Caitlin is a PhD student at the University of Maryland’s iSchool, where she is affiliated with the Ethics and Values in Design Lab (EViD), Archives Research and Collaboration Lab (ARC), and the Digital Curation Innovation Center (DCIC). She also serves as a Review Editor for dh+lib.
The College Archives & Special Collections recently received new material on Louise Sloan, collected from a closet in what had been the long-time home of Sloan family on South Main Street (next to Town Hall). Louise (1892-1992) was a local character – a long-time time resident known for her thriftiness and spunk.
The Sloan house on South Main Street, built circa 1900 and longtime home of Louise Sloan.
Born to Ida Withers Sloan and James Lee Sloan, Jr. (Class of 1884), Louise worked as an insurance agent and the 1920 census taker. Her father was described as “a local businessman, and sometime postmaster and mayor” by Mary Beaty in her book, Davidson: A History of the Town from 1835 until 1937. Sloan, Jr. occasionally owned a store or two on Main Street, invested in the Linden Cotton Mill in town, and served as mayor from 1900 to 1920 and again for 1925-1926. Both of Louise Sloan’s parents came from prominent local families, with ties to the area that predate the founding of Davidson College. She attended Peace College (now William Peace University) in Raleigh, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1911.
There are many town stories about Louise Sloan, many dealing with her extreme frugality and propensity for never throwing anything away. Jan Blodgett and Ralph Levering’s One Town, Many Voices contains many such tales and reminisces:
“She loved reading the Wall Street Journal, but only if she could read it at the college library or retrieve copies from the trash at the post office.”
“‘She was always very dressed and had her rouge on,’ Elaine McArn recalled. ‘She wore a little black suit a lot with a black hat with a veil.’ ‘She wore fifty-year-old clothes or older and walked all over town and picked things up,’ Mary Fetter Stough noted. ‘Every evening she would go through the garbage cans [downtown],’ Jane Power Schenck observed. ‘We [children] were always afraid of her because we thought she was a witch.'”
“She was famous for attending weddings at DCPC to which she had not been invited. During receptions in the fellowship room, invited guests watched with amusement as she filled her purse with goodies that she presumably ate at home later.”
This last story is the most commonly repeated, and although she wasn’t invited, it was considered a slight if Miss Sloan did not crash your wedding. She worked for a bit at the College Library, and then Library Director Chalmers G. Davidson (Class of 1928) even took out a second subscription of the Charlotte Observer for the students because Sloan so often snagged the paper as soon as it arrived.
Louise Withers Sloan posing inside a tree trunk in 1941.
However, these tales of thriftiness shouldn’t give the impression that Louise Sloan was one-dimensional, or at all disliked in town – as Mary Beaty wrote, “Miss Louise is something of a landmark herself, one of Davidson’s human institutions, a southern gentlewoman of soft features and incisive mind.” (Davidson: A History of the Town from 1835 until 1937)
One of the new additions to our collections found in the closets of the old Sloan house is Louise Sloan’s calling card collection – a wonderful snapshot of the social life in the town of Davidson in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the cards have the top left corner folded down, which could have several possible meanings – as Emily Post conveys in her 1922 Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Homechapter on “Cards and Visits”:
Turning down a corner of a visiting card is by many intended to convey that the visit is meant for all the ladies in the family. Other people mean merely to show that the card was left at the door in person and not sent in an envelope. Other people turn them down from force of habit and mean nothing whatever. But whichever the reason, more cards are bent or dog-eared than are left flat.
A sampling of Miss Sloan’s calling cards.
One of our favorites, this calling card is from “Jim” – first name only.
These cards illustrate the relationships between families in Davidson – both old town families, and faculty families that made the town their home. We look forward to exploring more of the collections from the Sloan house, and learning even more about the fascinating Louise Sloan!
Last week, Davidson freshmen ran the Cake Race – a Davidson tradition that dates back to 1930. According to an article in the November 13, 1930 issue of The Davidsonian, “It is intended that the first cake race held this year will set a precedent for future Freshman classes, and that in the future it will become an annual and looked forward to event in the yearly routine of the Freshman classes.”
The first cake race also saw the setting of “a new college cake race record,” naturally.
Track coach Heath “Pete” Whittle (Class of 1930) is responsible for beginning the Cake Race at Davidson when he began working in the athletics department in 1930. Whittle would stay in charge of the track team and serve as an Assistant Director of Athletics until 1971. The purpose was for Whittle to scout new running talent for the track team, and the cakes were the motivation for then mandatory race. Cakes baked by faculty spouses and townswomen were not the only prizes – students could also claim a number of items donated by local businesses.
Cakes are solicited from College employees and townspeople alike, as this 1990 memo shows. I heeded the helpful hint to use a disposable container for my cake.
