At the Late Night, Double-Feature Picture Show... by RKO

Trying to pick a scary movie to watch tonight? How about pulling some inspiration from Rauner's script collection? We have a few great ones from RKO Pictures. For something really classic, take a look at our screenplay for the 1933 King Kong, which is still spawning sequels and spin-offs today.

If you want something a little more off the beaten path, how about one of the films produced by Val Lewton? Lewton was hired by RKO in 1942 to make successful horror movies on shoestring budgets, particularly useful to the faltering studio after the financial failures of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. He would be given a sensational title, a small budget, and the task of making something that could emulate the monstrous successes of Universal Studios. Instead, Lewton tended to make quiet, unsettling psychological pictures with a deeply nihilistic edge. They were successful enough at the time, and some are now considered classics. We have the scripts for two big ones: Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943). The latter, a very loose adaptation of Jane Eyre with the addition of a Haitian Vodou element, has a subtitle reading "Based on Scientific Information from Articles by Inez Wallace." It also bears a handwritten note reading "Mr. Breen." We can't say for sure, but perhaps this copy passed through the hands of Joseph Breen, who enforced the Hays Production Code from the 1930s to 1950s. We'd be curious to hear what he thought of this particular picture, but we suspect it wasn't his thing. 

To take a look at the these spooky screenplays, check out Scripts 2206 (King Kong), Scripts 537 (Cat People), and Scripts 1064 (I Walked With a Zombie).  

 

 

Cinderella, by any other name

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a French writer and poet as well as a member of the Académie Française. In 1697, at the end of his illustrious career, Perrault published a collection of eight Contes du temps passé, literally “tales from times past” (Bouchenot-Déchin 2018). These included stories we know today as Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella, and all of them were written in prose. These stories have been told and retold so many times, and in so many ways, that they’ve become ingrained in our cultural imagination.

Searching Rauner’s collection for items using the keywords “(Cinderella OR Cendrillon) AND Perrault” yields 12 results. The earliest of these dates from 1697, the year the Contes was originally published in Paris, but Rauner’s copy is an unauthorized (pirated) edition that was likely printed in Amsterdam by Jacques Desbordes. In fact, the 1697 edition isn’t even attributed to Charles Perrault; its author is listed as “le Fils de Monsieur Perreault [sic] de l’Academie François” (the son of M. Perrault of the Académie Française). This minor literary mystery was resolved in short order, and it wasn’t long before new editions listed Charles Perrault as their author.

Thirty-two years later, in 1729, a British writer and translator named Robert Samber published the first English translation of Perrault’s Contes. Samber seems to have worked from the pirated Dutch edition of the text that we have in Rauner rather than the original Parisian edition, although that would not have made a substantive difference because the content is identical (Bottigheimer 2002, 5).

Samber gave Cinderella her English name (originally “Cinderilla”), and it stuck. I looked at ten English translations of Perrault’s Cendrillon in Rauner’s collection, ranging in date from 1785 to 1963, and every one of them refers to the protagonist as Cinderella/Cinderilla. (Note that this is just a small fraction of Rauner’s fairy tale collection!) Not one of them changes the name Samber gave her. I doubt Samber had any idea how much influence that one decision would have on readers, Disney viewers, and even college basketball.

But Cendrillon isn’t actually the protagonist’s name. It’s a nickname, and we never learn what her parents named her. In fact, it isn’t even the only nickname used for her in the story. According to the original, “Cucendron” was the name commonly used for her in the household, and it was the younger stepsister (described as less mean-spirited than the older one) who called her Cendrillon instead. Cucendron basically translates to “Cinder-butt” and relates to Cinderella’s habit of sitting in the hearth to take a break from her manual labor.

Given how consistent all of these English translations are about calling our protagonist “Cinderella,” it’s remarkable how widely their interpretations of “Cucendron” vary. These ten translations contain seven different versions of the mean-spirited nickname: Cinder-breech, Cinder-wench, Cinder-slut, Cinder-girl, Cindertail, Cinder-scraper, and Cinder-clod. Cinder-breech, which was Samber’s initial translation, appears in just two of these editions, and two of them avoid the matter completely by omitting those lines. Still other translations have turned this nickname into: Cinderpuss, Cinderseat, Cinderbottom, and Cinderbutt.

