Special Collections Research Center

TOMÁŠ GARRIGUE MASARYK AND CHICAGO

June Pachuta Farris, Bibliographer for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at Regenstein Library, has curated an exhibition highlighting the connections between Tomáš Masaryk and the University of Chicago.  Featuring items from Special Collections as well as the University Library's general book stacks, the exhibit is currently on view on the Second Floor Reading Room of Regenstein Library. A display case at the entrance to the second floor contains items to view, as does a wall case  with additional Masaryk material.

Image from Archival Photographic Files, Series II, Buildings and Grounds, apf2-07287

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was born in Hodonín, Moravia, in 1850, studied philosophy in Leipzig and
Vienna, becoming an illustrious and controversial professor at Charles University in Prague. The years leading up to World War I were filled with intense activity as he simultaneously pursued both a political and scholarly career, engaged in writing, editing and publishing, lecturing at home and abroad, as well serving in parliament and being actively involved in many time-consuming social controversies. This melding of the academic, social, cultural, religious and political was to continue throughout Masaryk's life, so that even the briefest summary of his achievements takes on mythic proportions, followed by an endless list of descriptors needed to reflect his many interests and concerns--he was a philosopher, thinker and critic, an educator and statesman and even "a cultural force". As well as being called an academic iconoclast, he has been described as a champion of democracy, a political dissenter, a friend of the Slovaks, a foe of anti-Semitism, a religious heretic, a defender of women's rights, an arch-critic of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy, and an advocate of Czech independence. Certainly, as the first president of the new country of Czechoslovakia (1918-1935), the title of President-Liberator [President-Osvoboditel] will always be at the top of any such list.

Among his many trips abroad, visits to Chicago in 1902, 1907 and 1918 were important in cementing the very strong and affectionate ties between Chicago's large Czech-American and Slovak-American population with Czechoslovakia and all that it would face in the 90 years since its creation as an independent state. Among those bonds are those that link Professor Masaryk to the University of Chicago, where, in the summer of 1902, he presented a series of 13 lectures on Czech Literature, History and Culture. Included in this exhibit are several letters of Masaryk housed in Special Collections, the University's first President, William Rainey Harper, and Charles Crane, a guiding force in bringing Masaryk to campus. The University's Masaryk Club, founded in 1947, continued to honor Masaryk in name and deed, by promulgating that combination of cultural, social and political activity which so distinguished his life.

Throughout the years, the wider Chicago community, admirers from every imaginable background, have also participated in events that have honored Masaryk's life and ideas, including the commissioning of the Masaryk Memorial, sculpted by Albin Polasek and dedicated in 1955, which stands at the far east end of the Midway Plaisance, in the midst of the University of Chicago campus (pictured above). 

The exhibit will run through August 2008. Additional events commemorating Masaryk's connection with the University include a ceremony to be held at 4:30 on May 13 at the Masaryk statue on the Midway Plaisance, followed by the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Lecture on Democracy, to be given by Madeleine Albright at Rockefeller Chapel at 5:00pm.

T. Kimball Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting Winners Announced

Aaron Vanides and Elizabeth Litchfield are the winners of the 18^th annual T. Kimball Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting. Vanides, winner of the second-year prize, was awarded $500 for his collection, “Into the Mists of the North: A Comparative collection of the Medieval Germanic Tradition and Its Modern Manifestations.” Litchfield received the $1,000 fourth-year prize for “A Library of Love: Challenging the Social Order One Couple (Or Threesome?) At a Time.” Fourth-year student Elizabeth Davidson received Honorable Mention for “Religion in Late Antique Egypt.”

Above: a selection of books from Elizabeth Litchfield’s collection

This year’s prize committee included Bradin Cormack, Associate Professor, Department of English and Director of the Nicholson Center for British Studies, University of Chicago; Brad Jonas, Powell’s Books Hyde Park and member of the University of Chicago Library Society Steering Committee; Alice Schreyer, Director, Special Collections Research Center; Sem Sutter, Assistant Library Director for Collections; and Erin Wonder, winner of the 2007 fourth-year prize for her collection, “Cultured Insolence: Wit in British Literature.”