Now the Cake Race is a voluntary event, with a fixed distance of 1.7 miles. The race wasn’t held in 1931-1933, 1941-1949, or 1972, as interest seemed to have waned, but upperclassmen insisted on the return of the race the following year and the 1.7 mile rite of passage has remained ever since. Sterling Martin (Class of 1963), a former winner of the Cake Race and organizer of the event from 1972 until the mid-1990s, said “The upperclassmen had a fit… they said they had to go through it, so they wanted to see everybody else run it. The next year we reinstated the race.” (Davidson Journal, Fall/Winter 1987) A few other colleges and universities have held cake races, and Georgia Tech’s also seems to have been tied to scouting new runners for the track and cross country teams, but it isn’t known whether Whittle was inspired by cake races at other institutions.
Sterling Martin selects a cake as his prize for winning the 1959 cake race.A group of freshmen women in the class of 1989 pose with their hard-earned cakes, August 1985.
When Daisy Southerland married Pete Whittle in 1933, she too joined the Cake Race tradition. Daisy Whittle (1906-1991) hailed from Mobile, Alabama, and worked as the Director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, prior to moving to Davidson. Once established in town, Daisy ran a nursery school out of the Whittle family home, was active in the Davidson College Presbyterian Church, and made cakes for every class of freshmen until at least 1987. Although Pete Whittle passed away in 1975, Daisy continued attending the annual Cake Race and was active in the Davidson Senior Center.
Daisy Whittle presents a cake to a winning racer in 1963.
As Daisy described in the Davidson Journal Fall/Winter 1987 issue, “I don’t think I’ve ever missed a race… I’ve made cakes every year, and my daughters helped when they were in high school. The cakes were usually chocolate, because that’s my favorite.” This year, to honor Daisy’s legacy and celebrate a new class of Davidson freshmen, I selected one of her recipes to make for the 2016 Cake Race and for this installment of our Recipes From the Archives blog series. Unfortunately, we don’t have any of her chocolate cake recipes in our collections, but Daisy did submit a recipe for Pumpkin Dessert Squares to the Davidson Senior Center’s 1985 printing of The Davidson Cookbook.
Daisy Whittle’s Senior Center portrait, taken by Frank Bliss circa 1980.
As the Davidson Journal‘s Fall/Winter 1987 issue states, “there are several competitions going on here – one involving the 140 freshmen running the 1.7-mile race, and another fiercer contest among the cake bakers waiting and watching to see whose cake will be picked first.” Daisy Whittle’s cakes have long been picked early in the selection process – racers are given place cards as they cross the finish line, and select cakes by that placement, alternating between men and women winners. Utensils are handed out, so cake eating can begin right away.
The Pumpkin Dessert Squares I made for this year’s Cake Race.
I followed Daisy’s recipe to the letter, with the exception of cutting the cake into squares and serving with whipped cream. I assumed the whipped cream wouldn’t hold up in the August heat of North Carolina, as cakes are placed outside an hour or so before the race begins. Instead I sprinkled a little bit of powdered sugar on top of the cake, and constructed a festive, inedible banner topping in order to make the cake more appealing to the runners.
Some this year’s cake spread – one photograph can’t capture all of the cakes!My version of Daisy’s Pumpkin Dessert, with “Welcome Wildcats” banner topper!
As Alex Hunger (Class of 2009) said in a 2005 Charlotte Observer article on the Cake Race, “I’ve never had to work this hard for a cake… running for (cake) definitely makes it more worth eating.” I hope all of the members of the Class of 2020 enjoyed their cake-filled welcome to Davidson!
It’s time for another Recipe from the Archives – summer salad edition! This week’s recipe is Dr. Catherine Slawy-Sutton’s Salade Niçoise, from Great Expectations: The Davidson College 1990-1991 Office Support Staff Cookbook.
The cover of Great Expectations: The Davidson College 1990-1991 Office Support Staff Cookbook.
As mentioned in the “Better Than the M & M’s Pimento Cheese” post, the Office Support Staff was born out of an earlier group known as The Chambermaids – a reference to the statues on Chambers Building, where most of the administrative staff worked, and a reference to the fact that the offices were almost entirely staffed by women. The Chambermaids, renamed the Office Support Staff (OSS) in 1982, was aimed at fostering professional development, advocating for needed changes on behalf of staff, and providing opportunities for social engagement. During the 1990-1991 academic year, the OSS compiled Though Great Expectations: The Davidson College 1990-1991 Office Support Staff Cookbook as a fundraiser. Recipes were solicited from across all areas of campus.
