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We found quite the variety, including 16th-century tomes on ichthyology, painted and written accounts of attacks on sailors, informative pamphlets for 19th-century children and for 20th-century navy men, and -- naturally -- a student's review of Jaws in the Dartmouth. He wasn't entirely convinced that it was worth all the fuss it generated, but we recommend you come by and read his thoughts for yourself.
Anyone who has spent some time either in our reading room or following our blog will recognize the name Viljhalmur Stefansson. Stefansson was a Canadian explorer born to Icelandic immigrants in 1879. After numerous Arctic expeditions, he became a renowned lecturer and advocate for the Arctic. Stefansson was a lecturer at Dartmouth from 1947 until his death in 1962, and the college acquired his significant collection of polar exploration materials in 1952.
Huntington was a Yale graduate and Presbyterian minister who in 1933 had co-founded The Burgoyne Trail in Otis, Massachusetts, one of the country's first nudist colonies. His promotion of the lifestyle was firmly based in its health benefits and its ability to free people from obsessing about sex. When he met later with Stefansson in July, it was with an eye toward recruiting the charismatic public speaker to give a presentation at the International Nudists Conference in August of the same year.
However, despite Huntington's well-meaning intentions, the potential for negative PR was too great a risk for Stefansson. The explorer responded tersely to a series of initially unanswered letters from Huntington by saying that he had decided against participating "on the principle that there is no point in getting eaten by lions except for what you think is a supreme cause." Subsequent letters from Huntington are marked in pencil with "No Ans", suggesting that for Stefansson the conversation was over.
To hunt for similar gold nuggets with Stefansson's correspondence, request a box online from MSS-196 and then come to Rauner to start digging.
In 1867, one trustee warned that in previous years "some of the young people danced at the close of the social gathering," causing some donors to withhold their gifts to Dartmouth. In his letter to Asa Dodge Smith, Zedekiah Smith Barstow emphatically concluded, "I am persuaded that it behooves us now to say that we will have no dancing at the close this gathering under out patronage." The stricture didn't last--by 1880, the invitation expressly states "Reception at 9:00. Dancing at 10:30."
To see the tickets ask for the "Commencement Ball--Tickets" vertical file. Barstow's letter is MS 867420.1.
French professor and scientist Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) dabbled in many areas, among them anatomy, medicine, botany, and zoology. We're going to focus on a subset of that last one today, because Rondelet legacy in our collections is that of ichthyology, the study of fish. First published in 1554, our copy of Rondelet's masterwork is the 1558 translation, L'Histoire Entière des Poissons (The Complete History of Fish), which remained a standard reference work on the subject until the early 19th century. Not remotely limited to fish, the book includes cephalopods, crustaceans, marine mammals like dolphins, and even less fishy aquatic animals like beavers. And unless you're studying the history of science, the woodcuts are the real stars here. The illustrations are fantastic, and there are a lot of them.
While the "fish" of L'Histoire are all worth looking at, we'll draw your attention to one anomaly, categorized helpfully in the sea monsters section. The "sea monster in the habit of a bishop," now referred to simply as the bishop fish, was something of a hot news item in Rondelet's day. According to his description, the bishop fish has been caught and brought to the King of Poland in 1531, to whom he "made certain signs to show that he had a great desire to return to the sea." The bishop fish was brought back to the ocean, into which he promptly threw himself.To look at L'Histoire, request it online (Rare Book QL41 .R7) and then come to Rauner to see it.
There is a reason Mary earned the nickname "Bloody Mary." During her short five-year reign she attempted to reverse the Reformation and restore property back to the Roman Catholic Church. This, naturally, involved killing a lot of people, as sensationally documented in Foxe's Actes and Monuments of the Latter and Perillous Dayes (more commonly called Foxe's Book of Martyrs). This formal invitation wasn't to the kind of party anyone wanted to attend.
The intended guests didn't have to wait much longer in exile. Mary died two years later and Elizabeth I assumed the throne and made it safe for these particular nobles to visit court again.