In his application essay, Vanides explains that his collection began when he purchased a book as a 10^th-grade student in Menlo Park, California, that led to his learning Norwegian and a fascination with Germanic languages and culture. He also describes his trip to the Faroe Islands – to date “the height of my experience as a book-collector,” – where he acquired very hard-to-obtain books in this challenging language.

 

Above: books from the collection of Aaron Vanides

Elizabeth Litchfield started out as an avid reader of romance novels and discovered ,after she came to the University of Chicago and served as a reviewer for a romance community website, that she wanted to focus on “the very best of the genre.” Her collection is organized according to standard “sub-genres” such as African-American, Classics, Gothic, Graphic Novels, and Inspirational. Litchfield remains an enthusiastic fan of romance novels, but she also values their scholarly potential: “These books are windows into how communities of women are struggling with questions of identity and power under the cover of pink typeface and floral covers.” For Elizabeth Davidson, an early fascination with Gnosticism led her to study Coptic at Chicago; her collecting interests have expanded to include magic and early monastic life. On a visit to campus she purchased Bentley Layton’s The Gnostic Scriptures, and in the fall she will attend Yale, where Layton teaches, to study Ancient Christianity.

As diverse as these collections are in their subject focus, each one reflects the passion, resourcefulness and creativity of the collector who shaped it – and demonstrates that book collecting can be done on any budget! Congratulations to our winners.

 

Department of Botany Records

[Henry Chandler Cowles with students from his Field Ecology class in Garret Bay, WI]

The University of Chicago's Department of Botany was one of modern botany's most influential centers of research and teaching, and it was the center of Henry Chandler Cowles's development of the field of plant ecology. This newly processed archival collection includes correspondence and reports from the Office of the Chairman, as well as thousands of photographs documenting plant life, environmental phenomena, and departmental activities.

[Shore dune at the north end of Lake Leelanau, Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan]

The University of Chicago's leading role in scientific research was ensured in 1894 when President William Rainey Harper appointed John Merle Coulter (1851-1928) to lead the newly established Department of Botany. Coulter was a leading American botanist and a friend of Asa Gray (1810-1888), the famed Harvard botanist whose Manual of Botany and other texts dominated plant science in the United States.   

The University of Chicago Department of Botany quickly grew to become one of modern botany's most influential centers of research and teaching. By the 1930s, the roster of notable researchers serving on the Botany faculty included Henry C. Cowles and George D. Fuller in ecology, Charles J. Chamberlin in plant morphology, Merle C. Coulter in plant genetics, Adolf C. Noe in paleobotany, and Charles Barnes, William Crocker, and Charles A. Shull in plant physiology.

Many of the photographs in the Department of Botany Records were digitized for the Library of Congress website, American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936.

The finding aid for the collection is now online!

Yerkes Archives Now at SCRC

The Special Collections Research Center has completed the transfer of more than 500 linear feet of historical records from Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.  Opened in 1897, Yerkes was a center of University of Chicago astronomical and astrophysical research for more than a century.  Its 40-inch refracting telescope, which was first exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, is still in operation today and retains its original mount and mechanical systems.

The archival records of Yerkes Observatory document the scientific work of many notable astronomers associated with Yerkes, including George E. Hale, Edwin B. Frost, John A. Parkhurst, Edward E. Barnard, Edwin Hubble, George Van Biesbroeck, Otto Struve, Bengt Strőmgren, S. Chandrasekhar, William W. Morgan, and Gerard P. Kuiper.  In addition, Yerkes observation log books, a set of hundreds of chronologically arranged handwritten volumes, record the systematic observations of Yerkes astronomers from the 1890s onward.

Among the most significant visual materials in the Yerkes collection are more than 4,800 documentary photographs.  These depict the construction of the main observatory building and the installation of instruments, the work of astronomers and staff, astronomical expeditions to sites including Sumatra and Catalina Island, and important visitors, among them Albert Einstein.

