Ordinary Memorabilia

The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne was held in Paris in the spring and summer of 1937. The Peace Pavilion was to be the culminating point of the exhibition and was dedicated to the "support of propaganda in favour of Peace." However, the Peace Pavilion's impact was overshadowed by the physical juxtaposition of the Nazi and Soviet pavilions. Situated directly across from one another, the two pavilions displayed each country's respective views on nationalism and politics through architectural motifs and created a visual preview of the coming world conflict.

There is little mention of these issues in our small collection of materials on the Expo. Instead, we have Churhill Lathrop's Carte de Légitimation and a handful of maps, pamphlets, postcards, and other ephemera. See the sights of Paris as featured on a folding guide to the Paris Metro. Dine on traditional British food at the British pavilion (though why one would when there were so many other options remains an open question). Travel to other parts of France on the "railway of the sea." All the usual things that the ordinary visitor would need during his or her visit to the continent.

Interestingly enough, though Lathrop was an Art History professor at Dartmouth, no mention is made of Picasso's Guernica which was exhibited for the first time in the Spanish pavilion at the Exposition.

Ask for MS-1015. A guide to the collection is available.

You Laugh

We recently acquired a small collection of Dartmouth's more recent history related to the introduction of coeducation in 1972. Elizabeth Epstein Kadin entered Dartmouth College in 1973, during a time when the College had not yet come to terms with this monumental change, and a sexist and hostile environment pervaded the campus. In response, as part of a class project for a philosophy seminar entitled "Feminism and Revolution," Epstein and seven other women wrote and produced a play called You Laugh, in 1975. The play was a "35 minute series of skits designed to focus on feelings and perceptions of Dartmouth women." Even though the women disagreed as much as they agreed during the writing process, according to Melanie Graves '78, every woman could identify with some of the crude jokes, insults and sexual stereotypes they were confronted with on a daily basis.

The play was first performed at Hopkins Center in front of a sympathetic crowd of only women. However, the next two performances at Rollins Chapel were opened up to the entire Dartmouth community and attracted a mixed crowd, stimulating lengthy discussions among those who attended.

Though it would take many more years, for women to be truly accepted at Dartmouth, the play exceeded the expectations for those who were involved and supported it. It remains a testament to all the women who fought and ultimately succeeded to break into this once all male bastion.

To view the script of You Laugh as well as newspaper accounts and correspondence related to the play and coeducation, including letters of support from trustees as well as letters from a disgruntled alum ask for MS-1228, The papers of Elizabeth Kadin.

Early Readers

Until quite recently, one of the first texts that many children would have learned to read was the Lord's Prayer. A child learning to read in eighteenth-century England might have encountered the Lord's Prayer in a hornbook, a durable primer containing a single sheet of text backed with wood and covered with a thin, transparent sheet of animal horn or mica. This hornbook from our collection devotes nearly half its page to the text of the Lord's Prayer.

In the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a young girl in the French royal family also owned a pocket-sized copy of the Lord's Prayer. Her delicately illuminated book of hours has some unusual additions - the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and Credo are all copied out in a large, legible hand on the first three pages of the volume. Every adult would have memorized these fundamental texts long ago, but a young girl just learning to read and write would certainly have appreciated this (admittedly lavish) cheat-sheet.

Ask for Val 028.5 H783 to see the hornbook.  The miniature book of hours is Codex 003197.