Members of Office Support Staff in Fall 1989. First row, from left to right: Jeanne Mandt, Jane Biggerstaff, Judi Murphy, Ann Callahan, Pat Snow, Mary Wilson, Barbara Mayer, Pat Richart, and Mittie Wally. Second row: Pat Gardner, Mary Mack Benson, Glenda Erwin, Kristi Mayhew, Cheryl Branz, Jean Martin, Ethel Black, Katrina French, and Frances White. Third row: Diann Cavin, Gail Hoke, Aileen Vinson, Harriet Kessler, Sara Paige Lewis, Barbara Carmack, Pat Burgess, Frances McCorkle, Jo Archie, Joan Franz, Gail Sloop, Brenda King, and Sarah Jackson.
The recipe I chose to make, Salade Niçoise, was submitted by Catherine Slawy-Sutton, Professor of French & Francophone Studies at Davidson. Born in Angoulême, France and raised in Dakar, Senegal, Catherine received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Nice and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington. She began working at Davidson College as Visiting Lecturer in 1980, moving to Assistant Professor in 1985, Associate Professor in 1991, and Professor in 1999. Catherine is married to recently retired French & Francophone Studies Professor Homer Sutton (Class of 1971), and the two professors have accompanied Davidson students on several study abroad programs in France.
Catherine Slawy-Sutton in 1997, from that year’s Quips and Cranks.
Since Catherine studied in Nice, I assumed she’d know a good Salade Niçoise! I hadn’t yet made a salad for Recipes from the Archives, and this hearty provençal staple seemed like a perfect fit. As Catherine describes it in the Great Expectations cookbook, “This is a recipe for a consistent summer salad.”
Catherine’s recipe for Salade Niçoise and “ze reeal French Salad Dressing” vinaigrette that accompanies it.
I purchased oil-packed tuna in order to get the best flavor, and used tomatoes recently gifted to me by Davidson’s Systems Librarian, Susan Kerr, who grew them in her home garden. With boiling the potatoes and hard boiling the eggs, the preparation time for the salad was a bit longer, but completing the recipe was very easy, and the results are delicious!
The finished Salade Niçoise, with vinaigrette on the side.
For this installment of Recipes from the Archives, I went back to the Athenaeum Book Club’s 1965-66 “Culinary Customs Around the World” cookbook, and chose Ruby Alexander’s “Potato Poories.”
The Athenaeum Club is one of several Davidson women’s book discussion groups, and although its date of founding is unknown, the Davidson College Archives holds materials on the club dating from the early 1950s until 2013. According to the club’s 1952 Constitution and By-Laws, the purpose of the Athenaeum Club is “to promote fellowship and mutual improvement of the members through the study and sharing of ideas.” Members would routinely select two books to host discussions for each year, and for the 1965 – 1966 year, members selected a theme of Culinary Customs Around the World – when a member would host a book discussion, they would also make a few dishes from a country or region of their choosing.
Cookbook compiled from Athenaeum Book Club members’ recipes for the 1965 – 1966 year.
According to book club minutes, members chose to make dishes reminiscent of “China, Persia, Mexico, Holland, South Africa, India, Ireland, Russia, Sweden, France, Pakistan, Hawaii, and Lebanon.” Each member was also expected to bring a dish from the country or region to the club’s Christmas party. Minutes also show that each book club meeting usually included some sort of presentation on region chosen, either by the book club member hosting or by an invited guest. While I’m not an expert on cooking by any means, my impression of the cookbook was that the recipes were more “inspired by” than necessarily accurate to the regional cuisine chosen by each member – recipes may have been clipped or adapted from magazines or other cookbooks, which was common practice.
The cover of the notebook used for recording minutes for the 1965-66 year of meetings, and the book list showing each member’s selection for their first book.
Ruby Alexander was a member of the Athenaeum Book Club from 1965 until at least 2013. Information on Ruby is sparse – from book club programs I was able to gather that another member of the club was her mother-in-law, Mildred Cashion Alexander (1917 – 2012). Mildred was also a long-time member of the Athenaeum Club, beginning in the early 1950s and continuing to be active until her death in 2012. Mildred was married to James B. Alexander, Sr., who graduated from Davidson College in 1938 and started the Alexander Trucking Company in town. Ruby married their son, James B. Alexander, Jr., although I couldn’t find anything more in our records on Ruby specifically. However, James B., Jr. and Ruby Alexander are still residents of Davidson.
Ruby chose Pakistan as her theme for the Athenaeum Book Club’s cookbook. I chose Ruby’s “Potato Poories” because I was intrigued by the recipe – in the cookbook, it includes the subtitle “Delicious deep-fat bread rounds, greasy fingers, but so good you’ll lick them.” That sounded pretty good to me, and as we have a new staff member starting today (Alison Bradley, our new Collection Development Librarian), I decided to make “potato poories” for her welcome party.
Ruby Alexander’s “potato poories” recipe.
