illustration ideas set forth in parentheses:

Big Anthony was in charge! (Series of pictures showing Big Anthony reading instructions and making big mistakes on the Husband and Wife wheel – mismatched couples – confusing wart cream and hair restorer – hair falls out, warts increase.)

Things weren’t going too well. (Source:Tomie dePaola Papers Box 41:125K).

Tomie then created illustrations (see below example of mixing up wart cream and hair restorer) to develop the humor of Big Anthony’s bumbling efforts.

What is interesting, however, is that Tomie’s editor suggested adding text to provide more at this point in the story, explaining that “for read aloud purposes it was important to have a few words.” (Source: Letter from Margaret Frith, Tomie dePaola Papers: Box 41:125L). Ultimately, the spare text was revised as suggested, and lengthened to:

Big Anthony smiled. He was in charge.

The first day he ran the husband and wife machine backwards.

The second day he confused the wart cream with the hair restorer.

Things weren’t going well.

As an author, I suspect that this lengthier text is where I would start my writing process for the same story action. How else would a reader know of the funny mishaps I envision? One possibility would be to include brief illustration suggestions to go with spare text. However, unlike an author/illustrator, who can write such notes to him or herself or to the editor (as Tomie did), an author must tread carefully when making suggestions for art so as not to be directing or limiting the illustrator’s creativity.

The right balance of text and art is achieved on pages 21–23 of the published book (see below). The complexity of Tomie’s illustration panels benefit from the added text that helps communicate his intent and humor regarding Big Anthony’s bumbling. The added text also nicely paces the story, allowing the reader to dwell on these silly mishaps.

[text: Big Anthony smiled. He was in charge.]

[text: The first day he ran the husband-and-wife machine backward.]

[text: The second day he confused the wart cream with the hair restorer.]

dePaola, Tomie. Strega Nona Meets Her Match (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993), 21–23. Photo taken from CLDC776, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Authors as well as author/illustrators must be mindful that there is a balance to be found between the read-aloud component and the illustrations in a picture book. However, an author who writes minimal text (even though he or she has a vision for what an illustrator might add) may run the risk of creating a manuscript that seems too slight or unclear to an editor, or perhaps, to young readers who may need some words to decode illustrations.

Conclusion

As I write and revise stories, I’ll keep thinking about layers. I’ll remember that my words need not dwell on emotions that an artist can convey with illustrations. I will deepen stories by words that can’t be shown in the art. I’ll choose words that may give an illustrator opportunities to take my protagonist to places (literally) other than those I may have had in mind. And if I am writing “funny,” I’ll strive for spare text that will encourage a clever artist to add visual jokes and hyperbole. I shall have trust to let an illustrator help tell my story—so that “our” story will marry text and art in a truly memorable picture book.

About Janet Lawler:

A recipient of a 2014 Billie M. Levy Research grant, Janet Lawler of Farmington, CT, is studying the relationship between art and text in picture books at the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Through studying the work and process of author-illustrators, she hopes to better understand how a story’s text interfaces with the art. She is searching for a deeper comprehension of why the best picture books are those where the final product is “greater” than the sum of the parts (text + illustrations). She looks forward to applying knowledge gleaned from her research to her own work process as a children’s author.

Ms. Lawler’s picture books have been published by major and specialty publishers. Two have been Children’s Book of the Month Club main selections, and two have been licensed into the Scholastic Book Clubs. If Kisses Were Colors has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, and Korean. Her recent credits include Ocean Counting (National Geographic, 2013 (named a 2014 Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association)) and Love Is Real (HarperCollins, 2014). National Geographic will publish Rain Forest Colors in November of 2014.

Meet Janet Lawler, Levy Research Grant Recipient

Posted on August 27, 2014 by

Blog Post 1: Author-Illustrators

As a writer, I confess to a long-held jealousy of the author/illustrator who gets to “play” with both parts of the picture book package, from idea through publication. I somehow had the idea (prejudice?) that creating a picture book is easier for these multi-talented people because they can “see” the whole project; the story (and related art) must just flow for them. I suspected that their process would not include the painstaking attention that I give to every word, and to every one of multiple variations of a story.

Although I have had several well-received picture books published, I continue to strive to improve my craft. I decided that a study of the process of author/illustrators might well help me better understand the magical interface of text and art that occurs in the best picture books. I hope my research helps improve my skill as a picture book writer, even if unlocking the secrets of author/illustrators can’t turn me into an artist.

