On Monday, May 4, 2009, at 2:30pm Ms. Thea Guidone will present the results of her research in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection housed at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.  A recipient of the James Marshall Fellowship, Ms. Guidone is a children’s writer who lives in Hamden. At the University of Connecticut, she studied Children’s Literature with Francelia Butler, and Creative Writing with Matthew Proser, Elaine Scarry and Feenie Ziner. She earned her master’s degree at Yale University.  An active member of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Ms. Guidone won Connecticut’s 2006 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in Children’s Literature and is the author of Drum City (Tricycle Press, May 2010). She is at work on a middle grade novel set in New Haven in 1925.

Ms. Guidone will discuss subtext in schoolbooks and novels for girls, circa 1920’s, that informed and reinforced attitudes about wealth, privilege and class.  The presentation will take place in the Dodd Research Center’s conference room 162 and is free and open to the public.

The UConn Archives received the “Outstanding Ally Office/Department Award” by the University of Connecticut’s Rainbow Center in April 2009 at the Lavendar Graduation Ceremony. The award recognized our public outreach efforts to educate the community on LGBTQ issues. One of those recent efforts noted included the exhibit “From the Margins to the Mainstream: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History, 1968-2008,” a historical and contemporary look at materials published by the LGBTQ community. Included in the program was a screening of the film “After Stonewall”. The award also recognized the continued effort by the curators to actively collect documents of value to the research of LGBTQ issues.

To celebrate National Poetry Month, a new exhibit showcasing works of Beat writers in various media from 1957 to 1966 opens April 6, 2009.  The exhibit features letters, manuscripts, little magazines, photographs and audio recordings from the extensive literary collections held by the Archives and Special Collections.

Post-war America of the 1950s witnessed a blending of cultural influences and the emergence of new forms of performance, music, and visual arts.  Recent scholarship on writers and writings during this period emphasizes the role that art, media and popular culture had on the American literary imagination and on expressions of the individual in society.

Beat writers including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William S. Burroughs experimented with literary narrative, forms and mediums whether in reaction to or as a result of social and cultural influences of their time. This exhibit highlights the works and collaborations of Beat writers from the 1950s and invites viewers to explore further questions. What role did form and media play in making the work of the Beats known, available and accessible to readers?  How or did the threat of media censorship impact expression?  Did Beat writers help to usher in a new print culture or, rather, did they aim to dismantle it?  How or can literature shape a movement?

Exhibit curated by Benjamin Miller, B. A. candidate in English, University of Connecticut.