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BEINECKE ILLUMINATED No. 4, 2017–18 Annual Report Front cover: Unveiling on May 4, 2018, of the winning entry in a juried competition, open to Yale art and architecture students, in conjunction with the course 1968@50: Art, Architecture, and Cultures of Protest. The sculpture was on view on the mezzanine through May 12. Back cover: Author Judy Blume visiting with her archives, recently acquired by the library Contributors The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acknowledges the following for their assistance in creating and compiling the content in this annual report. Articles written by, or adapted from, Matthew Beacom, Mike Cummings, Bess Connolly Martell, and Michael Morand, with editorial assistance and guidance from Tubyez Cropper, Dante Haughton, and Lesley Baier. Statistics compiled by Matthew Beacom, Moira Fitzgerald, Robin Mooring, and the staff of Technical Services, Access Services, and Administration. Photographs by Tubyez Cropper, Mariah Kreutter, Mara Lavitt, Michael Morand, and Ryan Seffinger. Design by Rebecca Martz, Office of the University Printer. Copyright ©2018 by Yale University facebook.com/beinecke @beineckelibrary twitter.com/BeineckeLibrary beinecke.library.yale.edu subsCribe to library news subscribe.yale.edu BEINECKE ILLUMINATED No. 4, 2017–18 Annual Report 4 From the Director 5 Exhibitions and Events Takamiya Exhibition Illuminated the Making of the Medieval English Manuscript Exhibition Showcased Collaboration as an Art Form Show Examined How Text and Textiles “ask us to remember” Mark Strand Memorial Reading Public Attendance and Events Display Marked Centennial of 1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade 10 344 Winchester Avenue and Technical Services Processing the Wilder Papers: Insights from an Archivist Catalog Boldly! Insights from 45 Years in Technical Services Statistics 12 Highlights from the Reading Room and Classrooms Learning Firsthand from the Collections in Expanded Classrooms Collections and Class Illuminate the Global Turbulence of 1968 Statistics 15 Fellowships 17 Recent Acquisitions, Briefly Noted 24 Windham-Campbell Prizes and Festival 25 Beinecke Online and in the Media In the News Digital and Social Media Statistics 30 Loans 30 Library Staff 4 From the Director This report documents a dynamic year, the first full Bill Beinecke took great pride in what his father Yale School of Architecture one in complete operation at 121 Wall Street since and uncles did to build this library and how it students Evan Sale and Davis Butner with Beinecke 2013–2014, after which renovations of the Bunshaft succeeded so well in meeting their aspirations as director E.C. Schroeder at the building began and our new state-of-the-art a center of scholarship, research, teaching, and unveiling of their winning facility for technical services opened nearby. public exhibitions. As a friend and as a Yale trustee, entry, “In ___We Trust,” in the competition “Lipstick, Statistics tell some of the story: nearly 180,000 he made sure the library both maintained a secure Revisited” people came through the doors, and the website fiscal foundation and kept growing in its reach. had 2.5 million page views; we acquired more Bill Reese was involved with the Beinecke than 17,000 printed volumes and cataloged nearly Library from his undergraduate days and 20,000 rare book titles; almost 600 sessions were throughout his life, as an adviser, donor, agent, held in the expanded classrooms; and more than and friend. His contributions are inestimable. Few 2,300 new readers registered for research. people have had as much impact on special collec- Behind all these numbers are people: an tions at Yale. Time after time, things worked out exceptional library staff, inquisitive students and according to an abiding formula: follow his advice scholars, eager public visitors, and dedicated and you came out the winner. donors and friends. This library is an extraordinary Bill Beinecke and Bill Reese exemplified the best architectural icon, for sure, with an impressive of what the Beinecke Library has been, is now, and collection of compelling documents of human can be. Their legacies inspire my colleagues and me culture. First and foremost, though, the Beinecke as we work to guide this place as an inspiration to Library thrives thanks to the people who work here all who enter in the years ahead. and those who come to engage the past, in the present, for the future in the reading room, class- rooms, exhibition hall, and online. This year we mourned the deaths, and cele- brated the lives, of two Yale alumni, William Sperry Edwin C. Schroeder Beinecke ’36 and William Sherman Reese ’77, both special friends of the library who demonstrated the power of people to shape and steward institutions in the service of society. 5 Exhibitions and Events Takamiya Exhibition Illuminated collection of medieval manuscripts over four the Making of the Medieval English decades,” Clemens said. “Held privately in Japan, Manuscript the collection had been relatively unstudied in the West, and Professor Takamiya’s generous deposit A collection of medieval English manuscripts that of these manuscripts at the Beinecke Library in 2013 had been in private hands was on view for the first made a significant contribution to medieval schol- time in the United States in the building-wide arship at Yale University and internationally.” exhibition Making the Medieval English Manuscript: The exhibition celebrated and showcased these The Takamiya Collection in the Beinecke Library medieval manuscripts, now permanently part of (September 1–December 10, 2017). Four Chaucer the Beinecke collections. They combined with the manuscripts, numerous devotional rolls, and works Beinecke’s existing holdings to make the library a as varied as Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae, vital center for scholars and the public to engage Langland’s Piers Plowman, and a Middle English medieval English literature, history, and manu- medical manuscript—all from the collection of script culture. “Chaucer remains widely read today, scholar and collector Toshiyuki Takamiya—were and the materials on view to the public illustrate displayed in the context of the Beinecke’s own the complexity of the medieval manuscript tradi- prior rich holdings of English and Continental tion,” Ducharme said. “The variety and beauty of manuscripts. the materials on display make this distant period The exhibition was curated by Raymond more accessible to us.” Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts; A series of talks, lectures, and conferences Diane Ducharme, archivist; and Yale graduate complemented the Takamiya Collection exhibi- students Eric Ensley, Gina Hurley, Alexandra tion. Many of the library’s regular “Mondays Reider, Joseph Stadolnik, and Emily Ulrich. And at Beinecke” gallery talks drew on materials on Clemens, Ducharme, and Ulrich authored the display. Alexandra Gillespie, chair of the Depart- accompanying catalog, A Gathering of Medieval ment of English and Drama at the University of English Manuscripts: The Takamiya Collection at the Toronto at Mississauga, delivered a lecture, “The Beinecke Library. Pardoner and the Printing Press,” in conjunction “With a rare combination of scholarly and anti- with the exhibition’s opening reception and a quarian expertise, Professor Emeritus Takamiya of related conference, “Making the English Book.” Keio University in Tokyo assembled an unrivaled Exhibition curators Raymond Clemens and Diane Ducharme at a “Mondays at Beinecke” gallery talk 6 Exhibition curators Melissa Barton, Elizabeth Frengel, and Nancy Kuhl at the opening reception Exhibition Showcased Collaboration as of a husband-and-wife team in “The Children’s an Art Form Books of Russell and Lillian Hoban.” A story of the complexity of collaborative adaptation was + The Art of Collaboration (January 19–April 15, 2018) explored in the curved cases at the top of each stair- explored the excitement and power of how separate case in “Richard Wright’s Native Son on Stage and elements combine to make things that are new, Screen.” And in “Studies in Creativity,” the jewel- beautiful, strange, and memorable. The show itself box vitrines on the mezzanine featured eighteen was a collaborative act by three curators—Melissa instances of American literary and artistic collabo- Barton, Elizabeth Frengel, and Nancy Kuhl— ration—from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas working together with colleagues across the library. to August Wilson and Lloyd Richards—spanning The exhibition considered exemplary works more than one hundred years. and the archival stories of their making, revealing the creative—and sometimes destructive—tensions that were parts of artistic collaboration. Items on Show Examined How Text and Textiles view were drawn from the Betsy Beinecke Shirley “ask us to remember” Collection of American Children’s Literature, the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Text and Textile (May 3–August 12, 2018) explored African American Arts and Letters, and the Yale the intersections of text and textile in literature Collection of American Literature (yCal). and politics, from images of Eve spinning in a “The works on view—including plays, children’s thirteenth-century manuscript to the mill girls of books, novels, performance artworks, films, photo- New England in the nineteenth century. The exhi- graphs, and more—demonstrate that collaboration bition featured works in a wide variety of formats itself is an art form,” said Kuhl, curator of poetry in drawn from each of the Beinecke Library’s curato-
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    The ICI Berlin celebrates the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Dante, edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (2021) with a Online Lecture Series series of lectures that suggest ways of reading Dante’s Comedy from a less cen- tral position and with a broader, more critical perspective. How can discussions of race in the Middle Ages and the attentiveness to indigenous forms of knowledge preservation help literary scholars to rethink their understanding of ’canonicity’ and the ’canonical‘? On what basis can canonical authors such as Dante, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan continue to be read today? In what sense and at what cost In English can Dante inspire other poets? What does he mean, more specifically, to a wom- an writer and artist in Jamaica? What changes when Dante’s Virgil is read not only as part of the Christian reception of classical authors in the Middle Ages, but also in dialogue with the practices of ancient pedagogy? Does the queer desire inform- ing the Aeneid also flow through Dante’s poem? Monday A lecture series on the occasion of the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Dante 10 May 2021 ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (2021) in Suzanne Conklin Akbari Wednesday cooperation with Équipe littérature et culture italiennes (Sorbonne Université) and Bard College Berlin for the Lorna Goodison lecture 12 May 2021 Lorna Goodison Monday 7 June 2021 Gary Cestaro Organized by each at 19:00 Manuele Gragnolati ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8 D–10119 Berlin Tel: +49 30 473 72 91 10 www.ici-berlin.org U-Bhf Senefelder Platz (U2) Dante Monday, 10 May 2021 prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder, and loving and compassionate as my own and the di- Moderated by Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden • 19:00 vine mother.
  • CONFERENCE 2016 RICHMOND MARRIOTT 500 EAST BROAD STREET RICHMOND, VA the 2015 Plutarch Award

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  • Jamaican Women Poets and Writers' Approaches to Spirituality and God By

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  • Kei Miller. a Light Song of Light. (Carcanet, 2010) --Alison Donnell 'A

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