Why does this matter? Aside from helping readers gauge just how mean those stepsisters are, this detail doesn’t impact the story’s narrative arc at all. But it’s one small way that generation after generation of translators was able to put their own mark on the text–whether they received any credit for their translations or not. (Five of the ten translations I studied do not explicitly name their translators.) With so many aspects of this story locked in place, this seemingly minor nickname gives the translator an opportunity to demonstrate that literary translation is a creative, interpretive process and not a simple matter of carrying meaning across a linguistic barrier. Translators have immense power to shape our understanding of the world, and of each other.

To see the 1697 pirated edition of Perrault's tales, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare PQ1877 .C513 1697. The various translations are as follows: Sine Illus R53fait ("Cindertail"); Sine Illus A66per ("cinder-girl"); Sine Illus D86sle ("Cinder-slut"); and Chapbook 50.5 ("Cinder-wench").

This post was written by Rachel Starr, Research & Learning Specialist at Dartmouth Libraries.

Not Noah's Dictionary

October 16th was "Dictionary Day," so named because it is Noah Webster's birthday. Sure, we have lots of editions of Webster's dictionary, from his initial 1806 attempt to catalog American English to the final beast of a book published in 1828. But, while those are cool and all, they are not exactly hep to the times, so today we feature our suite of Cab Calloway lexicological lessons including the 1944 Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: the Language of Jive. Like Webster, Calloway was looking to define a specific form of English.

It is hard to tell if Calloway was trying to be a serious lexicographer when he started to write these or if he has just trying to cash in on the craze for the Harlem scene, but when the New York Public Library adopted his book as their official dictionary of Harlem slang, it was suddenly very legit. There is no question that he is taking it seriously by the 1944 edition. It is still very playful and super fun to read, but you can tell he is working hard to document a form of English he loved and helped to propagate. So hit that jive, Jack, and truck on in. It'll blow your wig!

Ask for Rare ML102 .J3P76 1939.

 

The Hammer of Witches

We've got an evil one this week, both in terms of a book's subject matter and its impact in the world. Back in the fifteenth century, European Christians were developing a new understanding of how Satan worked on Earth: that he could bestow demonic powers onto humans so that they could commit harm through magic and undermine faith in God. This, among other factors, prompted the prosecution of those accused of practicing this diabolic witchcraft and the onset of the European witch hunts. Lasting from approximately 1420 to 1780 but concentrated most heavily in the period of 1560 to 1640, the trials led to the execution of somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 individuals. 

One influence on these witch hunts was the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches. We have a first edition, published in 1486 or 1487 in Speyer, Germany. Its authorship is somewhat contested but generally attributed to Henricus Institorius and Jacobus Sprenger, two Dominican friars. Institorius is the one who had practical experience persecuting the accused -- at one point in his life he claimed to have had 48 women executed. In terms of influence, it seems that the Malleus did a lot to formalize and disseminate the newer theories of diabolic witchcraft and structures for dealing with witches: its three sections are focused on 1) proving that witchcraft is real, 2) explaining how witchcraft operates and how it can be counteracted, and 3) how practitioners should be prosecuted. It also focused on witchcraft as something practiced by the lower classes and by women more frequently than men, which was certainly consistent with trends in who was prosecuted in most countries during the witch hunts.  

Our copy is pretty tidy, save for some staining on the initial pages and a few handwritten notes in the second section. The marginalia is intriguing -- we think we can pick out the words "exorcismus" and "rebaptismus." Certainly it seems like the reader was considering proposed treatments for the accused or their victims.  Whether or not they bought in, it's hard to say.

To look at the Malleus Maleficarum yourself, request Incunabula 170.  

Bloodletting for a Dim Future

When people think of the invention of moveable type and the start of commercial printing in the West, their minds usually go to monumental works like the Gutenberg Bible or the Nuremberg Chronicle, but the bread and butter for printers was in the production of more ephemeral documents. Single sheet broadsides far outnumbered weighty tomes, they just aren't the things that survived. One of the more common printing jobs was almanacs--handy guides that you could pin up on wall and then toss out at the end of the year. But these almanacs were not for farmers planning when to bring in the crops, they were usually more focused on a harvest of blood.