As archival processing of the Yerkes historical records is completed, finding aids will be made available online through the Archives and Manuscripts Finding Aids database.  In addition, with funds from the John Crerar Foundation, the Library has launched an initiative to digitize 2,000 glass-plate photographs from Yerkes and add them to the Archival Photofiles web site, a digital collection that already contains several hundred images documenting to the founding and history of Yerkes Observatory.

2008/09 Research Fellowship Recipients Announced!

The University of Chicago Library awards a small number of short-term research fellowships each year to visiting researchers who live more than 100 miles from Chicago and whose project requires on-site consultation of materials in the Special Collections Research Center. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program. The award announcement is posted on the Special Collections web site during the summer for a February 15 application deadline.

Fellowship recipients for 2008-2009 are:

[Page from the catalogue of the Hengstenberg collection, MS987]

Matthias A. Deuschle, Theologische Fakultät Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, for “Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg and the religious conservatism in nineteenth century Prussia.” The personal library of Ernst Wilhelm Henstenberg (1802-1869) was purchased by the old  University of Chicago in 1869. Dr. Deuschle will do a critical assessment of the collection and examine individual books for annotations and marginalia that provide insights into Hengstenberg’s thought.

Meradith T. McMunn, Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, for “Reconstructing a Rose: The Codicology and Early Ownership History of  University of Chicago Library MSS 1380 and 393.” Professor McMunn will examine the recently-acquired 14^th-century manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose and Le Jeu des échecs moralisé, another 14^th-century manuscript in the Library’s collection, with which it was previously bound. The complete descriptions will form part of Professor McMunn’s study of all the extant illustrated manuscripts of Le Roman de la Rose, which she is preparing for publication.


[Photo of Sol Tax by Joan Eggan]

Nicole Hesberg, University of Florida, for “Gender and American Indian Urbanization in Chicago and Cleveland, 1946-1970.” Ms. Hesberg’s dissertation examines how American Indian families, communities, and identities were created during the post-World War II shift from rural to urban areas, using the lens of gender and focusing on two major Midwestern cities, Chicago and Cleveland. She will consult the papers of University of Chicago anthropologists Sol Tax and Fred Eggan and other related collections for her project.

Nadine Rinck, Johann Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany,for “Max Rheinstein: His Life and Work.” Ms. Rinck is a law student writing a doctoral thesis on Rheinstein (1899-1977), who came to the United States in 1933 and was a professor of law at the University of Chicago, 1935-1968. His generation of legal scholars was unique in achieving expertise in both the Continental-European legal system and the Anglo-American Common Law system. Ms. Rinck’s project draws on the Max Rheinstein papers for documentation of his biography and his influence in the fields of comparative law, especially the conflict of laws; the sociology of law, and family law.

Chicago Poetry Symposium 08

CHICAGO POETRY SYMPOSIUM 08

Featuring Michael Anania, Devin Johnston, and Michael O'Leary

Saturday, April 19, 1:00-5:00

Special Collections Research Center
The Joseph Regenstein Library
University of Chicago
1100 East 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Contact:

David Pavelich, Bibliographer for Modern and Contemporary Poetry
pavelich [at] uchicago.edu
773.834.4338

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Download the event poster! >>> Download ChicagoPoetrySymposium.pdf

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ABOUT

This event is free and open to the public.

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Chicago Library seeks to open a conversation on Chicago poetry, its past, present, and future.

The speakers for this first event are poet and educator Michael Anania, whose papers have recently been acquired by the library; and Devin Johnston and Michael O'Leary, editors and publishers of Flood Editions, whose editorial files have also recently been added to our collection. [For speakers' biographical details, see below.]

Held in the University of Chicago Library's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), the event highlights the SCRC's strong archival and book holdings in the history of Chicago poetry, including the papers of Harriet Monroe and her Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Paul Carroll, Chicago Review, and others. 

This event is supported in part by the William Martin Card Trust.

Persons with disabilities who require accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact David Pavelich, pavelich [at] uchicago.edu, 773.834.4338 for assistance.