Because I mostly write for the very young, I started my research with archival material of author/illustrator Katie Davis, who also writes for this audience. While I have only completed a review of two of her picture books, Kindergarten Rocks! and I Hate to Go to Bed!, I have already learned so much. And I have totally discarded my assumptions and prejudices.

Katie’s author/illustrator process is meticulous and time-consuming. For I Hate to Go to Bed! I studied twenty-seven dummies that Katie created. Each one included text revisions and illustration revisions, as she tweaked her story in major and minor ways. It appeared that many of these versions were done as part of her creative process before she came to the point where she was satisfied and ready to show a dummy to an editor. (I hope to interview Katie, to confirm this and ask other questions).

I now think that the author/illustrator’s job of writing a story may even be harder than mine because he or she thinks visually and can see so many possibilities.

Text and illustration revision of I Hate to Go to Bed! by Katie Davis

As a representative sample, here are several text revisions Katie played with for the opening spread of this book:

I hate to go to bed! This is because I’m a very outgoing person and I can’t stand the idea that I’m missing something. And I just know I’m missing something really fantastic.

I hate to go to bed. This is because I’m a very fun person and I can’t stand the idea that I’m missing something fun. And when I’m sent to bed, I just know I’m missing something really fantastic.

I hate to go to bed! My mama and daddy absolutely swear nothing good is happening and that I won’t miss anything but I’m not too sure.

I hate to go to bed! This is because I’m a very fun person and I just know I’m missing something really fantastic.

I hate to go to bed! Because I just know I’m missing something really fantastic.

I HATE to go to bed! I just KNOW I’m missing something.

I HATE to go to bed! I just know I’m missing something!

A study of the illustrations in these many dummies reveals a similar “visual” revision process. All of the dummies show a frowning little girl (Katie captured her protagonist immediately). Some of the earliest dummies show “thought bubbles” of her parents partying after she is asleep. Others show her room with piles of toilet paper rolls (from which she later makes binoculars for spying). In some, her matching fowl (ducks/chicks?) slippers are quipping back and forth.

Here are three examples of Katie’s many illustrations drawn for the opening spread of I Hate to Go to Bed! Click on each image to enlarge.

Opening spread of I Hate to Go to Bed!, 1st dummy in Box 4: Folder 15 of Katie Davis Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.

A later version, with simplified text:

Opening spread of I Hate to Go to Bed!, 2nd dummy in Box 4: Folder 18 of Katie Davis Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.

And the final opening spread found in the published book:

Davis, Katie. I Hate to Go to Bed! (New York: Harcourt Children’s Books, 1999), 4-5. Photo taken from : CLDC1438, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries

The study of both text and illustrations reveals that Katie kept working the text and art, paring both to their essence. Her final version of the first spread immediately grabs a reader and sets the stage for the storyline to play out in a well-paced way over the rest of the book.

The frowning face of the determined protagonist remains almost identical throughout all versions of the first spread. Ultimately, that face, along with twelve words in two short sentences, clearly share her BIG problem with the reader.

Throughout the many variations of the remaining storyline, Katie explores different approaches, both with art and text, to reveal how her protagonist tackles and solves her dilemma. All versions include varied layers of meaning and humor. Sometimes, the same words, illustrated in different ways, change the plot and the story’s pacing.

How will what I’ve studied so far change my own process as an author?

I plan to slow my process down to focus more clearly on my story’s essence. I will try to pare text to get to the universal—the situation, emotion, or problem that every kid can relate to in my writing.

I hope slowing down will help me to imagine different ways the story arc might play out around the universal theme. I shall play “what if?” and “why not?” with my words in a way that will let an illustrator fill in blanks. I will strive to be less wedded to the “first” story I write; there may be other words or plot angles that offer more opportunities for an illustrator.

If I am to truly leave room for an illustrator, I need to focus even more on making every single word musical and meaningful.

Writers should make dummies as part of their process

To accomplish all of the above, or to strive to do so, I plan to create a dummy (for the text) for every story I write. I have done this with some of my manuscripts, but not all, since I have developed a good sense of story arc and appropriate length for a 32-page picture book. However, I believe parsing the text of each story I write, and placing it on the pages, will further improve my craft by encouraging me to 1) better examine what words belong on each page/spread, 2) consider whether my words allow for expansion of my story through different actions/illustrations, 3) improve forward plot motion and page turns,4) evaluate alternate story possibilities and pacing, and, just perhaps, 5) “see” more clearly how a better story might be told.