You see, medical bloodletting was an art directly tied to the astrological calendar and the movement of the planets. You couldn't just bleed someone any old time you felt like it--the stars had to align! This German almanac from 1484 gives you all the details. Just the top fourth of the page was a calendar. The rest prescribed the best times to let blood.

While the bleeding might help you keep healthy this year, things didn't look so good in the long run. Saturn and Jupiter were in an unusual alignment, an omen for sixty years of pestilence, wars and even the birth of a false prophet. Actually, thinking about that era, it was probably a pretty safe bet...

To see it, come to Rauner and ask for Incunabula 171.

Exhibit: "From Vision to Reality: The Appalachian Trail from Then to Now"

One hundred years ago, the first Appalachian Trail Conference was convened by the Federated Societies on Planning and Parks in Washington DC. According to the proceedings, the goal was to organize a "body of workers" to complete the construction of the Appalachian Trail. During the meeting, the Appalachian Trail Conference, later known as the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), was made a permanent body. Its purpose? To guide the completion and continuing care of the Appalachian Trail, an idealistic dream of Benton MacKaye in 1921 that had now become an improbable reality: 2,000 miles of nature trail that stretched across fourteen states as it hugged the Appalachian mountain range from Georgia to Maine. Over the last century, the ATC has provided stable leadership and a rallying point for those who agreed and still agree with MacKaye's long-held conviction that time spent in the outdoors could serve as a "sanctuary and a refuge from the scramble of everyday worldly commercial life".

"From Vision to Reality: The Appalachian Trail from Then to Now" looks back at the beginnings of both the AT and the ATC, explores the growth and change that have occurred along the Trail over the last one hundred years, and highlights the commitment and accomplishments of the Dartmouth Outing Club, one of many volunteer organizations that continue to keep the dream of a shared outdoors alive by protecting their portion of the Trail.

The exhibit will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries in Webster Hall from September 15th through December 12th, 2025. It was curated by Dakota Jackson, Senior Director of Visitor Engagement at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and Morgan Swan, Special Collections Librarian for Teaching and Scholarly Engagement at Dartmouth Libraries, with help from Kim Wheeler, Research & Learning Librarian at Dartmouth Libraries. The poster was designed by Max Seidman, Exhibits and Graphic Arts Designer at Dartmouth Libraries.

Censoring the Censor

 Anthony Comstock was a man with an obsession and that obsession was vice. He started the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (N.Y.S.S.V.) in 1873, which acted more or less as you might guess, lobbying for laws that would enforce a specific moral code for the public and then making sure that code was followed. Not long afterwards, the Comstock Act was passed, which made it explicitly illegal to distribute obscene matter via the U.S. postal service or other carriers. Comstock himself had a broad view of what should be considered obscene and so his targets ranged from literary works like The Decameron to nude paintings like Chabas' "September Morn" to even medical texts with remote references to sexuality and sexual health. During his career, he claimed to have arrested at least 3,800 people and to have driven at least fifteen to suicide.

Why are we bringing up such a truly unpleasant man, who saw immorality everywhere and thought that the arts were often just a cover for filth that would corrupt the public? Well, it's because we have a letter of his in the collections. In it, he addresses the Brooklyn Eagle, a daily newspaper which ran from 1841 to 1955, which apparently ran a piece stating that Comstock considered himself entitled to open people's mail and to enter the houses of citizens in the course of his duties. This seems to have made Comstock rather mad and, as this letter looks like a draft rather than a final product, we can see him self-censoring his cattier remarks. A digression is struck out in which he asks if there has been any change in management at the Eagle, as has the inquiry "Now sir, why cannot I be accorded fair play in your paper?" About a quarter of the text ends up being crossed out.

He leaves in his assertion that the editor will surely agree that "we have enough impure and unclean men and women at the present time" and that it is "not improper to repress, and keep from debauching the minds of the children" the materials which make them unclean. And the letter itself is typed on the N.Y.S.S.V. letterhead which presents an image summarizing his general position tidily: a man in simple clothes, being handcuffed and led away while another, dressed as a gentleman, tosses books into a fire.

To read Comstock's drafted letter, ask for Mss 886271.  

  

Will that be Cash or Beef?

