On Tuesday, a dozen first-year students participating in the Bantam Beginnings program came to the Watkinson Library to look at several rare books featuring anatomical illustrations from the 16th-19th centuries.  Each student was to select a particular organ, system, etc. and compare how early anatomical illustrations compare to 21st century depictions.  This was part of The Skill in Observation and Communication in Art and Medicine program, facilitated by Professor William Church. 

We had set out 9 books, all open to anatomy illustrations. The students were not only engaged with the material, but also asked many questions—both about content and the books themselves. In several cases, the students asked for dictionaries to look up terms that they didn’t understand instead of turning immediately to the internet for answers. The class was with us for about an hour with the students congregating around several of the texts, carrying on discussions about the content that ranged from questions about the images: “What is that?” “Is that a hip?” “What part of the brain is that?” “Are those lines veins coming out of the muscles?”

They were also curious about the way the images were depicted—questioning the artistic merit/content/liberties—and asking if the images were typical of anatomy books, or of iconography found in art of the period. One of the more interesting conversations that seemed to stem from the images was how the bodies for dissection were obtained. When one of the students realized that the bodies were often of the poor, lower classes, or prisoners, she took another look at the muscles that were depicted on the skeleton and said; “Then I guess he wasn’t the most muscular specimen that they could find!”

Students were particularly fascinated by illustrations in A series of anatomical plates; with references and physiological comments  by Jones Quain and W.J. E. Wilson, published in 1842.  This work stimulated many questions about specific organs and systems.  Also of great interest was the classic work Medici De humani corporis fabrica libri septem : Cum indice rerum & uerborum memorabilium locupletissimo,  by Andreas Vesalius, published in 1568.

[Posted by Watkinson staff Henry Arneth & Peter Rawson]

I am pleased to welcome back the 2nd Folio of Shakespeare, just in time for the fall semester!

Acquired by the Watkinson in the spring of 2012, the book was cleaned and repaired in February by Marie Oedel, who does conservation work for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (among other places). Marie generously donated about 30% of the labor involved–which came to over 40 hours of cleaning and repairing!

We then had to replace seven (7) missing leaves from the book, which were reproduced lettepress (from polymer plates) by Scott Vile of the Ascensius Press from scans of the copy at the John Carter Brown Library (Brown University).

Finally, we had the book bound in full leather by Sam Ellenport, a master binder, who used materials and designs consistent with books bound in England in the 1630s.

It is now ready to take up permanent residence in the Watkinson stacks, and to be shown to classes and consulted by researchers!

The Watkinson Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Rawson as Associate Curator of Archives and Manuscript Collections. He will begin working at Trinity on August 24, 2015.

Peter is originally from Riverside, Connecticut.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in history (concentrating on modern Europe) from Antioch University Seattle, a master’s degree in library science, and a master’s degree in history (American history, 18^th-20^th centuries)—both from Simmons College. His history thesis focused on the ways in which the 1918-19 influenza epidemic in the U.S. disappeared in popular discourse for over a generation after the event.

For the past nine years he has been Archivist for the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. Prior to that he served for six years at the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, as photograph/image archivist, archivist for the National Archives of Plastic Surgery, and assistant reference librarian. Before becoming an archivist, Peter spent a decade living and working in Hartford as the Canvass Director for the Connecticut Citizen Action Group.

We recently received a gift from retired professor Frank Egan of six (6) boxes of old issues of the Tripod (going back to 1968), as well as random issues of some hitherto unknown (at least to us) Trinity student newspapers such as The Trinity Observer (1983-87), The Trident (1983), The Trinity Questioner (1984-85), The Forum (1986-87), and The Other Voice (1994).

We also had about 10 boxes of old Tripods in the basement–and both collections were combined, and are shown here–each pile is a separate year of issues, from 1968-2009. We will be looking for ways to utilize these duplicate copies of the Tripod in the year ahead. We already have TWO archival copies of all of these issues–it is our ongoing mission to make sure we have two complete sets of these publications, as well as digitizing them for our online repository.

It is fascinating to look at these publications and realize that over the decades–over and over–we are dealing with the same issues.

On Wednesday (the eve of Shakespeare’s birthday) the Watkinson (producer) paired up with volunteers from Dan Lloyd’s “Shakespeare as Philosopher” class (cast) and area teaching artist Christin Goff (Director) to perform a staged reading of King John.

The players performed to a small but dedicated audience–augmented by a few floaters after intermission, who doubtless came to see what all the fuss was about. The production was augmented by inter-scene and intermission music, live bongo drums (for dramatic affect), and projected slides which provided a visual gloss, of sorts, to the action, which at times can be unclear (this is not one of the more well-known plays). However, the text was edited by Ms. Goff for the performance, which helped the flow and pacing of the play, and the name-cards displayed when a character was speaking also helped.

This was the first in what we plan will be a series of productions of Shakespeare sponsored by the Watkinson, to draw attention to the recently acquired and restored “2nd Folio” (the second edition of the first publication of the complete plays of Shakespeare, printed in 1632).

