Days of Caring

We have all been through a lot and the campus community is shaken. This Friday, October 21st, has been designated a Day of Caring. Classes are canceled, the Library is operating on skeletal staffing, and many campus services are curtailed to give everyone an opportunity to step back and take care of themselves.

Dartmouth has seen tough times before. To mark the day, two students, Sabrina Eager '23, and Kira Parrish-Penny '24, looked back through the archives to find other instances where the Dartmouth community came together after a tragedy with a compassionate response that made the campus a better place: the establishment of Dick's House in 1927; the response to the shootings at Kent State in 1970; and the memorial tributes to Karen Wetterhahn after her death in 1997. Sabrina and Kira have put together a pop-up exhibit that we will have out on Friday the 21st from 10:00-3:00 in our reading room. Please stop by.

 

New Exhibit: "Indigenizing an Institution"

On Monday, October 10, 2022, students belonging to the group Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD) hosted a gathering on The Green in honor of Indigenous People's Day. Members of NAD distributed signs, read speeches, and presented poems to the 150+ individuals in attendance. The mood was somber, as students reflected on the historical oppression of Indigenous peoples as well as modern forms of violence enacted against their communities. However, the event was also celebratory, as members of NAD, or "NADs", emphasized the resilience of Indigenous peoples and their distinct cultural practices. 

The style of assembly was not unique - in fact, Native students have orchestrated numerous events with the objective of raising awareness for Indigenous issues over the decades. Specifically, the past 50 years have witnessed NADs utilize petitions, demonstrations, symposiums, and more to share their concerns with others and advocate for pan-Indian causes. Commonly, such events were intended to counteract pervasive and harmful imagery, language, or "traditions" on campus related to Native representation. in other instances, such as the protests against Dartmouth's controversial investment in Hydro-Quebec, the tenacity of NADs ultimately benefited others. 

Despite The College's foundational promise to educate Native youth, such affairs were neglected by the school for nearly 200 years, cultivating an environment that was hostile towards Indigenous peoples. By 1970, only nineteen Native students had graduated from Dartmouth, which likely contributed to the general disregard for Indigenous peoples and customs by others on campus. However, the re-dedication of the institution's commitment to instruct Native pupils occurred around this period, precipitating record numbers of Indigenous students matriculating at the college. In recent years, Indigenous voices (with the assistance of their allies) have been instrumental in producing positive change at Dartmouth, especially as it pertains to the Native community. 

Our Lathem Special Collections Fellow, Sydnie Ziegler '22, has an exhibit called "Indigenizing an Institution," which aims to showcase the actions and achievements of Indigenous student advocacy since the 70s. It will remain on display in the Rauner Library foyer from October 10th through the end of November (Native American Heritage Month).

The Art of Gunboat Diplomacy

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Japanese waters with an impressive display of force. Four gunboats and a crew of soldiers demanded that Japan end its centuries-long isolation and open its borders to trade with the United States. It was a show of imperialist-minded moxie that rattled Japan.

But there was also a fascination with these "Black Ships" and the odd manners, uniforms, and customs of the foreign power docked just off the coast, and a desire to spread the news of the wondrous visitation attracted Japanese artists. They created a series of "Black Ship Scrolls," long hand painted scrolls that depicted Commodore Perry's uninvited visit to Japan.

We are fortunate to have one of these scrolls. It is an impressive sight--to us perhaps more impressive than Perry's gunships. The scroll is forty-six feet long on fine Japanese paper. The most stunning panel shows the ships at mooring, but the drawings of the soldiers and their uniforms show the exoticism of these foreign visitors. It is an intriguing artifact of a critical moment in Japanese and American history, where the United States flaunted its naval power to gain the concessions it wanted and Japan unwillingly began to open itself to the world.

To see all forty-six feet, ask for Codex MS 003505.

Exhibit: A Fighting Tradition

The Dartmouth College community has been involved in every one of the country's major military engagements, from as far back as the Revolutionary War all the way up to the recent conflicts in the Middle East. For centuries, Dartmouth men and women have carried on a storied tradition of valiant wartime service to the United States of America, serving all around the globe and in all branches of the military.

During the 2022 fall term, an exhibit curated by Ryan Irving '24, current president of the Student Veterans Association, explores this tradition. "A Fighting Tradition: Dartmouth in American Wars" will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries until December 3rd.

As Irving's exhibit illustrates, this tradition has evolved over the years, as has the college's identity and the nature of its student body. In the first decade of Dartmouth's existence, its connection to war was primarily through alumni involvement. Over the course of the next two centuries, the college's participation in war efforts grew in scope and variety: it saw the creation of student military societies, facilitated the training of soldiers on campus, sponsored military support services, and allowed students to put their college years on pause to enlist.

National unrest over the country's involvement in the Vietnam War was reflected on campus by the formal elimination of ROTC sponsorship due in part to student protest. However, in the early years of James Wright's presidency, and because his influence at a national level, Dartmouth was afforded the opportunity to support the war effort in a new way: by welcoming veterans to campus as students, along with the wealth of experience and diversity that they brought with them.