When Hanover decided to erect a new meeting-house in 1794 it needed to find a way to pay for it. The meeting-house would serve many uses: a church, a place for important speakers visiting town, a venue for political debate. It was to be the focal point for the life of the town separate from the College that had come to dominate. In classic New England fashion, they allowed select pews to be claimed for a set amount of money or goods. Pledging to purchase a pew would let you assert your family's status at every church service and every town event.

What struck us were the options for how to express your support. Cash was always welcome but, if you were a person with forested land, you could also pay with lumber or, if you were without means, each day's labor on the building went into your account. And, well naturally, there was the option to pay with commodities: beef, pork, and grain were welcome payment. This broadside issued in 1794 by Dartmouth's first librarian, Bezaleel Woodward (who was on the select board at the time) spells out the payment options so Hanover's citizens could pledge their resources. And a select few could claim their pews of distinction.

To see it, ask for Broadside 001501.

Learning to Lead

On June 8, 1863, concerned members of Philadelphia's Union League gathered to listen to a talk by George L. Stearns, an abolitionist and leading figure in the North's efforts to recruit Black soldiers. The Confederate Army was growing closer and closer to the "Birthplace of America", and Stearns emphasized the need for Black citizens to bolster the ranks of the Union Army. His words found purchase with the well-to-do members of the League, who immediately gave their support for the formation of three Black regiments in Pennsylvania. The next challenge was to find qualified white officers to train and lead these troops; the predominant belief was that these new recruits would require leaders of exceptional sensitivity and intelligence because of their lived experience of Southern and Northern racism and oppression.

Despite this concern about emotional intelligence, the selection board failed 47% of the applicants for the officer positions because of their lack of a modicum of training in tactics and military logistics. The fix, as the board saw it, was the establishment of the Free Military School for Applicants  for Commands of Colored Troops in December 1863. The Free Military School was not meant to mirror West Point, but instead to 'teach to the test' so that applicants who had previously failed the selection board review process would be equipped with the military training necessary for them to pass a second attempt. By March 1864, the School had received 1,691 applications and accepted 843 of the candidates; 422 of those applicants actually attended the school. Although there were some initial successes, the School was shuttered after only a year of existence. The core issue for its dissolution was ongoing drama that centered on Thomas Webster, the chair of the school's Supervisory Committee, and his disagreements with both the War Department and his own Committee members.

Here at Rauner, we have a copy of the pamphlet that was printed in December of 1863 to solicit applications to the Free Military School. The document was written by Thomas Webster and lists the qualifications necessary for application, including the following crystallization of the Selection Committee's core ethos: "No talents, no zeal, no sympathy for the colored race, unless attended with military knowledge, and power to command men in battle, can avail; and no amount of presence or number of testimonials of influential friends will answer the purpose; the applicant must give reasonable evidence of his ability to command."

To see our copy, request Rare E540 .N3 F72 1863 online and then come to Rauner.

Two Shootings, One Mistake: The Cost of Leniency in Dartmouth’s Boom Boom Lodge Debacle

Colloquially known as the Boom Boom Lodge incident, the fatal shooting of graduating student Joseph Maroney in 1920 unsettled Dartmouth College in ways that administrators would have preferred to avoid. From the obvious displeasure of the student body to the criticism in the news to even some scrutiny from the government, the whole debacle was pleasant for none.  The shooter, Albert Meads, was hardly an unknown given he had previously been involved in the supposedly accidental death of Norman F. Arnold in 1916, a casual “misfiring” of a gun in the dorm halls they said. Accounts of the 1920 incident, both in Dartmouth histories and in contemporary press coverage though, simplified the Maroney shooting into a quarrel over liquor prices in the Prohibition era. This neat framing conveniently leaves out the awkward fact that Maroney had been sober for more than a year and that there was no grand thief-in-the-night tale. The more uncomfortable part of this story concerns not just the tragedy of 1920, but Dartmouth’s earlier decision to allow Meads back on campus after Arnold’s death, which, in hindsight, reads as a heavily misjudged decision. 