I can’t wait to start! And I can’t wait to continue my research!

Exploring Bolivian political culture in the years between the War of the Pacific & the Federal War of 1899 in newspapers

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Marisol Ramos

[This summer, we at the Archives and Special Collections department at the Dodd Research Center had the pleasure to welcome Forrest Hylton, PhD, one of our Strochlitz Travel Grant awardee of this year, who came to us to do some research for his coming book, Reverberations of Insurgency: Indian Communities, the Federal War of 1899, and the Regeneration of Bolivia. Below is his essay recounting his experience working with a selection of Bolivian newspapers that are part of the Latin American Newspapers Collection. Enjoy, Marisol Ramos, Subject Librarian and Curator of the Latina/o, Latin American and Caribbean Collections]

A Bolivian newspapers from Sucre (1884)

It is always a pleasure to work in the Archives and Special Collections of a research library, and thanks to a Strochlitz Travel Grant, I came to the Dodd Center to use the Latin American newspapers collection, which is particularly strong for Bolivia in the nineteenth century. The research I did in the course of several days will allow me to analyze key features of Bolivian political culture in the years between the War of the Pacific and the Federal War of 1899 for the first chapter of a book manuscript entitled Reverberations of Insurgency: Indian Communities, the Federal War of 1899, and the Regeneration of Bolivia.

The manuscript examines sovereignty, political representation, and property rights, as well as processes of racial-ethnic and state formation, and highlights indigenous forms of organization and mobilization that combined elements from pre-colonial, late-colonial, and republican political cultures. I argue for the role that politics played in defining collective self and other, and thus for its centrality to the construction of ethnic and racial identities in late-nineteenth-century Bolivia. In the Federal War of 1899, modes of indigenous sovereignty and political representation that had been forged in anti-colonial insurrections of the late eighteenth century resurfaced with dramatic force, and victorious Liberals tarred them with the epithet of “race war.” These were non-liberal, but not separatist or ethnocidal movements, which aspired to hegemony at the sub-national level. Non-indigenous groups would be subject to indigenous authority, at least in the countryside where nine of ten Bolivians lived. Yet indigenous insurgents were firmly allied with Liberal federalists. I have used judicial sources from Bolivia to understand these aspects of indigenous insurgency.

I came to Storrs to look at Bolivian newspapers from the 1880s and 90s to develop a clearer picture of the Liberal Party, in its own words and in the provinces, as well as the Conservative response to Liberal initiatives, proposals, and candidates. The Latin American newspaper collection at the Dodd Center has a number of papers, such as El Artesano Liberal, El Artesano, La Democracia, Ecos Liberales, Ecos Federales, Ecos de Aroma, El Liberal, and El Imparcial, that explicitly identified themselves as organs of the Liberal Party in Sucre, Potosí, and Oruro, as well as La Paz, and these papers—many of them produced by and for artisans—carried extensive coverage of elections of 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1896 and the fraud, intimidation, and violence that went with them, in country seats as well as provincial capitals. This coverage helps us see why the Liberal Party revolted against Conservative rule in 1899, since the electoral path to power was blocked by Conservative political monopoly, which also favored Conservative business interests in land and commerce. It also allows me to reconstruct the political and journalistic careers of leading creole figures in the Federal War, Conservative as well as Liberal, such Severo Fernández Alonso, José Manuel Pando, Ismael Montes, Fernando Guachalla, Adolfo Mier, and Claudio Quintín Barrios, and focal points of Liberal organizing in the provinces, such as Sicasica, Colquechaca, and Corocoro.

One of the remarkable things about Liberal newspapers is their interest in and coverage of local electoral efforts, particularly in Sicasica and Luribay, the area south of La Paz where the most important leaders of the Federal War emerged on the creole as well as the indigenous side. I had hoped to find news of local indigenous uprisings connected to Liberal electoral campaigns, particularly in Sicasica, but it appears that indigenous communities were largely absent from official debate and discussion among Liberals and Conservatives during the 1880s and 90s. The two articles I found in the Liberal press that mention indigenous uprisings (or the threat of them) condemned them as a threat to property rights and propertied persons, which suggests that Liberals had not seriously considered mobilizing indigenous communities until the late 1890s, even though there were local-level indigenous revolts beginning in the late 1880s.

