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In honor of Black History Month, we're highlighting the work of African-American artists and authors in Special Collections. Artist Romare Bearden and poet Derek Walcott participated in this beautiful collaboration for the Limited Editions Club in 1983. We've selected a few of our favorite images to share here, including the gorgeous decorated cloth binding, which is the first image below.
For this week's manuscript, we're posting a couple of pages from Carta de el secretaro, Antonio Perez, al duque de Lerma de la manera que seharia de governar en la privanza.
The manuscript was produced between 1568 and 1579. It's quite a long letter written by Antonio Perez, secretary to Philip II of Spain, addressed to the duke of Lerma, providing advice for princes on governing from privilege, illustrated with examples from the Spanish court. Find it in the MERLIN catalog.
Our popular teaching spotlight series returns this semester with a fresh look at innovative teaching in Special Collections. This month's featured educator is Ruth Knezevich, an instructor in the English department at Mizzou.
SC: Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I am a doctoral candidate and graduate instructor in the English department. My research focuses largely on in late 18th– and early 19th-century British literature with interests in ballad collections, Scottish Romanticism, and the emergence of “folk” literatures. My dissertation in-progress is on footnotes within ethnographic poetry and novels of this timeframe. When I’m not reading, writing, or teaching, I enjoy spending time outdoors and traveling, especially in and around my native northern Minnesota.
At MU, I’ve taught a handful of literature-based courses, including English 1000H (Honors Exposition), English 1210 (Introduction to British Literature), English 2100 (Writing About Literature), English 2159 (Introduction to World Literature), and English 3200 (Survey of British Literature, Beginnings through 1784).
In each of these courses – in addition to teaching critical thinking and reading skills – I like to show students that there are more ways to read a book than breaking down the words on the page, and that there is more to literature than just reading a book and looking at the arrangement of words on a page – each book holds a story of the world around it and the readers who have picked it up, read it, and written in it.
SC: How have you incorporated Special Collections into your teaching?
Each semester, I ensure that I bring my classes to visit Special Collections and spend time learning about various aspects of printing history, reading a book as more than just literature, and letting students get their hands on the materials. And frankly, Rare Books and Special Collections adds variety to times in the semester where we’re all feeling a little bogged down and need a new and exciting way to approach the text.
One semester, I brought my students in Survey of British Literature to Special Collections as a way to break up the monotony of our class discussion on Renaissance poetry. Alla and Kelli brought out a variety of publications and objects featuring the same poems and authors we were reading in class; students were encouraged to dive into reading the primary materials in their original context, outside of the anthology we were using in class. Suddenly, Ben Jonson and Amelia Lanyer came to life for students as they struggled through the centuries-old typography.
I have also asked my honors composition students to actively read selected from Special Collections as objects, carefully analyzing and writing about their thoughts and findings. Students were asked to choose one of the manuscripts or objects that were displayed during our class’s visit to Rare Books and Special Collections, and to spend time with it again outside of class, asking questions of the object, analyzing it, and drawing inferences from their observations of details they might otherwise overlook and then inferring how the book would have been used and who might have used it.
SC: What materials or collections did your students work with?
The various classes I have brought to Special Collections have worked with a wide array of materials and collections, including 19th-century travel writing, publications of Renaissance-era poetry, 18th-century editions of Homer, different antique versions of the Bible, and 16th-century documents addressing the politics of magic and religion.
SC: What outcomes resulted from your class visits? What were the effects on your students?
In addition to submitting some rich essays from the students detailing their findings from their assignments based on Special Collections, students consistently walk away from their visit in awe, inspired to discover what else is held in Special Collections.
One specific moment that will remain with me is when tears began welling up in one student’s eyes as she held an 800-year-old book. “I’m a part of this book’s history now,” she whispered to a classmate standing next to her. Another student, a college senior, said that the days spent in Rare Books and Special Collections were the highlights of her time in college, and that it was a shame that she was just learning about one of MU’s most exciting resources right as she was about to graduate.
SC: What advice would you give to colleagues interested in using Special Collections in their courses?
When I set aside a day for my class in Special Collections, I often don’t yet know exactly what I want my students to explore. The librarians have consistently helped me figure out the aims and goals of the day’s visit, suggested specific materials, provided samples for follow-up assignments, and offered to lead lectures for the class on topics related to the course.
For instance, I recently taught a unit on Christopher Marlowe’s play, Doctor Faustus, and I had asked the librarians to pull some resources that could be relevant and helpful in exploring the politics of magic and religion expressed in the play. Little did I know that Alla is actually an expert in Renaissance magic! My students were able to get so much more out of the library session than they ever imagined, and more than I could ever offer.
So, the biggest piece of advice that I would give to colleagues interested in using Special Collections in their courses is to use it! The staff in Special Collections is immensely helpful in putting together a productive and exciting day with demonstrations of the materials and offering suggestions for follow-up assignments.
We're excted to welcome our new Chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, to Columbia. He's well-known his fashionable bow ties, so in his honor, we're presenting a gallery of neckerchiefs, cravats, ties, and of course, bow ties, in historical illustrations from our collections. More information about each illustration is below.
