Please join the Human Rights Institute, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies for the opening film of the Human Rights in the Americas Film Series.

Curator Marisol Ramos is showing Dr. Sellin one of the archives Venezuelan newspaper

Every year, we get several visiting scholars that take advantage of the Strochlitz Travel Grant. This travel grant, an endowment created and supported by Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz, Holocaust survivors and great supporters of the Thomas J. Dodd Center from its beginning, is intended to encourage use of these unique collections and to provide partial support to outstanding scholars who must travel long distances to consult them.

This month we have the pleasure to have Dr. Amy Sellin, who is visiting us from Durango, Colorado to use a variety of materials in our Latin American holdings, mainly newspapers from Venezuela, but also rare books from Chile, Puerto Rico and Venezuela on education, including those national histories and geographies which appeared in textbook form for young readers and learners.

Dr. Amy Sellin is visiting us from Durango, Colorado where she is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Modern Language Department

Dr. Sellin is an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Modern Languages at Ft. Lewis College. She received her B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D in Hispanic Studies at Brown University.  Her academic interests include nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Venezuelan literature, nineteenth-century Spanish literature, and contemporary women’s writing in Spanish.

Please mark your calendar to attend her presentation:

Chavez’s Educational Missions: A Return to the Nation-Building Goals of Venezuela’s Independence Era?

• Day: Thursday, June 17^th 2010
• Place: Class of ’47 at the Library
• Time: 1:00-3:00pm

Today we are pleased to report that President Obama signed into law the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act.  The Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act is named in honor of former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan, just four months after the September 11th attacks.  For those who follow our blog and our events, know that this past October we were honored to award the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) with the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights.  The program allowed the University to learn more about the struggle for press freedom and about the work CPJ does to defend the rights of journalists around the world.   It also provided us with the opportunity to meet Mariane Pearl, wife of the late Daniel Pearl.

President Obama and members of Daniel Pearl’s family in the Oval Office.  Photo by Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

“Daniel Pearl’s tragic death shocked the world and, at the same time, opened our eyes to the abuse and harassment that many journalists face across the globe.  With this bill, we pay tribute to Daniel’s life and his work by shining a spotlight on this sort of all-too-frequent repression,” said Senator Chris Dodd, a champion of the bill.  Senator Dodd also introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

According to the press release from Senator Dodd’s office, this legislation calls upon the Secretary of State to greatly expand its examination of the status of freedom of the press worldwide in the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.  Specifically, the legislation requires the State Department to identify countries in which there were violations of press freedom; determine whether the government authorities of those countries participate in, facilitate, or condone the violations; and report the actions such governments have taken to preserve the safety and independence of the media and ensure the prosecution of individuals who attack or murder journalists.  The text of the legislation can be found here.

President Obama was joined by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Congressmen Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Mike Pence (R-IN), co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press, as well as members of Daniel Pearl’s family.

(from l-r) Photo 1: Sam Charters, Nanette Addesso Photo 2: Marisol Ramos, Sergio Mobilia Photo 3: Lesyn Clark, Anna Kijas, Sam Charters Photo 4: Laura Smith, two graduate students

On April 16, 2010, the staff of Archives & Special Collections held our second Open House to showcase archival materials in University archives, natural history, children’s literature, railroad history, Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian studies, the alternative press, human rights, and other curatorial areas.  Our reproduction services were highlighted as well as our extensive multimedia collections.  The new search feature on our web site that allows keyword searching across all finding aids was demonstrated as well as how to access photographs, maps, and other digital collections.  Sam Charters (in the blue shirt above ) delighted the audience by playing the Victrola he donated for the Samuel and Ann Charters Multimedia Room and discussing the music of the era. Marisol Ramos is shown with graduate student Sergio Mobilia, and Laura Smith speaks to two graduate students in Psychology about her collections.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Whitney Harris, UConn President Michael Hogan, October 1, 2007

The Dodd Research Center is involved with many causes, none of which is more powerful than the struggle for human rights.  U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, for whom we are named, devoted his life to public service, the rule of law, and the rights of the oppressed.  It is while serving as a member of the Executive Trial Council in Nuremberg, Germany, Senator Dodd met Whitney Harris, a lawyer in the U.S. Navy.  And because of that unique connection between two men, the Dodd Research Center had the occasion to bring Mr. Harris to the University of Connecticut.