I had expected to find evidence of Liberals and indigenous communities working together against Conservatives at least since the late 1880s, but it now looks as though indigenous activism against the privatization of community lands and Liberal opposition to Conservative political monopoly operated on largely separate tracks, with little overlap before 1896. Thus it is possible to see the Federal War of 1899 as the result of a general crisis of sovereignty, in which the convergence between indigenous movements for self-government in the countryside and the Liberal opposition based in provincial capitals and county seats—a temporary marriage of convenience—changed the country’s political geography decisively. The short-lived nature of the convergence, in turn, makes it easier to understand why Liberals turned on their erstwhile indigenous community allies immediately after coming to power.

Curator, Marisol Ramos showing Strochlitz Travel Grant awardee Forest Hylton a Bolivian newspaper

The Dodd Center’s collection is essential for anyone wishing to understand creole and mestizo political culture of urban centers in nineteenth-century Bolivia, and though they fell beyond the scope of my own research on the 1880s and 90s, I found numerous papers from the 1860s and 70s, as well as the 1830s. What makes the collection particularly remarkable is its variety and diversity, for it contains materials from provincial capitals that have not, to the best of my knowledge, been preserved in Bolivia itself. I am grateful to have had a chance to look at the Dodd Center’s impressive collection, however briefly, and hope to return in the future.

Forrest Hylton, PhD, was a Lecturer in History & Literature at Harvard University in 2013-14, and beginning in 2014-15, he will be a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University.

Ed Young donates extensive archives to Northeast Children’s Literature Collection

Posted on August 12, 2014 by

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Archives & Special Collections is proud to announce that Ed Young, the multi-award winning author and illustrator of children’s books, has donated his extensive collection of artwork, sketches, scrolls, storyboards, color studies and other archival materials to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Mr. Young was born in Tientsin, China, lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and moved to the United States in 1951 to study architecture. He graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and taught at the Pratt Institute, Yale University, Naropa Institute, and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The awards and accolades for his books are too numerous to list but include the Caldecott Medal for Lon Po Po (1989) and Caldecott Honors for The Emperor and the Kite (1967) and Seven Blind Mice (1992). His books have been named to the ALA Notable Books list seven times, have been awarded the AIGA Award: The Fifty Most Beautiful Books of the Year ten times, and have received three Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Awards. Mr. Young was also nominated in 1992 and 2000 as the U.S. representative to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award, for “works that have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature.” Some of Mr. Young’s best-known and most-loved books are derived from Chinese folktales and include The Sons of the Dragon King (2004); Monkey King (2001); The Lost Horse (1998); Mouse Match (1997); Night Visitors (1997); Little Plum (1994); Red Thread (1993); Seven Blind Mice (1992); The Voice of the Great Bell (1989); The Eyes of the Dragon (1986); Yeh Shen (1982); White Wave (1979); Cricket Boy (1977), and 8000 Stones (1971).

The Ed Young Papers have been on deposit in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection for approximately eighteen years. His artwork travels extensively around the world for exhibitions, including many museums in this country as well as the European Union. Mr. Young employs various media such as collage, watercolor and pastel, making his collection a treasure trove for researchers in the fine arts. The finding aid for the Ed Young Papers provides information on the more than ninety books’ worth of archival materials. Mr. Young now lives in Westchester County, New York, with his family and a cat. More information on Ed Young is available at http://edyoungart.com/. The Northeast Children’s Literature Collection holds a substantial collection of materials pertaining to children’s literature and is very grateful for this extremely important addition.

Thank you, Mr. Young!

Mapping and Understanding the Emergence of the Underground

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Sean Cashbaugh, a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas Austin and recipient of a 2014 Strochlitz Travel Grant, visited in March to conduct research for his dissertation currently titled A Cultural History Beneath the Left: Politics, Art, and the Emergence of the Underground During the Cold War. “This notion of the underground constituted a distinct political and aesthetic imaginary parallel to, but distinct from, groups like the Beats and movements like the Counterculture and the New Left,” according to Mr. Cashbaugh. Travel Grants are awarded bi-annually to scholars and students to support travel to and research in Archives and Special Collections. The following essay was contributed by Mr. Cashbaugh.