Making the “potato poories” turned out to be more of a logistical challenge than many of the recipes I’ve made from our archival collections before. Because they’re fried, I couldn’t follow my usual routine of making the recipe at home and bringing the resulting treats into work the next day. My coworker Jan Blodgett suggested I fry the poories at work, using a fondue pot. I made the called-for two packages of instant mashed potatoes at home, combined with flour, prepared the dough patties and stored them in the fridge overnight. Then, this morning, I fried the patties in our staff break room in the fondue pot.
Left: fondue frying setup (thanks to Davidson College’s Technical Director/Scenographer Neil Reda for letting us borrow one of his fondue pots!). Right: the finished product.
I used canola oil instead of fat, so that the recipe would be vegetarian-friendly. My finished product turned out differently than I was expecting – I made more of an ersatz latke or rosti than a poori. I learned a few things during the cooking process:
I have no idea what the consistency of yeast dough is. Ruby’s recipe did not specify an amount of flour; rather, flour is added to the mashed potatoes “until mixture is soft and elastic like yeast dough.” I’ve never made bread, so I basically added flour until the consistency seemed different than regular old mashed potatoes. Since my “potato poories” never floated on top of the oil – they were too dense – I think I needed to add much, much more flour to this mixture.
If you’re going to prep patties of dough the night before, you should use bakery release or parchment paper to separate the patties. I used tinfoil because I didn’t have baking parchment at home, and removing the patties was a gigantic pain – many of my “poories” were oddly shaped because of this.
An electric fondue pot is actually a really great option for stove top frying. Because the sides are high, I didn’t have any issues with oil spatter, and the pot may have been hotter than using a pan on top of a stove. I would definitely recommend a fondue pot for all of your home frying needs!
While my “potato poories” may have been different than both Ruby Alexander’s and a Pakistani puri, it was still very delicious! I would make these again, perhaps just as a potato pancake, and experiment with adding more ingredients.
For this installment in the Recipes From the Archives blog series, I made Marjorie McCutchan’s “Luscious Brownies,” featured in the Davidson Senior Center’s 1985 printing of The Davidson Cookbook.
Marjorie Munn McCutchan (1903 – 1998) was born in Iowa, and received B.A./B. Music from Tarkio College in Missouri. After completing her studies, she taught at the American Mission School for Girls in Assiut, Egypt. While in Egypt, she met her husband, John Wilson McCutchan (Davidson College Class of 1931, faculty in the English department from 1951 to 1961), and they married in 1936. John Wilson McCutchan (1909 – 1966) taught at Assiut College in Egypt, Queens College (now Queens University of Charlotte), Davidson College, and University of Waterloo in Ontario. By 1961, the McCutchans had divorced and J.W. married again, to Betty Combs Ellington.
Marjorie, John Wilson, and their two daughters (Marjorie Ann McCutchan Clark and Mary Caroline McCutchan Henry) moved to Davidson in 1951. After her divorce, Marjorie spent the 1960s living in Philadelphia, where she attained a M.S. in library science from Drexel University and then worked as a librarian at the Board of Christian Education, United Presbyterian Church. After moving back to Davidson in 1969, Marjorie served as the Acting Head of Reference and Personnel at the Davidson College Library from 1972 to 1974.
Mary Beaty, Marjorie McCutchan, and Leland Park in front of stacks in the Grey Memorial Library, circa 1972.
In addition to her teaching and library work, McCutchan worked as a piano instructor and was very active in the local Presbyterian community, serving as the first woman elder at the Davidson College Presbyterian Church (DCPC). She was one of the first residents to move into The Pines, the local retirement community, in 1988, and also was a member of the Davidson Senior Center. When photographed by Frank Bliss for the Davidson Senior Center, she wrote on her portrait information sheet that she “Returned to America at time of 2nd World War on S.S. Aquitania via Australia then to California, so I’ve been around the world.”
She donated funds to the library in 1988, establishing the Marjorie McCutchan Fund, which has allowed to library to purchase 80 titles.
Senior Center portrait of McCutchan, by Frank Bliss, circa 1980.
I chose to make McCutchan’s “Luscious Brownies” for the retirement party of my library colleague, Jean Coates. I selected the recipe because it sounded delicious, and making one former Davidson librarian’s recipe to celebrate the retirement of another Davidson librarian seemed very apropos.
Marjorie McCutchan’s “Luscious Brownies” recipe in the 1985 Davidson Cookbook.
I didn’t deviate from this recipe very much – I was even able to use Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk! I made two batches of these brownies, one with walnuts and one without. The texture of these brownies is different than what I’m used to – the condensed milk and crushed graham crackers made the batter very thick and much harder to pour than I was expecting. I also ended up using a muffin pan to make the batches of brownies, since I didn’t have a metal pan of an appropriate size on hand. The most onerous and time-consuming part of the process was crushing the graham crackers – I broke the crackers into smaller pieces and then smushed them with a meat tenderizer to end up with a finely crushed product. I would recommend melting the chocolate chips prior to mixing the ingredients, a step McCutchan didn’t mention.