In Senator Christopher J. Dodd’s book “Letters from Nuremberg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice,” letters from Dodd to his wife, Grace reference Mr. Harris.  From these writings, we learn that the two spent much time together during trips and at official dinners.  Mr. Harris even shuttled an anniversary gift back to the states for Grace.  Mr. Harris attended the program in which we launched the book with a series of readings, and read the following excerpt from a letter dated June 3, 1946: “Whitney Harris has been away all weekend.  He is a nice chap but not much company.  He sings all the time – and is generally too young for me.”  His laughter after recounting the late Senator’s words, gave the audience a glimpse of the humor and good nature that was Mr. Harris’ hallmark. 

We were honored to have Mr. Harris deliver a lecture in 2006 on the 60^th anniversary of the judgment at Nuremberg, where he spoke to an auditorium overflowing of students, who learned so much more from his lecture than from any text book.  He joined us again in 2007, when we awarded the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, an event that keeps alive the idea that the rule of law and pursuit of human rights is still a necessity. 

As an archive, we know that it is through history that we can often learn about today, and we owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have gone before us and fought for what is right and true.  According to Matt Sepic of St. Louis Public Radio, Mr. Harris’ experience in Nuremberg made him “a leading advocate for international law and the modern war crimes tribunals that are Nuremberg’s legacy.”  We are saddened by the loss of such a true human rights activist, and extend our deepest sympathy to his family and friends.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd and Whitney Harris, April 10, 2006

l-r: Whitney Harris, October 1, 2007; Justice Robert Jackson decorating Lt. Colonel Whitney Harris (1945-46), from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers

Please join the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center for a special presentation and discussion with Taylor Krauss, Founder of Voices of Rwanda, for a discussion of his work to document stories of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

Voices of Rwanda:
A Conversation and Film Screening with Taylor Krauss

Tuesday, April 20, 2010
4:00 PM, Konover Auditorium

Sixteen years ago, in April 1994, genocide broke out in Rwanda. Over the course of 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people were brutally killed by their neighbors. Today, survivors, bystanders, rescuers, and perpetrators are all searching for ways to live with one another and with their difficult past.

Taylor Krauss, founding director of Voices of Rwanda, will be presenting clips from his filmed testimony  from survivors of the Rwandan genocide.  Krauss founded Voices of Rwanda in 2006 to record and preserve testimonies of Rwandans to ensure that their stories inform the world about genocide and help prevent future human rights atrocities.  Voices of Rwanda currently has a large film archive of testimony and is working with organizations and schools in Rwanda and the United States to make the testimonies available for education and research, as well as community healing.

To find out more information on Voices of Rwanda please visit:
http://www.voicesofrwanda.org/

Please join us for an Open House!  The event will include interactive displays, presentations and one-on-one conversations to facilitate the discovery of the rich resources in the Archives that will help with your classes and your own personal research.

Wednesday, April 14
4:00-6:00pm

You are welcome to come and go as your schedule allows, but if you have a particular interest in the presentations, the schedule is as follows:

4:15-Welcome
4:30-Exploring the collections with our new search feature
4:45-New tools for using our digital resources
5:00-The distinctive sounds of the Victrola

Refreshments will be provided.

‘The Dancer’, 1951, poem by Joel Oppenheimer, drawing by Robert Rauschenberg, printed at Black Mountain College by Oppenheimer and Jonathan Williams, Jargon 2.

Found among the literary broadside collection in Archives and Special Collections are works that represent unique, unusual and innovative collaborations between poets and artists.  Poetry broadsides produced between the 1950s and early 1970s offer some of the most diverse examples of poem and picture combinations.  Visual artists, printmakers, typesetters, and graphic artists emerging from American schools and cities experimented with forms and techniques influenced by their association with other artists, writers, and performers.

Black Mountain College in the 1950s is often described by those that attended and taught there as a laboratory for artistic collaboration.  The print shop at the small college in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains was a space where experimentation and collaboration were encouraged, producing small-run editions of poetry and poetry broadsides alongside the works of print-makers and visual artists.  Joel Oppenheimer partnered with the painter Robert Rauschenberg, both students at the time, and the poet and emerging small-press publisher Jonathan Williams, to create ‘The Dancer’.