Multiculturalism was one of the hottest cultural flashpoints in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in higher education. Across American universities, debates erupted over what constituted a core curriculum and whose voices belonged in it. These were the so-called "canon wars." Works like E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy (1987) and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987) sparked fierce controversy over essential knowledge, with conservative critics warning that diversifying syllabi would dilute academic rigor and displace the Western intellectual tradition. At Stanford, student-led protests demanding a more inclusive curriculum prompted the university to replace its required Western Civilization course with a multicultural alternative, an institutional change that became a lightning rod in the canon wars.Yet for all the attention on these college campuses, Dartmouth College rarely appeared in national accounts of these disputes. When it did, it was usually cited as a campus that had already "solved" the problem: Dartmouth, after all, had implemented a "non-Western" requirement starting with the Class of 1985. Even in Illiberal Education (1991)—a widely read book by Dinesh D'Souza '83 critiquing multiculturalism in academia written by a Dartmouth alum—the College is mentioned only briefly as an institution that paradoxically required a "non-Western" course for graduation, but not a "Western" one. This raises the question: what was actually happening at Dartmouth during this tumultuous era?
An answer can be found in the November 8, 1991 issue of The Fortnightly, a news magazine published by The Dartmouth, which offers a remarkable snapshot of a campus at a curricular crossroads. The entire issue was dedicated to the theme of multiculturalism, reflecting how seriously the topic was being discussed on campus. Each article opens with a variation of the same line: "Multiculturalism, a catchphrase of the '90s," "Multiculturalism has become the hip new watchword," "Multiculturalism has hit the ground running in Hanover." This repetition suggests both trendiness and urgency, a topic that has arrived and demands collective attention.
The following year, the College undertook a major curriculum overhaul under new president James O. Freedman. A strong advocate for liberal arts education and global learning, Freedman pushed Dartmouth to align itself with broader educational trends. A faculty-led Ad Hoc Curriculum Review Committee convened in February 1991 and recommended a new "World Cultures" requirement to "prepare its students for participation in and concern for the life of the entire planet." According to The Dartmouth, the proposal aimed to widen the curriculum's focus and incorporate more non-Western perspectives.
This shift, however, was not as novel as it may have appeared. Despite the language of curricular expansion, Dartmouth had already instituted a "non-Western" requirement about a decade earlier. The real change in 1991 was not the inclusion of non-Western content, but the addition of two new categories: Europe and the United States. The resulting "World Cultures" requirement obligated students to take one course in each of these three areas.This structural change was subtle but strategic. By giving Western cultures their own dedicated categories, the new curriculum both expanded and rebalanced the distribution requirements. It repositioned U.S. and European traditions not as assumed defaults but as specific cultural domains to be studied alongside non-Western ones. In effect, it reframed the curriculum to deflect conservative critiques. As President Freedman told The Boston Globe, "We’re trying to preserve an emphasis on Western culture as we respond to concerns about multiculturalism."
Still, the shift was not without controversy. Critics raised concerns about the cost of curricular change. In the same issue of The Fortnightly, English professor Jeffrey Hart warned that "an undue stress on the study of non-Western cultures unavoidably leads to an undue de-emphasis of Western cultures." He also called multiculturalism a "passing fad." Another article, titled "Significant Anglo Exhibits Lost to Multiculturalism," echoed this concern, extending the critique beyond university curricula to museums. It lamented that "with our quest for racial equality and recognition of others' cultures, the past, as we and the previous generations know it, is facing destruction." These pieces revealed a common anxiety about the perceived erosion of Anglo-American traditions.
But were these fears supported by evidence? One article in the issue examined data from Dartmouth’s Organizations, Regulations, and Courses (ORC) catalogs over the past decade. Contrary to claims of a "multicultural surge," the number of courses had remained relatively unchanged since 1981. In fact, the article reported that only four new courses had been added to African and Afro-American Studies, while six had been cut in related fields. "What we can learn from the statistics," the article concluded, "is that the number of courses offered to Dartmouth students has remained relatively unchanged." Still, the author acknowledged that statistics alone cannot account for changes in student interest, intellectual engagement, or campus climate.One of the most fascinating elements of the November 8 issue is how The Fortnightly positioned itself in the debate. Through strikingly uniform headlines and editorial framing, the magazine mirrored the national discourse while also signaling an acute awareness of the College’s place within it. Some pieces celebrated the expansion of literary canons, while others offered more cautious meditations on cultural literacy and the very purpose of a college curriculum, together reflecting a student body in the midst of its own cultural reckoning.