Dapper bowtie-wearing gentlemen from Allgemeine Modenzeitung (1823, above; 1839, below)
Ties and cravats from the Bourbon Restoration (above) and the Second Empire (below) from Histoire du costume masculin français
Traditional dress of Lozére (above) and Alsace (below) from French Costumes by Lepaige-Medvey (London, 1939)
The great Gatsby himself (Limited Editions Club, 1980)
From the pages of Red Ryder Comics…
…and Dick Tracy!
And finally, the very first cover of Showme, MU's long-running student humor and literary magazine.
Happy Manuscript Monday! This week's offering is a letter from the papal chancery of Pope Leo X, written in Rome on March 27, 1517, to Ottaviano Fregoso, Doge of Genoa. The letter is signed Jacopo Sadoleto as papal secretary and was written by the papal scribe, Ludovico degli Arrighi. In addition to being a papal scribe, Arrighi was a type designer and author. His typefaces, based on his own elegant script, have influenced the design of fonts and letter forms from the Renaissance to the present.
Pamphlets – literature published in an unbound, ephemeral format – are one of the strengths of Special Collections. The collections contain thousands of sermons, speeches, tracts, and political writings from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, many of which are very scarce. We'll share a pamphlet each week to highlight these holdings.
This week's selection comes from the Fourth of July Orations Collection. It's one of eight known copies, all in the United States, and contains exactly what it says it does – the text of a Fourth of July address given in 1824.
The Fourth of July Orations collection is a great source for studying the development of American identity and politics. Many speeches, including this one, comment on contemporary world events and urge leaders to stick with the values and policies espoused by the country's founders.
Newburyport, [Mass.] : Printed at the Herald office [by Ephraim W. Allen], 1824. Find it in the MERLIN catalog.
This semester, we're kicking off a new series. Every Monday, we'll share a page or two from the department's manuscript holdings – just enough to give you a glimpse into the collections.
First up: the oldest manuscript in the collections, a fragment of De orthographia by Bede from the 9th century (Fragmenta Manuscripta #002). Fragmenta Manuscripta is a collection of leaves, clippings, and binder's waste assembled by bookseller John Bagford in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. It's fully digitized – find out more about it at Digital Scriptorium.
Stay tuned next Monday for another manuscript from the collections.
This is Pietra del paragone politico by Trajano Boccalini (1556-1613), an Italian political satirist whose writings were influential during the late Renaissance. Boccalini died before the publication of this work, which is a scathing attach on the Spanish for the treatment of their subjects during their occupation of the Kingdom of Naples.
Like many works that challenged authority, this one was issued with a false imprint for the protection of its printer. It has a beautiful engraved title page featuring a king talking with a courtier. It's small – just the right size to be concealed in a pocket. And, interesting for us (or for this librarian, at least), the endleaves are covered with pen trials. Find it in the MERLIN catalog, and come by to see it in person.
Academic Hall burned 122 years ago today, leaving the Columns to become a Mizzou icon. Before the fire, the building housed classrooms, offices, libraries, and museums – almost the entire university. Although parts of the Law Library were salvaged, the main library was a total loss. Almost.
Germania Kalender survived because it was checked out during the fire. However, it wasn't returned to the University until 1937, forty-five years later. After it came back, it was placed in the Rare Book Room. It's in rough condition – who knows what it went through over at least 45 years of being checked out? – but it's been here ever since.
The book was returned by Henry Gerling of St. Louis. The date, September 24, 1884, and the library stamp for Missouri State University (which was one of the names used by the University of Missouri at the time) alerted him to the book's history.
When the book was returned, the story made the news. These are clippings from the Kansas City Star (left) and the Columbia Missourian (right) from April 14, 1937.
Germania Kalender has calendars and an almanac, as you'd expect from the title, but it also contains pictures and readings on various subjects for the entire family.
It even includes some early comics!
Here in Columbia, we were greeted by temps of -10 (with wind chills of -25) during our morning commute. A meditation on winter somehow seems appropriate today.
John Shower (1657-1715) was a Presbyterian minister who published several works during his lifetime, mostly funeral sermons. His Winter Meditations was first published in 1695, and was fairly popular – this is the third edition. In this sermon, Shower sets out to illustrate the ways his parishioners could see winter as a blessing.
For instance, "In some Countreys, as in Lapland, not only doth the Snow abide all the Year on the Mountains, but durign the whole Winter the Earth is cover'd with Snow. And considering that for some Months of Winter, the Sun riseth not above their Horizon, or not much above it, this is rather an Advantage than an Inconvenience. For by the Light of the Snow they are enabl'd to work by Day, and to travel safely by Night."
"The good Effect of the Winter's Frost and Snow is perceiv'd very often the following Summer… As when a Gardner is seen to pull up some delightful Flowers by the Roots, to dig up the Earth, and cover it with Dung, some ignorant Person may be ready to charge him with spoiling the Garden; but when Spring is arriv'd, there will be sufficient Ground to acknowledge his Wisdom in what he did."
And it could be a lot worse.
Our temperature should climb into the 20s tomorrow. Perhaps winter really isn't so bad. As Garrison Keillor put it, more than 300 years after Shower, "Winter is what we were meant for and we welcome it. We thrive on adversity and that’s just the truth. The snow shovel is the secret of happiness."