After Maroney’s death, correspondence between President Ernest Martin Hopkins and former faculty member Frederick Adler revealed how uneasy many already were about Meads’ presence. Adler, who had taught Meads himself, condemned Meads’ character in no uncertain terms, and Hopkins admitted that it was “a pity beyond measure that Meads should ever have returned to the College campus.” He assured Adler that Dartmouth would take “no action, direct or indirect, to temper the law’s course in this matter.” Hopkins’ comments acknowledge, if indirectly, that Meads’ readmission had been an error and perhaps one that now looked far more consequential than it had in 1916. More than that however, it strikes one as quite odd that, in opposition to the past, the law would operate as per normal and perhaps there was more than meets the eye to how Hopkins handled the first shooting.

The surviving correspondence on the case is equally notable for how much energy was devoted to Dartmouth’s public image. From friends, alumni, and occasional influential onlookers, Hopkins received a steady stream of offers of legal advice, reassurance about alumni opinion, suggestions on how to manage rumors about alcohol on campus, and more than a few invites to what could be viewed as emotional-support-and-friendly-catch-up golf. In a letter to the Associated Press, he expressed reluctance to make any public statement unless it was necessary to protect Maroney’s reputation, separating Dartmouth as an institution from Meads as an individual. “Among the exceptions there will be men potentially dangerous to the welfare and reputation of the group as a whole,” he wrote.

Even in 1920 though, some observers accused the college of mishandling the situation. One letter claimed that Dartmouth had sided with Maroney because of his “popularity”, using Meads as a convenient scapegoat and expediting his removal from campus before commencement. Hopkins, in private, rejected the idea, insisting that Meads had already benefited from extraordinary leniency after the Arnold shooting but did concede that perhaps it was a mistake to have let Meads roam free. His tendency to bootleg alcohol for instance, was a well known campus and administrative fact. 

What emerges from this all is a picture of an administration attempting to balance accountability with the instinct for institutional self-preservation. The Maroney case prompts a few difficult questions: Why was someone who killed another student, accidental or not, allowed to return to campus with little supervision? How much weight did Dartmouth place on its reputation compared to student safety? More than a century later, those questions still feel uncomfortably familiar, especially following the events of the past year. As such, Dartmouth’s 1920 tragedy remains more than just a curious episode of college lore; it serves as a reminder of how institutions manage crises. Unfortunately for the colleges, it's not always with the clarity or foresight they would like or wish to claim.

To read this and more correspondence about the Meads-Maroney shooting, request DP-11, box 6766, folder 17 at Rauner Library.

Posted for Erica Mao '28, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 summer 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.

Sally Drew Hall: "One of Dartmouth’s Greatest Ladies of All Time"

For nearly a century, generations of Dartmouth students have turned to the college’s infirmary, known as Dick’s House, for first aid and medical care. Yet few realize that this enduring institution was born not merely out of necessity, but as a lasting testament to the profound love and devotion a mother had for her son. That mother was Sally Drew Hall and it was her perseverance, generosity, and unwavering dedication in the face of heartbreaking tragedy that gave rise to what we now know as Dick’s House.

Throughout her life, Sarah “Sally” Drew Hall was devoted to serving the many communities she belonged to. She served as a trustee of her alma mater, Radcliffe College, as well as Boston Children’s Hospital. Beyond her institutional roles, she was also an active member of the League of Women Voters and a dedicated supporter of the American Red Cross.

But it was the sudden and tragic death of her son, Richard “Dick” Hall, in 1924 that would inspire her most enduring act of philanthropy. Dick died of polio in 1924 during his sophomore year at Dartmouth. At the time, the college lacked proper on-campus medical care, and Dick passed away far from his family in a local hospital.

In the midst of overwhelming grief, Sally and her husband, Edward K. Hall (Dartmouth Class of 1892), resolved that no other Dartmouth student should have to endure serious illness without the comfort of home and family nearby. They donated $300,000 (around $5.7 million today) to create that home and worked hand in hand with the college, sharing ideas and overseeing the project to ensure it reflected their vision.

In 1927, the year Dick was meant to graduate, Dick’s House was completed and opened its doors. Throughout its planning and construction, Sally worked closely with the architect she selected, Jens Larson, to ensure the building felt more like a residence than a hospital. She insisted on including guest rooms so that family members could stay with ill students and advocated for the hiring of a House Mother, so there would always be a comforting presence within its walls.