In hindsight, the 1991 debates about multiculturalism at Dartmouth were about far more than course requirements. They were debates about identity, institutional values, and the politics of knowledge. The "World Cultures" requirement didn’t abolish the non-Western category: it embedded it within a comparative framework that redefined what "multiculturalism" could mean on Dartmouth's terms. Whether this marked a genuine de-centering of the West or a strategic repackaging of it remains a matter of interpretation. As contemporary conversations about decolonizing education, inclusive syllabi, and global knowledge continue, this issue of The Fortnightly reminds us that the struggle over whose knowledge counts is not new.
Posted for Alice Kim '27, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 spring term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.
We're all terrifically glad that spring is here for real, and so we would like to share a lovely book that celebrates the signs of the season. Michigan artist Gwen Frostic's To Those Who See (1965) is our pick this week, a little volume of poetry and linocut prints highlighting scenes familiar in the Upper Valley like uncurling fiddleheads and red-winged blackbirds.Frostic (1906-2001) is known for her nature-inspired printing, but she worked primarily in the metal arts during the early part of her career, running her own shop. That changed with the onset of World War II as metal became too precious to manufacturing to be used for art. With the closure of her shop, she joined the war effort by working in a factory that produced military aircrafts. But in search of a new medium, she landed on linoleum.
In addition to creating block prints on linoleum, Frostic bought and learned to operate a letterpress. Her own shop, Presscraft Papers, was born. It's the same press that produced our copy of To Those Who See some twenty years later. If you're as excited about the spring as we are, we recommend coming in to look at this little piece of a decades-long artistic career.
To see To Those Who See (ha), request Presses P925fto online and then pay us a visit.
One of the great joys of working at Rauner is the pleasure of unexpected discoveries. You're looking into a person or event when you stumble across something entirely unrelated that proves fascinating in its own right. That's what happened not long ago as our staff researched Thomas Flint, Jr., Dartmouth Class of 1880, whose notebook Rauner recently added to our collections. Our archivist, intending to learn more about Flint, instead found herself delving into an entirely unfamiliar practice: "mittening.""Hoc docet (as you must agree)
‘Tis meet that Phyllis should discover
A wisdom in preferring me,
And mittening every other lover."
One day in France in 1905, a tiny tragedy occurred. A small fly, attracted to a delicious pool of water, got too close to the surface, fell in, and drowned. Like the proverbial tree in the forest, the death of this insect made no sound and would have likely escaped all human attention if not for one thing: this was no ordinary pool of water. This was a papermaker's vat. Following its untimely death, the fly's body was mixed into the slurry of water and paper fibers in the vat, a thin layer of which was then left to dry on a wire screen, becoming a piece of handmade paper.
We discovered this poor creature on the title page of a book of printer's ornaments, titled Flosculi Sententiarum: Printers Flowers Moralised. At first, it wasn't clear how it met its demise. Did it get squished during the printing process? Did a reader close the book on it? Or was it part of the paper? Using a cheap pocket microscope and phone camera attachment, we examined the page and were able to see paper fibers clearly lying over the corpse of the fly, indicating that it had fallen in during the paper-making process. A second fly appears to have met the same fate later in the book.
According to the colophon, Flosculi Sententiarum was produced in 1967 by the Gehenna Press, a well-known fine press, using paper made in 1905 and bought by a dealer in 1959. Fine press bookmakers like Leonard Baskin at Gehenna are known for their fastidiousness and high aesthetic standards, so it is somewhat of a mystery why they would have used paper with a dead bug in it, and on the title page no less. Perhaps they felt it added character.
To view the book, bugs and all, request Presses G274basf online and then come to our reading room.
John Martin Mecklin, Class of 1939, traveled a lot. A few years after graduating from Dartmouth, he became a correspondent for the Chicago Sun in Europe, sending regular eyewitness accounts of developments in the war. After World War II, he continued as a reporter in Italy. Later he would have posts in Paris and in Saigon but today we're looking at one very specific achievement in world travel. On May 31st 1955, while flying from Singapore to Jakarta, Mecklin crossed the equator.We know Mecklin did this because there's a certificate in his papers to that effect, reading "KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS THAT John Martin Mecklin borne on the wings of the PH-LDG, a Flying Dutchman of KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, has had the distinction of crossing the Equator." The certificate is illustrated with Aeolus, the ruler of winds in Greek mythology, sending an airplane and a ship on their way.