The finished product, topped with powdered sugar.The “Luscious Brownies,” amongst other goodies made for the retirement party!
Overall, this recipe was a crowd-pleaser – I was even asked for the recipe by one faculty member who sampled them!
I began trying to write about my experience with HIS/GER 433: The Holocaust and Representation and our study trip in Berlin over spring break since… well, since we were in Berlin in late February and early March. But I’ve been stymied, partially because the Spring 2016 semester has been a test of endurance and limits in every way possible, and partially because I needed time to sort out my thoughts.
I worked with this class every week (sometimes every day) from January until May (with prep work beginning the semester before), serving as a sort of combination embedded archivist and co-instructor. As part of that work, I helped shape the syllabus, attended the seminar classes every week, participated in and led discussions, and helped plan and shape the final projects. I also was part of an intensive class study trip in Berlin over spring break.
HIS/GER 433 was experimental in nearly every way a class can be – the course comprised twelve students from a variety of majors (Caroline Bell ’17, Colin Bye ’17, Vita Dadoo Lomeli ’18, Kate Donahoo ’17, Rosi Goetz ’16, Hannah Grace Heartfield ’16, Matthew Schlerf ’16, Amanda Scott ’17, Bolton Smith ’16, Emily Taylor ’16, Nora Wartan ’16, and Ben Williams ’16) one lead faculty member (Scott Denham), two co-instructors (Roman Utkin and myself), and six faculty fellows from a variety of disciplines (Patricio Boyer, Caroline Fache, Kyra Kietrys, Kristi Multhaup, Alan Michael Parker, and Rizwan Zamir). Scott insisted on all participants being on a first-name basis with each other (no titles), and emphasized a democratic classroom model where students’ voices were allowed to drive both discussions and content. All 21 of us spent a week in Berlin together, visiting Holocaust sites and meeting with key figures in Germany to discuss remembrance and representation of genocide. No grades were given for individual assignments, and students and instructors dedicated many hours outside of the seminar meeting each week (particularly in Berlin and during the final project work, which I’ll describe more further on).
Course instructors get selfie-crazy in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery – posing with Hegel’s and Brecht’s graves.
My role in the class was also pretty revolutionary – most of our archives & special collections classes are based around our existing collections, either teaching students how to use primary sources, helping them find and engage those sources for a project, or digitization and digital exhibit projects. But HIS/GER 433 utilized my base of knowledge (on the Holocaust, collective memory, and memorialization) and my “archival frame of mind” – I would often discuss archival theory in class and how it related to the historical research and readings students were conducting, and being an archivist helped ensure that the class final projects would end up in a repository (Davidson College’s archives, as a matter of fact). I was also pleased to see how interested in the students were in archivist/librarian careers – one student had already applied to library school (and was accepted during the semester!), and three others talked to me about career paths related to information work. Being able to “model” what an archivist is and does for undergraduate students in this way was really a privilege.
I feel like I’m still absorbing and processing everything that happened in Berlin and afterwards – I arrived in Berlin on February 24th, for two days of vacation before the students, other instructors, and faculty fellows joined me. Those first two days were incredibly relaxing – I made a point of not visiting any sites I knew the whole group would go to later in the week, so most of my free time was spent eating delicious food and wandering around Prenzlauerberg (with some jaunts to visit the Bauhaus Archiv, Currywurst Museum, and Templehof airport).
The interior of Templehof Airport – very cool!
Once the students and fellow instructors arrived, the schedule was non-stop. The class experience in Berlin was so many things at once: exhausting (physically and emotionally), freezing, depressing, interesting, engaging, and incredibly educational. I feel like I know my students and my colleagues in a whole new way – I had so many fantastic group and one-on-one conversations about what we were seeing and feeling, and every person on the trip seemed to be genuinely moved and engaged in the subject and in our dissection of it. The people – students, faculty, staff, community – have always been the best part of working at Davidson College, and I already respected and admired the dedication and passion of our students and our employees, but that week together in Berlin awed me more than I would have thought possible. This community is special, and not just because of the academic rigor Davidson is known for. It’s a community that has allowed me to grow in a myriad of ways – as an archivist, as an instructor, and (as cheesy as it sounds) as a person.
All 21 of us, in the Bundestag after meeting with Ekin Deligöz.
The bonds we formed in Berlin carried over to the second half of the semester, particularly as we began discussing the final project outputs. We had several – an essay written for Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V, a reading of Hank Greenspan’s play REMNANTS for the 2nd Annual National Jewish Theater Foundation – Holocaust Theater International Initiative Remembrance Readings, a presentation about the course and study trip by two students (Caroline Bell and Ben Williams), and the production of an archival book documenting the class. The archival book is particularly innovative – part scrapbook, part chapbook, part art object, the book includes extracts from writings students had done throughout the semester, reflections from students and instructors on the course and the study trip, hand-drawn charts, photo collages, and a fiber art cover that gestures towards Magdalena Abakanowicz and Joseph Beuys. The play reading, class presentation, and showing of the book all occurred during a public event on May 2nd.