Once construction was complete and attention turned to the interiors, Sally truly came into her own. With a deep sense of purpose and an eye for warmth and beauty, she immersed herself in designing a space that was both functional and comforting. Her notebook (now preserved in the Rauner Special Collections Library) contains detailed plans for each room, along with swatches of wallpaper, paint samples, and handwritten notes. These materials reflect not only her aesthetic sensibilities but also her profound dedication to making Dick’s House feel less like a hospital and more like a true home.

The final cornerstone of Dick’s House was placed during a special ceremony attended by members of the Class of 1927. At the event, Sally and Edward Hall shared their vision for the building:

“This House will serve as an infirmary for Dartmouth students who are sick, as a place of recuperation for those who simply need rest and a bit of care, and for all who sojourn within its walls we hope that it will serve as a home.”

Just five years later, in 1932, Edward Hall passed away. Sally continued to oversee Dick’s House with unwavering devotion, receiving frequent letters of gratitude from students who had stayed there. In one of her own letters, she responded to a student:

“If Dick’s House has served you well both physically and spiritually, it has once more fulfilled its highest purpose and I am happy indeed.”

In 1947, twenty years after Dick’s House first opened, Sally was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Dartmouth College at the commencement of the Class of 1947. Among the seven recipients that year, she was the only woman. In presenting the degree, President John Sloan Dickey called her “one of Dartmouth’s greatest ladies of all time” and praised her unrelenting commitment to the care of students through Dick’s House. Fittingly, Dickey himself would receive hospice care and pass away at Dick’s House more than four decades later.

When Sally passed away in 1949, she ensured the continued care of Dick’s House by establishing the Sally and Edward K. Hall Fund, overseen by her daughter, Dorothy Leavitt. The fund was created specifically to preserve the home-like atmosphere she had so carefully crafted from the wallpaper and furniture to the comforting library still intact today. Her son’s portrait still hangs in the lounge, and the quiet warmth she instilled in every room continues to embrace each student who walks through its doors.

Though Sally Hall was formally recognized with an honorary degree, her letters make it clear that her greatest reward was knowing that, thanks to her, generations of Dartmouth students, just like her son, would find rest, healing, and comfort in the house.

To see Sally Drew Hall's design plans for Dick's House, request MS-1370. Her correspondence can be found in Mss 003179 and ML-33, boxes 8, 9, and 10.

Posted for Caítlin Layhe Nugent '25, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 summer 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.

New York, Boston, and Chicago in Costa Rica? Sounds Bananas!

Every day, when you walk into the ‘53 Commons Dining Hall — locally known as FOCO — or any other dining location at Dartmouth, you can pick one out of three choices of fruit: apples, oranges, or bananas. The latter, in particular, are displayed in an array of baskets of their own, for you to select the one you desire. The variety extends not only to the state of ripeness, but also to the brand. At least at FOCO, Dartmouth alternates between Dole and Chiquita bananas, offering one brand on some days and the other on the next.

Dartmouth’s connections to these fruits extend beyond their availability within dining locations. Victor Cutter, one of the college's beloved Trustees and Alumni, was president of the United Fruit Company, the corporation that became Chiquita. Cutter, a Dartmouth ‘03 and Tuck ‘04, took a job as a timekeeper for the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica shortly after graduating. He quickly began to rise within the ranks of the Company, landing a promotion that placed him as the superintendent of the Costa Rican Zent division, located in the Province of Limón.

The United Fruit Company is notoriously known for its monopolistic and exploitative operations in Latin America. The company left behind a legacy of environmental degradation, labor abuses, and political interference in the region, as the United States profited at the expense of local workers and governments. Cutter’s personal collection, housed at Rauner, is firsthand evidence of such.

One compelling artifact is a leather-bound collection of maps of the UFCO’s properties in Costa Rica, which Cutter saved from his time as superintendent in Costa Rica, carefully preserved for around a century. These maps are detailed cartographic records of United Fruit’s landholdings in the country, with delineations of the different farms, existing railroad crossings, and even projected railroad lines, as the company sought to tighten its grip on Central American transportation networks.

Strikingly, individual farms are labeled New York, Boston, and Chicago—names of U.S. cities imposed onto a foreign land. This naming was not merely administrative. It reflects a deeper form of colonial capitalist thinking: that Costa Rica could be transformed into an extension of U.S. commercial and cultural space. The land was not only used, but renamed, repurposed, and reimagined to serve corporate interests.