Documented as early as the 17th century, line-crossing ceremonies are a variety of folk practice surrounding the first time someone, typically a sailor, crosses the equator. They can range from entirely anodyne to outright hazing and assault. This is a funny commercial example from the '50s -- one imagines there couldn't have been much of a ceremony onboard the plane itself, but the airline clearly found it worthwhile to produce and distribute personalized certificates for its eligible passengers.
To see this and other travel souvenirs, request ML-28 Box 2 Folder 10.
We have a great edition of the first American printing of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It lays out the principles, but it was Seneca Falls that turned women's rights in American into a political movement with structure and purpose. We can't wait to set them side by side in a classroom and see what happens! Added bonus, it appears to be a presentation copy from Elizabeth Cady Stanton!
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December 7, 1941 changed a lot for many in the United States, especially students of the draft age, but perhaps none experienced uncertainty and fear quite like Takanobu Mitsui '43, a Dartmouth student from Japan. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the College was transformed into a training site for the U.S. Navy, and for many Mitsui represented an enemy on home soil. His nationality and race impacted him throughout the rest of his Dartmouth career.
On July 3, 1942, President Ernest Martin Hopkins received a letter from a Dartmouth community member informing him of Mitsui's involvement with the Dartmouth Broadcasting System (DBS). John H. Shaw wrote, “While none of us who know Nobu would be inclined to have any question about the matter, the coming of a Naval unit to Hanover would almost inevitably cause doubt and criticism and in all probability protest if Nobu was associated with the DBS in any way. Consequently, I think it highly expedient for him to have anything to do with broadcasting or even to be around the offices of the DBS.”Mitsui was a physics major and had joined the club to get practice working with the technical side of the DBS. He took a class on the subject with Professor Willis Rayton, and in his own words was appreciated by the other members of the organization for his work installing a new transmitter. But that didn't matter in wartime. Mitsui was Japanese and came from a prominent Japanese zaibatsu family. Working in radio—which was especially susceptible to espionage and tampering—was not allowed.
Mitsui wrote to President Hopkins regrettably but willingly accepting the request to abandon the DBS. He wrote on July 6, “I fully realize the situation, and have decided to withdraw from the organization at least officially.”Mitsui, who was the target of race-based judgements himself, was forced to apologize for pursuing extracurricular interests. He wrote, “I should have been wise enough to keep myself out of DBS; in fact I have always been conscious of the fact that I was taking a rather heavy risk.” Other Dartmouth students could easily work in radio; for him, because of his race and nationality, it was a risk.
Mitsui expressed his desire to work with the DBS in an unofficial capacity. “It may not be helped,” he wrote, “if they come to me for advices and assistance on technical matters.” DBS clearly meant something to him: “I have been getting acquainted with some of the nicest fellows there at DBS, and it has been a very good practical experience for me to work with them. I have seen the most interesting part of the growth of this young and promising organization, in fact, I have had my own little share of it.” He didn't want to leave, but his own respect for President Hopkins, the College, and DBS led him to give up a passion.
President Hopkins was sympathetic to Mitsui, and certainly didn't suspect him of nefarious motives. He was sure that Mitsui had “not intended to do anything that would in any way be detrimental to the College or that would lead to misjudgement of the relationship between the College and yourself.” College leadership supported Mitsui throughout his time in Hanover. They helped him deal with immigration authorities and provided him with funds while he was cut off from his family in Japan.
Still, public sentiment and government suspicion broke through Hopkins's trust. Hopkins wrote that it was “very wise that [Mitsui] should have decided to withdraw from the organization of DBS.” Hanover was the homefront, and as a training site Dartmouth was effectively a place of war. Mitsui faced relentless suspicion, both from federal authorities and the students and community members whom he called neighbors.
Mitsui's exclusion from the Dartmouth Broadcasting System is a reminder that racist and xenophobic suspicion during the Second World War extended beyond obvious sources. He wasn't allowed to participate in a student club, despite there being no evidence of any wrongdoing. For Mitsui, participation in an innocent hobby turned into a perceived threat to national security.
To read these correspondences from Mitsui and Hopkins, request DP-11 Box 7046, Folder 17.
Posted for Dalton Swenson '26, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 winter term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.