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SCHEDULE

> 1:00-1:30: Opening remarks and welcome, David Pavelich, Bibliographer for Modern and Contemporary Poetry, University of Chicago Library

> 1:30-2:30: "Before the Flood", Devin Johnston and Michael O'Leary, Poets and co-directors of Flood Editions

> 2:30-3:00: Break and refreshments

> 3:00-4:00: "Poetry in/from/about Chicago", Michael Anania, Poet and Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Illinois-Chicago

> 4:00-5:00: Display from the Special Collections Research Center poetry manuscripts and books collections, and reception

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SPEAKERS:

Michael Anania is a poet, essayist and fiction writer. His published work includes numerous collections of poetry, among them Selected Poems (l994), In Natural Light (1999) and Heat Lines (2006), as well as a novel, The Red Menace, and a collection of essays, In Plain Sight. Anania was poetry editor of Audit, a quarterly, founder and co-editor of Audit/Poetry, poetry and literary editor of The Swallow Press, poetry editor of Partisan Review and a contributing editor to Tri-Quarterly. As Chairman of the Board and President of CCLM, the literary magazines organization, he was involved in designing and implementing the Ford Foundation Project for distributing literary magazines and small press books. He also served as a panelist for the NEA, the NEH and the Illinois Arts Council.

Anania taught at SUNY at Buffalo, Northwestern, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is Professor emeritus of English. He lives in Austin, Texas and on Lake Michigan.

Devin Johnston is the author of three books of poetry, Sources, (Turtle Point, 2008), Aversions (Omnidawn, 2004) and Telepathy (Paper Bark Press, 2001), as well as a number of chapbooks. The latter include a collaboration with the artist Brian Calvin entitled Looking Out (Lvng Supplementals, 2004). His book of criticism, Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice, appeared from Wesleyan University Press in 2002. With Michael O’Leary, he directs Flood Editions, an independent and nonprofit press for poetry. Johnston is associate professor of English at Saint Louis University.

Having started LVNG magazine in 1990 at Kenyon College where he majored in Greek and Latin, Michael O'Leary co-founded Flood Editions with Devin Johnston in 2000. He is currently finishing a PhD in materials engineering at UIC and works as a structural engineer in Chicago.

David Pavelich is Reference and Instruction Librarian at the Special Collections Research Center, and Bibliographer for Modern and Contemporary Poetry, at the University of Chicago Library. He earned his MA degree from the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo and his MALIS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recent poems, writings, and reviews appear in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, A Sing Economy, Crayon, College & Research Libraries, and RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage. 

 

 

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MAPS AND PARKING TIPS

Maps of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago Campus

Parking Information

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS IN THE SCRC

Images of Prayer, Politics and Everyday Life from the Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection

The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism: From the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica

Discover Hidden Archives Treasures

LOCAL BOOKSTORES AND RESTAURANTS

Seminary Co-Op Bookstore

57^th Street Books

Powell’s Books

O’Gara and Wilson

Dining in Hyde Park

HYDE PARK MUSEUMS

Smart Museum of Art

Hyde Park Art Center

Renaissance Society

Oriental Institute

Museum of Science and Industry

 

Special Collections Acquires The Plan of Chicago

Thanks to the generosity of the University of Chicago Library Society, Special Collections has acquired the first edition of Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett’s The Plan of Chicago (Chicago: Commercial Club, 1909). The volume, which is in very good condition, is copy #273 of 1,650 copies printed.

The Plan of Chicago is a fundamental document of Chicago history as well as in the history of city planning. It continues to be a vital resource for understanding our city’s past and a living document inspiring and guiding its future. In an “Interpretive Digital Essay: The Plan of Chicago” by Carl Smith in the Encyclopedia of Chicago History (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10537.html), it is described as follows:

"The Plan of Chicago of 1909, better known as the Burnham Plan, (after its principal author, Daniel H. Burnham), is one of the most noted documents in the history of city planning.  It has influenced not only how Chicagoans have shaped their city, but also how they have envisioned urban life."

The Burnham Plan Centennial, which is organizing events to celebrate the centennial of the 1909 publication, recognizes the importance of the plan in charting the city’s future (http://ecuip.lib.uchicago.edu/burnhamplan100/).