The cover (designed by Rosi Goetz and Amanda Scott), and Vita Dadoo Lomeli’s page – including a pocket containing an essay she wrote on the gendering of Kristallnacht and her bio photos.Two of the spreads from the archival book – the top pages cover the group’s visits to Sachsenhausen and Treptower Park (including a reflection by yours truly), and the bottom pages depict our visits to the House of the Wannsee Conference and the Bundestag/Reichstag.
Seven of these students graduated this past weekend, so I’m feeling extra verklempt as I write this – I’m so, so proud of the students from HIS/GER 433, not only for the high quality of the work that they produced by the end of the semester, but for their thoughtfulness and creativity throughout the class. I’m proud to have been a part of this group of people, teaching and learning from each other.
Outside of our wonderful students and faculty mentioned above, several other deserve thanks for making this course into the amazing experience it was: Gabe Ford for lending us his experience and bookmaking tools, the Weinstein and BACCA Funds for helping fund the study trip, the National Jewish Theater Foundation and Hank Greenspan for allowing us to stage the reading of his play, and the Davidson College administration for supporting this innovative model of course instruction and faculty/staff development. Big thanks also to my coworkers, for helping cover the archives reference desk while I spent so much time with the course.
I’ve been ruminating a lot on work-life balance recently – it’s a topic that comes up time and again across the many communities I identify as being a part of: archivists, librarians, digital humanists, academics. How much beyond 40-ish hours per week should I be giving my job? How do I “count” work done outside of the library building/not at my desk, as that’s sometimes invisible to others? My position is a staff position, which can sometimes be at odds with the collaborations and interactions I have with faculty on campus, whose working hours are different than most of our staff. I struggle with what’s best for the Davidson community, for my physical and mental health… but the answer has been boiling down to: for our students, our faculty, our community – I want to give all of my time. I want to be better, because this community deserves my best. I feel like I’ve drank the institutional Kool-Aid, but working for the archives of Davidson College has allowed me to learn so much, and I want to give back what I can to this community.
All that being said, I still have some more amazing images from the Berlin trip! So, capping off this post with pictures (some taken by me, some by other members of the group):
Bauhaus Archiv! I made a quick visit before our trip really got underway.While I was at the Bauhaus Archiv, the rest of the group was making their way to Berlin – here, Rizwan, Rosi, Colin, and Caroline B. all read on the floor of an airport.Best graffiti at our local U Bahn – roughly translates to “cats against petty bourgeoisie” (although “Spießer” is one of those words that’s hard to translate, it seems).Neue Synagoge, on Oranienburger Straße – we stopped here on our first full day in Berlin, and Patricio gave a mini-lecture on the Moorish architectural style and La Convivencia.Chatting with Caroline F. and Patricio on our way around Berlin – whenever members of the group got too cold, Scott lent his jacket out to them. Much appreciated!You can’t go to Berlin and NOT visit the Berlin Wall Memorial – we had interesting conversations throughout the trip about how the divided nature of Berlin and Germany as a whole affected public memorialization of the Holocaust.The group packed into a mirrored elevator in the Bundestag, on our way to the Green Party’s conference rooms. When this image was shared on our class whatsapp group text, Caroline B. captioned it “Dr. Zamir caught smiling.”One of my favorite pictures I took on the trip: Nora, Emily, and Kate in front of the Reichstag dome.Hannah Grace and Kyra in the Reichstag dome, with the German flag in the background.Emily takes in the scale of Treptower Park – a really massive Soviet War Memorial.The entrance to the memorial at Treptower Park.We visited the amazing Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Haus Unter den Linden reading room, with this beautiful sculpture of gigantic newspapers. After our tour of the building, Michaela Scheibe gave us a lecture on Nazi looted books and we briefly chatted about German library schools and cataloging systems.The group wanders through the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on our way to look at the Neue Wache.Ben, Matthew, and Patricio somberly examine a memorial to Jewish businesses in the fashion/clothing industry, outside of the Hausvogteiplatz U Bahn.The group listens intently to Roman lecturing.Prior to the trip, we’d had a class discussion on the Jewish Museum and it’s complex and fascinating design (truly, you need to visit in person to really experience the intricate design and its physicality). We talked about whether or not to walk on Menashe Kadishman’s installation of metal faces, whether walking or witnessing makes one more or less complicit. Here, a few of our group walk on the sculpture.Bolton takes a picture of the video playing in the Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism.Sculpture outside of the Deutsches Historisches Museum – “Einheit” means unity.Another new experience – my first döner, from Rosenthaler Grill und Schlemmerbuffet.