In his short story “The Piano Player,” poet, novelist, publisher, and musician Ed Sanders recounts the life of Samuel Gortz, an idiosyncratic musical genius living in New York City’s Lower East Side during the early 1960s. As Sanders writes, “His piano played such incredible melody lines that sometimes tears were the only response. He was a textbook example of a genius in America who shat upon convention, sell-out, compromise, acceptance.”[1] Sanders’s story is an ode to this pianist’s talents and his refusal to work and live on anyone’s terms but his own, but it is also an elegy. An impoverished musician, one living amongst a community of poor artists, he and any trace of his works disappeared: a leaky roof and a greedy landlord eager to evict an unpaying tenant destroyed his compositions; Gortz vanished. Even the building where he lived, an apartment at 13^th street and Avenue C, is gone, razed, likely in the name of “developing” the always changing cityscape.

Though the Gortz Sanders recounts likely never existed, he may as well have. Sanders’s story is a call to remember all those creative figures working in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a period his novel Tales of Beatnik Glory (1975) recreates in glorious, and at times hilarious, detail.[2] It is a scholarly commonplace that New York City at this time was home to a flurry of political and artistic movements that left a lasting impression on twentieth century American culture. Of course, this was not strictly a New York phenomenon: this was happening all across the United States, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, and in Chicago, to name only a few urban bases of wildly creative political and artistic practice. Continue reading →

Tracking Down the Goods sold on Main Street USA

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Laura Smith

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Kirin J. Makker is an Assistant Professor of Architectural Studies at Hobart William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, and the recipient of a 2014 Strochlitz Travel Grant. Travel Grants are awarded bi-annually to scholars and students to support their travel to and research in Archives and Special Collections. Part of the following essay also draws on materials at Winterthur Library, where this year Dr. Makker is also being supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities residential fellowship. To learn more about the book she is working on, please go here.

I went to Archives & Special Collections of the University of Connecticut Libraries to spend a couple of days sifting through the records of the E. Ingraham Company. I’m working on a book about the history of small town development when it boomed around 1900 and a major part of my research methodology involves following the trail of company goods right at the moment big capitalism really spread its wings (see blog The Myths of Main Street). My hope is to track where a handful of companies sold their goods in order to describe a product’s national distribution, and hence its availability across small town America. I have found, and my research will argue, that one of the reasons that small town America is such a consistent idea in the nation’s cultural language is that the goods exchanged there had both local and national parameters. Some of this research has had to do with companies that literally produced small town America: the storefronts, the brick-making machinery, the lamp posts. But other parts of the research is about the everyday objects that were sold in small towns, and how most of them during the period of small town America’s boom were not made locally or even regionally. The retailers were locals, but the items for sale on Main Street were typically sourced from manufactories or large distributors in cities.

For example, a $2 watch made by the E. Ingraham Company in 1898 was made in Bristol, Connecticut but was sold on several thousand Main Streets all across America in general stores or small jewelry shops. Ingraham was after the mass market that the very successful company Robert H. Ingersoll had been selling to. Ingersoll had shrewdly introduced a $1 pocket watch, the “Yankee,” in 1892, stumbling into an enormous mass market of working- and middle-class consumers interested in owning timepieces they could afford.

Although Ingraham couldn’t make a quality watch for that little (the Ingersoll watches, not surprisingly, were cheap but not known for quality), they did start making a $2 watch by 1900 and these sold quite well, judging by how long they produced this watch (until the 1950s). Yet, when I dug around the Ingraham Company archives in Archives & Special Collections, I had some trouble finding records to support their efforts to take a share of the Ingersoll Yankee’s market.

As I said, I set out to spend all my time on the Ingraham Clock Company archive. However, it turned out that what I was really hoping to find within my time period (1870-1930, Main Street’s ‘boom period,’ so to speak), wasn’t so easy to cull. I had set out to identify names and locations of retailers who ordered Ingraham watches for their shops on Main Streets in towns all over the country. Or possibly find advertising by the company that included testimonials from retailers in small towns. I have found these types of testimonials for Elgin watches of the period, so I was hopeful. However, most of the Ingraham Company’s order records in Archives & Special Collections show sales to large distributors in cities. In addition, most of the records in the collection were from the 1940s and 50s (just the luck of what records survived, unfortunately). I did find contract letters with Sears from the 1930s, in which the mega-retailer agreed to uniquely market Ingraham watches in their stores and catalogs. But I needed letters with Sears or Montgomery Ward from around 1905 or more information about the distributors who bought $2 watches in large volume and then re-sold them in small batches to shopowners in the nation’s towns. That information may or may not be available in any archives, so in the end, the Ingraham $2 pocket watch story might not make it into the book.