Daniel Burnham and members of the Commercial Club invested substantial resources in the physical production of The Plan as a way to heighten its stature and impact. The printing (by Commercial Club member Thomas Donnelley’s Lakeside Press), illustrations (by noted artist Jules Guerin and others), and distribution of the work as a “deluxe, limited edition” was central to its success and influence. Thus, although two complete facsimiles have been produced of The Plan of Chicago; and the entire work is available in electronic form on the Internet through The Encyclopedia of Chicago: (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10417.html), the original publication is essential for students of the plan’s production, distribution, reception and influence; and to historians of Chicago, urban renewal, and city planning.

Images of Prayer, Politics and Everyday Jewish Life opens at the University of Chicago Library

"Images of Prayer, Politics and Everyday Life from the Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection" is on view in the gallery of the Special Collections Research Center through July 6, 2008.

Assembled over many years by Harry Sondheim, a University of Chicago alumnus (A.B.'54, J.D.'57), the collection spans the 16th to the late 20th century and includes early books, prints, drawings, 19th- and 20th-century newspaper and magazine illustrations, and ephemeral items such as New Year's cards and postcards depicting Jewish life and customs. In 2005, Sondheim began to present his collection to the University of Chicago in a series of gifts.

The exhibition is organized around representations of events of the Jewish life cycle — birth, circumcision, naming, marriage and death — and those of the Jewish calendar — the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Sukkot and Passover. Sondheim also collected numerous images of Jews at labor and leisure and works by illustrators and artists Bernard Picart, Ben Shahn, Moritz Oppenheim, Ephraim Lilien, Alfred Szyk, Alphonse Lévy and François-Louis Schmied, which are also represented in the exhibition.

The Sondheim collection complements other Library collections, especially the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica.

View the Press Release here for more information.

 

Office of the President Records

[Pictured, William Rainey Harper, founding president of the University of Chicago]

The records of the Office of the President of the University of Chicago have long been the most heavily used resource in the university's archives. Since the Office of the President is involved in so many different aspects of the university, researchers in SCRC can approach this collection of administrative records as an archival "encyclopedia" of the University of Chicago, using it as a first stop for vital information about the campus and community. In December 2007, the Special Collections Research Center completed a year-long project to process the records of the Office of the President of the University of Chicago.

Archives processing staff organized, preserved and documented over 700 boxes of files, spanning the years from the university's founding through the late 1970s. In the process, we uncovered important architectural records, documentation of artworks and artifacts owned by the university, representations of student life and campus events, and records of the university's complex relationship with the Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood.

For the first time, these materials are now completely organized, with archival finding aids that can be searched online. Represented are the administrations of William R. Harper (1891-1906); Harry P. Judson (1907-1923); Ernest D. Burton (1923-1925); Max Mason (1925-1929); Robert M. Hutchins (1929-1951); Lawrence A. Kimpton (1951-1960); George W. Beadle (1961-1968); Edward H. Levi (1968-1975); and John T. Wilson (1976-1978). The records include correspondence, reports, photographs, budgets, meeting minutes, and other material documenting essential developments at the University of Chicago.

Mircea Eliade Papers

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), influential Romanian historian of religion and prolific author, was exiled from Romania in 1938. Eliade moved to the United States in 1956 and was Professor and Chair of the History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School from 1958 until1986.

Eliade was the author of many books, including The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History and the novel Youth Without Youth, recently made into a major motion picture by Francis Ford Coppola.

The Mircea Eliade Papers span the years 1938-1989, and document Eliade's studies in India in the late 1920s, his life in France after his 1945 exile from Romania, and his career as Professor and Chair of the History of Religions at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

The majority of the papers comprise manuscripts, notes and publications written by Eliade, and correspondence with his colleagues, publishers and translators. The papers also include texts written about, or dedicated to, Eliade, photographs, awards, and a small number of audio and video recordings and personal artifacts.

The collection contains copies of Eliade's published books, in multiple editions and languages, which will be individually cataloged in the Special Collections Research Center, making them more accessible to researchers.

Take a look at the guide to the Eliade Papers, now online!