Earlier this semester, a number of archives and special collections created coloring books featuring images from their collections, inspired by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s #ColorOurCollections coloring fest. At the Davidson College Archives & Special Collections, we noticed the amazing coloring books on Twitter but hadn’t had time to put one together ourselves. However, when we received a copy of Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library coloring book in the mail (courtesy of Chelcie Rowell – thanks Chelcie!), our student volunteer was intrigued and asked if she could work on a Davidson version.
Regular readers of Around the D will have already seen some of Caroline Turner’s (Class of 2017) work – the athletics timeline Caroline created was the subject of a recent blog post. Caroline has been volunteering in Archives & Special Collections since last September. Once she had completed the athletics timeline, Caroline combed through rare book and college publications, looking for images that could be decolorized and turned into candidates for the coloring book. She then wrote blurbs to go along with each image, explaining what it was and what part of the collection it hailed from.
The cover of “Color our Collections: A Coloring Book of Images from the Davidson College Archives and Special Collections.”
While compiling the coloring book, Caroline found more images than she could use, so I’ll share the “extra” coloring panels here on the blog, with Caroline’s captions:
From Quips and Cranks – Caroline’s caption: “The image of the College of Medicine opens the 1895 issue’s section on the students that were a part of the college, with a humorous message.”“The image of the page signaling the start to the athletics section featuring a track athlete is from the 1900 edition. The Davidson College Archives houses editions of Quips and Cranks from 1895 to the present.”“A decorative image from a Quips and Cranks issue.”“This image is from a decal from an artifact from the Special Collections.”
You can download the “extra” coloring panels from this post, and the whole coloring book to print at home here, or pick up a copy in E.H. Little Library – while finals are going on, we’ve been putting out copies of the coloring book in the lobby downstairs!
Every October is American Archives Month and North Carolina Archives Month, and here at the Davidson College Archives & Special Collections we’ve been celebrating the occasion in some way or another for the past seven years. However, for Archives Month 2015 we decided to really commit to Archives Month and experiment with some new methods of outreach and new collaborations. We’re a small shop (3 FTE), so I figured sharing our planning process and evaluating our activities at this halfway point between October 2015 and October 2016 might be useful for other archivists considering participating in Archives Month next year.
The 2015 North Carolina Archives Month theme was “Celebrating Archives: North Carolina Arts, Crafts, and Music Traditions,” so our first step was to sit down and consider what materials we have related to arts, crafts, and music in North Carolina. That led to planning one of our earliest events in the month, Mandolin Madness on October 5th.
Every October is American Archives Month and North Carolina Archives Month, and here at the Davidson College Archives & Special Collections we’ve been celebrating the occasion in some way or another for the past seven years. However, for Archives Month 2015 we decided to really commit to Archives Month and experiment with some new methods of outreach and new collaborations. We’re a small shop (3 FTE), so I figured sharing our planning process and evaluating our activities at this halfway point between October 2015 and October 2016 might be useful for other archivists considering participating in Archives Month next year.
The 2015 North Carolina Archives Month theme was “Celebrating Archives: North Carolina Arts, Crafts, and Music Traditions,” so our first step was to sit down and consider what materials we have related to arts, crafts, and music in North Carolina. That led to planning one of our earliest events in the month, Mandolin Madness on October 5th.
Flyer advertising Mandolin Madness.
Mandolin Madness featured biology professor Dr. Karen Hales and Davidson alumnus Mike Orlando (Class of 2001) playing a mix of traditional bluegrass and more modern Southern songs in the Rare Book Room. The concert was preceded by a brief talk by College Archivist Jan Blodgett on the history of music at Davidson, and a small display of music and music-related materials from the archives. About 30 people attended, and we have been told by many that we need to repeat this event in the future.
We don’t have very rich art collections in our archives, but we do have art galleries on campus, so I began conversations with the director of those galleries, Lia Newman, over the summer. Lia was completely on board to collaborate, and suggested that we have a month-long show on North Carolina artists in the college’s collections, curated by current students. That resulted in the Archives Month Art Show, curated by Kate Hall and Lee Summerell (both Class of 2016), which hung in the lobby of Chambers Building in October. Kate and Lee selected six works, focusing on (according to the panel text they wrote) “primarily on artists who lived, worked, or studied in North Carolina. North Carolina has a rich history of artistic excellence. In the 1930s through the 1950s, the Black Mountain College hosted many prominent figures in the development of Modern Art. Josef Albers served on the college’s faculty where he taught Robert Rauschenberg and helped shape his later artistic theory.” In addition to pieces by Albers and Rauschenberg, the show included works by long-time Davidson College art faculty member Herb Jackson (Class of 1967), William Ferris (Class of 1964), and two Charlotte-area artists, Ce Scott and Juan Logan.
