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!