To see the exhibit while it's on display, come by Webster Hall and visit the exhibit space on our mezzanine. To read more about the exhibit online, visit its website.

Representing Lust (and Chastity!)

The use of emblems was popular during the Baroque time period in Italy and Europe in general, serving as a guide and source of inspiration for artists, poets, and sculptors when they were looking to creatively represent virtues, ideas, or even animals.

Cesare Ripa’s Noua Iconologia, printed in 1618, takes an encyclopedia-like format, alphabetically categorizing his emblems in multiple sections: Main Images (in 3 parts), More Notable Things, Animals, Colors and Metals, Gestures and the Human Body, Artificial Objects, Fish, and Plants. With each emblem description, Ripa also includes allegorical interpretations and references famous philosophers and writers of the time, whose interpretations of a particular object or virtue influenced his depiction of it.

Take the examples of Lust (Libidine) and Chastity (Castità). Ripa writes that the woman that symbolizes Chastity in his emblem dresses in white to represent “the purity of the spirit, which maintains this virtue” (“Vestesi questa donna di bianco per rappresentare la purità dell'animo, che mantiene questa virtù.” (77).) and we see an association of colors with the value of chastity, but even more importantly, there is a suggestion that chastity leads to strength and truthfulness of character, as though someone who isn’t chaste is deceitful. Similarly, the emblem of Lust uses a particularly large amount of animal imagery, from beaks to panthers, all of which Ripa says symbolize lust, whose beauty “devours time, money, fame, body, and soul and spits it out becoming a slave to sin and the devil” (“Il che molto è simile alla Libidine, la quale con la bellezza ci lusinga, e tira, poi ci divora, perché ci consuma il tempo, il dannaro, la fama, il corpo, e l'anima istessa ci macchia, e ci avvilisce, facendola serva del peccato, e del demonio.” (312)). This, therefore, adds an element not just of deception, but of monstrosity and of sin, bringing in a religious element as well. Lust, according to Ripa, derives in women not even solely on a sexual level but also on the pursuit of fame and money.

All of this is to say that the use of emblems both had an impact on the time period’s interpretations of virtues, people, and things in the moment, as well as a longer lasting impact when the allegorical interpretation of these virtues are still seen in the present day depictions of values and morality.

To explore the woodcuts of Lust, Chastity, and many more, come to Special Collections and ask to see Rare N7740.R52 1618.

This post was originally written by Diana Alvarado '22 for Nancy Canepa's Italian 23 class, "17th and 18th Century Italian Literature".

New Mini-Exhibit: The Early African American Novel

We have a new exhibit on display in our foyer: The Early African American Novel. Literature written by African American authors expanded enormously during the 19th century. Autobiographical narratives of enslavement, such as Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Harriet Jacobs's 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were particularly prominent and influential to the rhetoric of abolition.

At the same time, the African American Novel was developing. This nascent genre dealt with many of the same topics as the autobiographical narrative - such as enslavement, escape, and identity - but in a different literary medium and through a different lens. We've put together a selection of five early works by African American novelists, dating from the mid-1800s to the turn of the century, each important to the growth of that literary tradition. 

Come by the Rauner this September to see the following works on display: William Wells Brown's Clotelle; or, The Colored Heroine: A Tale of the Southern States, Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends, Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South, and Charles W. Chestnutt's The House Behind the Cedars.

Freud and Closing Frontiers

Eighty-three years ago this month Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist known globally for the foundation of psychoanalysis, died in London of oral cancer that had first appeared as a benign tumor on his jaw. Freud had been initially diagnosed with the disease in 1923, which was likely a result of his incessant cigar smoking. His earnest desire was to die in Vienna, where he had lived for most of his life after relocating there with his family at the age of four. Because of this, Freud narrowly escaped capture and confinement by the Nazis in 1938. His sons, who had previously lived in Berlin, fled to England and France in 1933, while his daughter Anna stayed in Vienna with him and his wife Martha.

In March 1938, Hitler arrived in Vienna. Soon after, Freud's house and office were ransacked, his passport was confiscated and Anna was taken in for interrogation by the Gestapo. After a significant amount of international pressure, the Freuds were allowed to leave Austria for London in June of 1938. Four of Freud's sisters were not so lucky; unable to secure exit visas, one sister died in the Theresienstadt ghetto and the remaining three were put to death at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland.

Rumors about the fate of the Freuds spread quickly during the initial days of the Nazi's Austrian occupation, to such an extent that Wilhelm Stekel, one of his former pupils, wrote to a Dr. L. J. London in New Hampshire to ask if he had heard the news about Freud's imprisonment. The real purpose of the letter, however, was to beg London to send him an invitation to come to New Hampshire under the pretenses of participating a medical conference. As Stekel says in his letter, "Please act as quickly as possible because frontiers could be closed at any time."

To see this letter, and correspondence from other noteworthy psychoanalysts like Carl Jung or Fritz Wittels, come to Special Collections and ask to see the L. J. London Papers (MS-1062).