A panoramic shot of the lobby of Chambers during the Archives Month Art Show.
Lia Newman also suggested that we host a panel on art and archives, which would tie-in well with the exhibition running in the art galleries from September 10th through October 25th – Regina José Galindo: Bearing Witness. I put together and moderated a panel entitled “Art, Archives & Documentation” that featured Lia Newman (Director and Curator of the Art Gallery), Dr. Alison Bory (Assistant Professor and Chair of the Dance Department), and Dr. Jan Blodgett (College Archivist). That panel, held in the art galleries on October 21st, preceded performances by three Charlotte-based performance artists (John W. Love, April Marten, and Jon Pritchard). Although attendance was only a handful of people, the conversation was rich and feedback from the small audience was very positive.
Flyer for Art, Archives & Documentation on October 21st.
In addition to planning new outreach initiatives based on the theme for North Carolina Archives Month, we also experimented with two new ideas outside of the theme that met with varied degrees of success. When I was training international student orientation leaders for a nighttime glow-in-the-dark campus history tour in August 2015, I kept on being told that the students wanted to hear more stories about Davidson College’s past. “Why haven’t we been told about this before?” one student demanded, when I explained the 1854 student rebellion. Their eagerness to learn more sparked an idea, and our department decided to plan a monthly archival storytime – Stories from the Archives kicked off on October 1st. We aimed to hold the event the first Thursday of every month, with stories provided from Archives & Special Collections staff and students, faculty, and community members who had done research on Davidson’s past. The storytime atmosphere was enhanced by a donation of carpet squares for listeners to sit on, given by Drew Kromer (Class of 2019).
Flyer for the second Stories from the Archives.
While I still believe that Stories from the Archives was a good idea, we discontinued the series after three months due to low attendance. I’d love to relaunch it in the future, but we need to re-tool how we advertise and plan the event, and potentially hold it once or twice a year instead of monthly.
We also chose to launch a departmental Instagram account during Archives Month, which has been much more successful. We now have received a number of reference questions based on Instagram posts, and are able to reach current students and alumni in a new way. This semester, the Instagram account garnered a new kind of student attention – after a class visit to the Archives & Special Collections, students in Dr. Amy Kohout’s ENV 340: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral asked to take over our account for a week, in order to promote their class pop-up exhibit. ENV 340’s posts are currently populating the Davidson Archives Instagram until May 3rd!
While planning new events and new forms of outreach, we also stuck with some tried and true methods – we held Ghosts in the Library for the 7th year in a row, participated in #AskAnArchivist Day on October 1st, and I wrote a blog about a seminal figure in the Music department’s history, James Christian Phofl. The blog also served as a collaboration of sorts – I ran my early drafts by music professor Dr. Neil Lerner, who had done research on Pfohl before and provided helpful tips. Ghosts in the Library, an annual night of telling of ghost stories in the Rare Book Room, had its usual excellent attendance – roughly 30 people showed up to hear ghoulish tales.
As we look forward to Archives Month 2016, our department learned a few lessons from last year:
Throw things at the wall and see what works: Several of our initiatives were new ones, and turned out quite well – Mandolin Madness, the Archives Month Art Show, and the Instagram account all had excellent returns on our investment of time.
Don’t be afraid of failure: Stories from the Archives and Art, Archives & Documentation both suffered from low turnouts. While both events were enjoyed by those who attended, we need to evaluate if the problem with these events was that the concepts didn’t appeal to the Davidson audience, or whether they could be advertised better.
Plan well in advance: Some of our attendance pitfalls may have been mitigated if we had planned better – perhaps flyering in the dorms, or making announcements to classes who visited the Archives & Special Collections in the weeks prior. We also potentially could have sought funding for food, which can be a draw – none of our events or initiatives had any cost other than staff time.
Reach out to new people or groups for collaborations. One of my favorite parts of Archives Month 2015 was working with the art galleries – we hadn’t previously done much collaboration with them, but the theme for North Carolina Archives Month gave me a good reason to seek out a partnership with the director. Archives Month can be a great foot in the door for folks you want to work with but haven’t had a chance to yet.
You don’t have to do everything during Archives Month: In some ways, we bit off more than we could chew during Archives Month 2015 – planning four events, coordinating one art show, writing one Archives Month-themed blog, participating in #AskAnArchivist Day, and launching a new social media account was a lot to take on while we all continued our regular duties. Some of our most successful outreach events this academic year actually took place outside of Archives Month (such as this month’s Race At Davidson panel, a collaboration between the Archives and the Tau Omicron chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha), and sometimes it will make more sense to plan an outreach initiative to align with an institutional anniversary or the availability of collaborators. October is Archives Month, but any and every month can be archives outreach month.