The railroad system, in particular, was a key tool of United Fruit’s monopoly. In Costa Rica, as in other countries where it operated, the company owned and controlled the very infrastructure that allowed bananas to be exported, often to the detriment of national sovereignty. Railways were designed not to connect Costa Rican communities, but to move bananas efficiently from the plantation to the port.

To this day, that legacy of corporate colonialism remains visible. Incredibly, some locations in Costa Rica still bear the names given to UFC-owned farms. Boston and New York remain identifiable on modern maps of the Limón region, corresponding precisely to locations recorded in United Fruit’s internal documents. The names that once served as internal waypoints for corporate logistics have, in some cases, become permanent fixtures of local geography—reminders of a time when a U.S. company could redraw the map of a sovereign nation to mirror its own.

Cutter's maps of Boston Farm and New York farm overlaid onto the modern Google Maps satellite image. The corresponding areas are still labeled "Boston" and "Nueva York."

To take a look at these maps, come to Rauner and request MS-63, Box 2, Folder 7, or see what else is in Victor Cutter's papers.

Posted for Alejandra Sequeira Argüello '27, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2025 summer 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.

Summer Exhibit: Let the Old Traditions Fail

Rauner's current exhibit, "Let the Old Traditions Fail: Persistence of Feminist and Queer Life At Dartmouth in the Twentieth Century" was designed by the students in Professor Matthew Ritger’s ENGL 61.03/WGSS 66.20 class, "Early Modern Literature and the History of Sexuality." Throughout the quarter, the students explored academic debates over the history of sex and gender, the relationship between identity formation and sexual orientation, and the difference between representations of these issues in literary/dramatic texts and legal/institutional archives. The course was focused on early modern England - the age of writers such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Margaret Cavendish, and Katherine Philips. In their exhibit, the students dove into Dartmouth's own archives to see how these dynamics and debates manifested in a different time and place, and in a unique institutional archive.

As the student curators explored the history of feminist campus publications such as Spare Rib and Inner Bitch, or Dartmouth's history of cross-dressed performance before coeducation, or the institutional panic in the face of a growing community of queer students at Dartmouth in the 1920s, they found striking continuities, stark differences, and many fascinating stories. Throughout the records of twentieth century Dartmouth, there remains evidence of the close relationship between literature, drama, and daring acts of self-expression that challenged the "old traditions" of gender and sexuality and defied the narrow definition of "the Dartmouth man" still retained by many aspects of campus culture. Despite facing expulsion and violent threats of repression from so many directions, queer and feminist life has persisted on campus in unexpected ways.

This exhibit is on display from July 9th through September during the Summer 2025 term.

Bad Art on the Cutting Room Floor

We are always touting our beautiful books--so important and culturally significant!--but this summer we are working with a class called "Baaaaad French" and another one called "Bad Art!" We have so much to offer it is dizzying! We have books that have been banned for daring to suggest the earth is not the center of the universe; others that challenged the social mores of the day to such an extent that they were deemed pornography; others that were cheaply printed for a mass market that the cultural elite suspected of being, well, too damn dumb to deserve to read; and many books with lots of naughty bits.

We have so much that not everything we selected could make the final cut to be used in class. Case in point, Did She Fall?, by Dartmouth's own Thorne Smith. The book was marketed to titillate. Its racy pulp cover shows our heroine, Emily-Jane, practically falling out of her dress engaged in a passionate kiss, but the blurbs on the back were what caught our eye: "She could have given lessons to Lolita," and "When she was bad, she was very, very bad, and when she was good, she was luscious until somebody killer her, or Did She Fall?"

That one didn't make it into the class, but you'll be happy to know that Lolita did!

To find out if bad, bad Emily-Jane fell, ask for Alumni S662dia.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into Rauner...

This month we have a new single-case exhibit installed at Rauner Library, one appropriate to the summer and especially to this coming Fourth of July weekend. Since the movie Jaws just turned 50, we decided to do a survey of sharks and shark attacks in the collections.

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. 

The Angling Nudist

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.