However, as typically happens for me, as soon as I turn my attention away from one enticing collection, I find myself in the midst of a host of material that suits some other aspect of the book research. (Nothing, I tell you, NOTHING beats the fun of serendipity in the archives!)

What did I find? A glorious collection of ephemera and sales records for the E.E. Dickinson Witch Hazel Company of Essex, Connecticut. One of the chapters I’m writing is on the variety of goods and services related to a townsperson’s health, all of which they could get on Main Street. There was quite a bit of overlap between what was a “good”, a “service” and also a ways to participate in community life in the many shops and offices in downtown small town America between 1870-1930. For example, one might go to the town druggist to purchase a prescription from a local doctor, a box of candy, or sit at the soda fountain and gab with friends over a strawberry fizz. Barber and beauty shops were where one got one’s haircut or styled, but also where one socialized with a gendered group of residents. Doctors were where one received diagnoses and health recommendations, but also where one might purchase a drug remedy (many physicians made their own drugs during the early part of my period of study). I’m interested in looking at how Americans living in small towns attended to their health needs because understanding healthcare history before drug and health insurance, medical malpractice, and managed care may be valuable for understanding our contemporary struggles with the industry. Or at the very least, this history offers an interesting comparison to the practices and standards the current day.

The story of Dickinson’s Witch Hazel fits right into this chapter because it was a factory-produced astringent that became an everyday remedy for minor ills. It was sold all over the country in drugstores and used extensively in small town doctor’s offices. And this time, I found records that show national distribution. For example, during the mid-1920s there were many letters between Dickinson executives and the Druggist Supply Corporation (DSC). The DSC was made up of retailers across America, many of which were located in small towns (Fresno, CA; Peoria, IL; Ottumwa, IA; Burlington, IA; Fort Wayne, IN; Rock Island, IL among many others). By working with that organization, Dickinson assured that they would get their product into those shop owners’ hands.

There were also several large company scrapbooks with hundreds of ads, letters from happy vendors, testimonials, and the like. For example, there was a letter from the owner of a drug store in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was thanking the Dickinson Company for sending him a set of booklets to give out to his customers with their purchase of a bottle of Witch Hazel. With his letter of thanks, he included a clipping from the local newspaper which documents his announcement of the Witch Hazel booklet’s availability. He also noted that he gave a bunch of the booklets to a teacher at a nearby rural school for their students.

I could go on and on, but you’ll have to wait for the book. Overall, my visit to Archives & Special Collections was a success, both in terms of clarifying the role of Ingraham in the book and adding to my health-related goods and services chapter. [KJM]

New Exhibition: “For Young Naturalists: Ocean Ecology in Children’s Literature”

Posted on March 25, 2014 by

Explore the diverse ways authors and illustrators use word and image to explain to children the complex relationships between man and the ocean in a new student-curated exhibition “For Young Naturalists: Ocean Ecology in Children’s Literature,” on display from March 27 to April 11 in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center’s John P. McDonald Reading Room. Featuring artwork and books drawn from the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection in Archives and Special Collections, student curator Rebecca D’Angelo presents children’s books from 1844 to 2012 that illuminate how subjects such as ocean biodiversity, food security, and conservation have been depicted and narrated through time.

An Ocean World by Peter Sis (New York : Greenwillow, 1992). Pg. 8.

This exhibition is on view to coincide with the Edwin Way Teale Lectures “What role will the oceans play in meeting the global demand for food?” by Steven D. Gaines, Thursday, March 27, and “Climate, Weather, Oceans and Biodiversity: Science in Policy and Politics” by Jane Lubchenco, Thursday, April 10, 4:00pm in the Dodd Center’s Konover Auditorium.

Location: The John P. McDonald Reading Room, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Dates: March 27-April 11, 2014

Exhibition hours: 10:00am to 4:00pm, Monday through Friday

For more information contact:
Melissa Watterworth Batt, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research
Center, UConn Libraries, melissa.watterworth@uconn.edu

How a Filmmaker Researches the Past

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Kristin Eshelman

from Steven De Castro’s film
Fred Ho’s Last Year

— Steven De Castro is a recipient of a Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant to use the Fred Ho Papers held by Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. A description of his research experience appears below.

Most folks visiting a library are doing so to write a book or a paper. But a library preserves not only the papers of our culture, but also its sights and sounds. And these audio and visual records are of particular interest, not just to writers, but to filmmakers.