Join us in celebration of the exhibition ‘Poem and Picture’ at the Benton Museum at the University of Connecticut featuring ‘The Dancer’ (“The Dancer”, 1951, poem by Joel Oppenheimer, drawing by Robert Rauschenberg, printed at Black Mountain College by Oppenheimer and Jonathan Williams, Jargon 2), and National Poetry Month.

Please join the Human Rights Institute and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center for the March film for the 2009-2010 Human Rights Film Series: Human Rights in the USA.

Film: “SiCKO” (2007)
Directed by Michael Moore

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
4:00 pm, Konover Auditorium
Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

The words “health care” and “comedy” aren’t usually found in the same sentence, but in Academy Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore’s film ‘SiCKO,’ they go together hand in (rubber) glove. While Moore’s ‘SiCKO’ follows the trailblazing path of previous hit films, the Oscar-winning BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and all-time box-office documentary champ FAHRENHEIT 9/11, it is also something very different for Michael Moore. ‘SiCKO’ is a straight-from-the-heart portrait of the crazy and sometimes cruel U.S. health care system, told from the vantage of everyday people faced with extraordinary and bizarre challenges in their quest for basic health coverage. Watch the film trailer at http://sickothemovie.com/dvd/trailer.html

For more information on the full film series, including upcoming films, a downloadable poster is available on our website at http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/events/hr_usa_film_series.htm

Imagine you’ve stumbled into a juke joint where the mentor of Robert Johnson and the idol of the Rolling Stones, Howlin’ Wolf, “dis” one another. Picture a place where Wolf taunts Bukka White and the spectral Skip James weaves his haunting Devil Got My Woman. It’s an archetypal blues “crossroads” where legends of the 1920s Delta and 1950s Chicago share the same musical space, suspended out of time in a super-real present, a non-specific “bluestime.”

The film captures the blues experience in its first and truest milieu, the 1966 Newport Folk Festival, one in which African-American men and women drink, dance, and share their troubles and triumphs.

Devil Got My Woman: Blues at Newport 1966
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
4:00 p.m.
Konover Auditorium

As a scientist, a writer, an activist, and a woman, Rachel Carson has inspired generations. Through her scientific integrity and elegant prose she became one of the 20th centuries most prescient scientific authors. And as an individual she battled economic adversity, family tragedy and gender stereotyping. She also reminds us that we each have not only the ability to make a creative difference in this world-we also have the responsibility to do so.

This Thursday, February 4th the film “A Sense of Wonder“, a film about Rachel Carson, will be shown as part of the Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series.  Using many of Miss Carson’s own words, actress Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in a documentary-style film, which depicts Carson in the final years of her life.  Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government, and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people.

A Sense of Wonder
Thursday, February 4, 2010
4:00pm
Konover Auditorium

Rachel Carson was born in Springdale, PA on May 27, 1907. She graduated from Pennsylvania College For Women (now Chatham College), worked several summers at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, then earned her masters in zoology from John Hopkins University. Carson worked for what was to become the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a writer and biologist for nearly 16 years. While there she published her first two books, Under the Sea Wind, and The Sea Around Us. The latter became a best seller, winning her numerous literary award. Her next book, The Edge of The Sea, completed her sea trilogy.

In 1962 came Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring, which alerted the world to the dangers of chemical pesticides and launched our modern environmental movement. Controversy swirled around the book as the chemical industry tried to suppress publication with a lawsuit. In 1963 Miss Carson testified before Congress, speaking out in an effort to protect human health and the environment from the cascade of poisons unleashed by the chemical industry. On April 14, 1964, Carson died from breast cancer.

But her legacy lives on. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U. S. government can award a civilian. Her determined labors led directly to the passage of such important laws as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. These laws remain the pillars of U.S. environmental law today.

The Dodd Research Center was among more than 100 public colleges and universities in all 50 states that contributed to the 2010 City University of New York’s (CUNY) calendar, website and curriculum project by sharing historic images and milestones from their own past.

Entitled, “Investing in Futures: Public Higher Education in America,” the 2010 calendar project is the sixth such collaboration bringing together CUNY, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and The New York Times Knowledge Network, with support provided by founding sponsors JPMorgan Chase and TIAA-CREF.

War Effort on Campus, from the University of Connecticut Archives

The calendar will have two photographs from the Archives, one that will appear on the page that highlights the efforts on college campuses during World War II and another they have labeled “milestones”, which will include our own Huskies women’s basketball team at the final game of the N.C.A.A. tournament.

The LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, which produced the calendar, is housed at CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York.