It has long been known that reading aloud confers numerous benefits upon not only the reader but the listeners. Doing so can expand the vocabulary of the reader and the listeners as well as strengthen the bond between them and spark creativity and imagination. In young children, reading aloud can help them lengthen their attention spans, improve their listening skills, and stimulate cognitive development. Reading aloud, especially within the context of a family, allows children and adults who aren't literate the chance to hear stories and gain knowledge that they otherwise would not be able to access.In our society today, we are fortunate to have access to any number of texts, whether because of the ubiquity of digital content online or local public libraries. But several hundred years ago a book was a precious commodity whose cost was beyond the means of most working-class people, and texts were regularly passed down as heirlooms from one generation to the next. If a family in19th-century America was fortunate enough to own even one book, it was probably a Bible. And so if the members of a family in 19th-century America read aloud to each other, it was probably from the family Bible.
However, this could potentially pose a problem. Christian parents may have wanted their young children 
To reverse-engineer an exhaustive list of naughty Bible verses, come to Rauner and ask to see Chapbook 51A.
While my research was initially intended to look at the centennial year as a whole, I eventually chose to focus on Dartmouth’s unique connection to the Centennial International Exhibition. The Rauner Library’s incredible collection provided me with a unique link to this historic event. Using Dartmouth as a focal point allowed me to explore the broader tensions of the centennial on a more personal, localized level, while also giving me insight into the administrative effort required to organize such a monumental fair.
Pictured here is the title page and index to an otherwise missing historical sketch of Dartmouth College, commissioned by the Bureau of Education for an exhibit at the fair. It was prepared by John King Lord, Dartmouth class of 1868 and faculty member. Similar sketches were requested from a variety of educational institutions and many of them still exist in full today. However, despite letters discussing plans to print 300 copies of Dartmouth’s sketch, a complete copy of Lord’s work does not exist.
My favorite part of this project was definitely my time in the Rauner Library. Trying to read 19th-century cursive and combing through old editions of The Dartmouth gave me a new appreciation for the intricacies of archival research — it’s an amazing experience to conduct research on such a tangible level. If you’re curious about Dartmouth’s connection to the centennial, please stop by Rauner and check out the exhibit "Dartmouth at the Nation's Centennial"!
Posted for Madeline Fisher ‘27
P. S. If you miss the exhibit, you can always come in and ask to see the John King Lord papers (MS-562).
"I had been aware, of course, that there was such a policy, but to say so for publication showed incredibly bad taste. In thinking about the thing it has occurred to me that Dartmouth never has made its position very clear on exactly what it represents. I'm tempted to reply to the next appeal for donations to the alumni fund simply by mailing them a clipping of the president's remarks. As a matter of fact this clinches something I've been considering for a long time---that if I ever have a son I won't send him to Dartmouth.
There's no place in the world today for an educational institution unwilling to face the fact that an entire new philosophy of life has been born in this war. I don't know what Dartmouth is doing about the war and revisions in its curriculum---nothing has been said about that in any of the alumni communications I've seen---but I'm skeptical that it will be big enough to face the challenge. This war and its terrible climax in the atomic bomb has put before us the simple choice of making the values we say we represent stand up or of suicide. I didn't learn about values in Dartmouth, not the ones that count and I'm beginning to suspect the learning simply wasn't available there.
I didn't understand freedom of speech, for instance, until I came over here and saw what happens when it doesn't exist. I learned about equality of opportunity in Germany, not in Dartmouth. I learned about economics in starving Berlin, not in Hanover. Perhaps it's impossible to understand such things as a student, but I don't think you have to be as dismally ignorant as I was. Of this I'm certain: the war caught Dartmouth 100% unprepared either for it or its repercussions. Will Dartmouth be caught unprepared for the peace in the same way? Hopkins' latest pronouncement certainly indicates that the answer is yes."
This is in a letter to his parents, by the way. The updates Mecklin sends home during his time as a war correspondent are filled with thoughts along these lines, a combination of sharp observations about other people alongside seemingly unaware references to his own prejudices. After all, to him the quotas weren't an issue until acknowledged publicly.
To read this and other letters, ask for ML-28 Box 2 Folder 24.
If you're a long-time reader of our blog, then you've heard us enthuse about books before. As we explained in a previous post, chapbooks were cheap and ephemeral publications made to fill a demand for reading material by the working class who, while increasingly literate, could not afford to purchase a book outright. Chapbooks were an important means of disseminating popular culture as well as improving literacy rates. In England, roving peddlers called chapmen would depart from London or other printing centers with their bags full of these flimsy, poorly made books and sell them all over the countryside.
To take a look ask for The Toilet by Stacey Grimaldi (Rare BJ1681 .G86 1821).