Among the many collections we acquired was a 96-box collection containing Stefansson's personal and professional correspondence over a 67-year period. We are always finding new gems within these boxes, and this week turned up another winner. On May 28 of 1935, Stefansson received an unsolicited request from Henry S. Huntington, the brother of an acquaintance. In it, Huntington says that he would like to come over and talk with Stefansson about "the Eskimos from the 'nudist' angle". After a period of profound silence, Stefansson eventually responded to Huntington on June 14th, admitting that the idea of  "Eskimos from the nudist angle" had "somewhat startled" him and was likely the reason that he had taken so long to reply.

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.

Having a Ball (but No Dancing!)

Starting sometime in the late 1700s, the graduating class threw a ball after commencement. The earliest ticket we have is from 1792. The balls began at 6:00pm in the evening after commencement ceremonies. Young ladies from the community were invited to enjoy what looks like a somewhat staid reception with the students. But, as will happen when young celebrants gather, dancing sometimes broke out. Oh dear, that is not right!

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."

So, everyone enjoy the Commencement festivities this weekend, and, yeah, it's okay to dance.

To see the tickets ask for the "Commencement Ball--Tickets" vertical file. Barstow's letter is MS 867420.1.

Dolphins, octopi, and bishop fish

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.

Um, I have a lot going on that week...

Many people dream of a hand-delivered official summons from the Queen for a private appointment. Sounds pretty exciting, but each of the ten nobles summoned with this letter refused to attend on the appointed date. Some of them wouldn't even allow Lord Paget, Keeper of the Privy Seal, anywhere near them to deliver the invitation. You see, this particular letter was from Mary Tudor to a group of English nobles living in exile in 1556. They had fled their home county when Mary assumed the throne. All of them had helped either Henry VIII or Edward VI bring about the English Reformation, and many had received lands from Henry when he dissolved the monasteries as reward for their loyalty and support.

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.

We are still cataloging the letter, but we will put a link here when it is ready. It pairs nicely with our 1563 first edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs--just ask for Presses D334f.

Multiculturalism and Curriculum Reform at Dartmouth

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.

To Those Who See

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.

Mitten: It's a Verb Too!

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."

Wait, how'd that happen? Well, Rauner maintains a collection of the class reports, class histories, and reunion books of each graduating class. It was while thumbing through the "Freshman History" of Flint's Class of 1880 that our intrepid archivist came across the following: "A certain young lady of Hanover was heard to remark, 'I have mittened Service, Jake, the Quarter, and in fact I have mittened nearly half the Freshman class.' That is hard on Balaam, for they do say that next to studying he hates women above all things. She didn't mitten Jake the night he walked her home away from the Senior." 

Having never seen "mitten" used as a verb, our archivist was intrigued. "Mittening" seemed to relate to courting practices, but its exact meaning remained unclear. Luckily, another source at Rauner provided a useful clue. In the poem "To Phyllis" (from the volume Echoes from the Sabine Farm), Eugene Field wrote the following:

"Hoc docet (as you must agree)
‘Tis meet that Phyllis should discover
A wisdom in preferring me,
And mittening every other lover."

Mittening, then, meant the opposite of desiring a lover–it meant rejecting them. So the "certain young lady of Hanover" who bragged about mittening half the freshmen in the Class of 1880 was trumpeting the number of men whose overtures she had denied.

But why did mittens, of all things, signify rejection? The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1897) enlightens us: "To get the mitten, to receive only the mitten, instead of the hand; be refused as a lover" (p. 3805).

Thoroughly delighted by this unexpected etymological excursion, our archivist returned to the original subject of her research.

If you're interested in Thomas Flint's notebook, which has rules relating to senior societies at Dartmouth, request Codex 003539 online and then stop by!

Oh, the Glory of it All!

When the second edition of The American Gazetteer came out in London in 1762, it was a pretty quiet event. There was nothing really new, just a three-volume compendium of statistics, descriptions of fortifications, notes on natural and political history, some nice maps, and other factual tidbits concerning the new world. But somehow it inspired an Italian printer who decided it was worth translating and embellishing. Suddenly it was a lavish production perfect for the arm-chair colonialist. From the comfort of a nice Italian villa, a gentleman could tour the Americas in all of their glory.

It is worth your time to stop by and take a look--and then think about how the Italians were thinking about the English thinking about the Americas! Ask for Il Gazzettiere Americano, Rare E14 .A54 1763. 

Flypaper

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.