Research on a historical film is similar to researching a book or paper. The director John Sayles, before producing Amigo (his drama set during the Philippine-American War), read over 100 books on the subject. The difference in documentary filmmaking is that after engaging in the scholarly work, one has to then engage in the business of negotiating and purchasing the rights to the video you have unearthed.

As a filmmaker, I have found Archives & Special Collections invaluable in my research for the upcoming documentary film, Fred Ho’s Last Year.

ABOUT THE FRED HO PAPERS

Enclosed within the walls of the Dodd Research Center’s archives are the sights and sounds created by one of the greatest avant-garde jazz artists of his generation – a prolific composer, a committed Asian American activist and public intellectual – Fred Ho (b. 1957).

Fred Ho is a 6-time Rockefeller Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a 2-time National Endowment of the Arts recipient, the winner of an American Book Award and a Harvard Arts Medal. Despite these accomplishments, most people – even in the field of contemporary music – have never heard of him. Whether it is because of the fact that he is an outspoken Asian American (a rarity in the music industry), or whether it is because he infuses his own brand of leftist politics in most of his work, is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the most compelling reason why such a prolific artist is not more widely known is that he refuses to be categorized. His music is too challenging to attract a popular fan base, and yet it embraces (and remakes) so many popular styles of music that it is not “out there” enough for other avant-garde musical cliques.

One of the most important facets of Fred’s art is that if you are buying his albums and enjoying his music, you are experiencing only a portion of his creative work. Fred is not only a musician, but an operatic composer whose works are meant to be both seen and heard at the same time. The only way to experience this, short of attending a performance, is through audio/visual media. The central repository of audio/visual records of Fred Ho’s work and public statements is in the Fred Ho Papers held by Archives & Special Collections.

Fred’s artistic and political direction profoundly changed when, in 2006, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Currently Fred’s condition is terminal and he has refused further chemotherapy. Incredibly, Fred still continues his work. As of this date, he has a concert with his orchestra at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and an upcoming book. The significance of the Fred Ho Papers to the fields of Asian American studies, art, and music is difficult to quantify, both for this generation of scholars and for future generations.

Most of the video within the Fred Ho Papers is undiscovered and unplayed. Video is (quite understandably) not of interest to scholars whose main interest is to publish papers and books. And although the video is quite visually fascinating and intellectually provocative, much of it is stored on magnetic tape that degrades with each passing year.

BRINGING THE ARCHIVES TO THE MOVIE SCREEN

Through my research at Archives & Special Collections, I am able to tell a more comprehensive story of Fred Ho’s life and work on a greatly expanded timeline, through the use of archival video. The video shows Fred performing and speaking many years ago, before I began shooting. Through the skills of documentary storytelling, this material comes alive and brings the art and thought of Fred Ho to undiscovered audiences.

And yet, finding the material is only a first step. Under the Fair Use exception to the Copyright Act, a university is allowed to play these videos to a classroom of students. However, a filmmaker is not allowed to incorporate these materials into a film without authorization. So I had found the videos. Now what?

In addition to being a filmmaker, I am a lawyer. Through weeks of calls and internet searches, I was able to track down these rights holders for a release. The television production companies had their own release forms, but in one instance, I drafted the release for the company representative to sign.

Licensing of archival video footage for a film is expensive. Generally, institutions have different rate plans for licensing, which eases the cost for independent producers such as myself. Thankfully, one institution and most individuals I have asked have released their rights for free.

Due to the age of the material, many rights holders failed to locate the original high-quality versions of the footage within their own archives. Therefore, some of the video archives in the Fred Ho Papers turned out to be the only existing copies. In those cases, my research allowed me to acquire these materials and negotiate their release even when they were lost by the production company that made them.

When a video is made, it is usually made for a short term purpose. Production companies cover an event to place on the evening news. A performer may videotape his own performance for the purpose of reviewing it the following day. The maker of the video rarely intends to create a lasting archive. And yet, as a historical documentary filmmaker, I depend on the archival video at Archives & Special Collections – sometimes stored in archaic analog formats – to bring the subject alive.

Steven De Castro, J.D., is the Producer and Director of the upcoming feature documentary, Fred Ho’s Last Year. His research is made possible by the University of Connecticut’s ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AT THE THOMAS J. DODD RESEARCH CENTER, FRED HO FELLOWSHIP, and STROCHLITZ TRAVEL GRANT. You can contact him at decastro@credibilitymedia.com.

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