We thank professor Lloyd & his class for their hard work!

I am pleased to announce that David Field ’15 is this year’s awardee of the South Beach Writing Residency, offered by the family of Hyam Plutzik ’32.

David is an English major originally from Franklin, MA, with a focus on creative writing, rhetoric, and media arts. He has written two novels, and was a recipient of a Watkinson Creative Fellowship in the Spring of 2014, the ultimate product of which was a publication of several short stories, available here. He plans to attend an MFA program after Trinity and to teach creative writing at the college level.

The Family of Hyam Plutzik (Trinity ’32) offers an annual residency (for five years, beginning in Spring 2014) in South Beach in the Betsy Writers Room to a graduating senior with outstanding talent in the literary arts.  The award is given in May, as part of the graduation program (Honors Day).  This residency comes with a $500 travel stipend, six days lodging, and a per diem of $50. During the residency, which can happen anytime during the award year (June-April), the recipient will be invited to participate in an Arts Salon to share his/her work with the community; planning will be done in close partnership with the visiting artist.  The residency will be awarded annually by the Head Curator and Librarian of the Watkinson, in consultation with College advisers, for a residency to be scheduled directly with the Betsy Writers Room.

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Last night the English Department sponsored an event in the Watkinson to help us celebrate the gift of two archives (now processed and ready for researchers) by retired professor Paul Lauter.

The larger of the two archives are 25 boxes of files and papers related to the formation and production of the Heath Anthology of American Literature, now in its eighth edition. The Heath Anthology  began in 1984 as a project of The Feminist Press called Reconstructing American Literature (RAL).  The literary “canon,” according to Lauter and his collaborators, had long overlooked the writings of most women and people of color.  Beginning at the 1968 meeting of the Modern Language Association, activist conference participants argued for a more inclusive and diverse understanding of American literature.  Lauter was a leader in this groundbreaking endeavor, from which the RAL project and ultimately an entirely new anthology emerged.

Among the categories in the Lauter collection are African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and Native American writings, organizations like MELUS (Multiethnic Literature of the United States), traditionally significant authors like Melville, Multiculturalism, Secondary School projects (for changes in high school curricula) and Teaching. The Teaching folders feature syllabi developed for the Heath Anthology  along with articles by Paul Lauter and other members of the Heath editorial board on such topics as using the anthology and teaching lesser-known writers and multicultural literature.  Also included are copies of a biannual newsletter produced by the publisher, DC Heath, to promote the anthology and to help faculty teach its breadth of literary texts.  54 folders labelled “Miscellaneous” offer access to varied works by authors considered for the anthology, searchable by last names.  The Heath Anthology  is, in fact, part of a revolution in the study and teaching of American literature.

“In putting together the Heath,” Paul Lauter wrote, “we wished to represent what we perceived to be the rich diversity of American cultures, [especially] the significance of gender, race, and class to the shaping and reception of literary texts.”

The second collection is the Paul Lauter ‘Sixties Archive, comprising fourteen boxes which contain correspondence, pamphlets, newspapers, books, and flyers from organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), New University Conference (NUC), American Friends Service Committee, U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, and the Feminist Press.  Lauter, who was active in all of those organizations, also collected materials on the anti-Vietnam-war movement, including draft resistance and GI peace activity, the feminist, civil rights, and LGBT movements of the time, and student activism more generally.

As an exercise in analyzing the artifact, Jonathan Elukin’s Honors Seminar on the History of the Book (FYSM 256) recently examined two works from our collections which occur in, shall we say, multiple “instances.” Four copies of two editions of the so-called Nuremberg Chronicle, (German and Latin), published in 1493 . . . and five editions of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia, all printed in Basel, 1550 ; 1558; 1559; 1568; and 1574.

The question we put to the students: Why do we need multiple copies of an edition of a work, or even multiple editions of the same work? What (if anything) can each copy of each edition “teach” us?

The students did an excellent job of examining the various aspects of the books, which included marginalia, binding, rubrication, hand-colored illustrations, observations about linguistic changes over time, and other factors crucial to the study of what kinds of information was available to Europeans about the world in the Renaissance, and the modes of the production and distribution of that information.

Not only did we decide to keep all of the copies, they convinced me that I should try to acquire (by gift or purchase) more editions of the Cosmographia! Since complete copies of 16thC editions run into five figures these days, this may take a while…

The most gratifying part of all this, of course, is to be able to provide such a fully equipped “laboratory of the humanities” for Trinity students. The rare book collections in the Watkinson are equal to, and most often exceed, those of our “peer” schools, and is a true point of pride for Trinity.

This evening is the first meeting of players from prof. Dan Lloyd’s “Shakespeare as Philosopher” (PHIL 254) class who have agreed to participate in a staged reading of The Life and Death of King John, a play not often performed in modern times.

We are sponsoring this performance for two reasons: to herald the acquisition (in spring 2012) and restoration (in spring 2015) of the so-called “2nd Folio” of Shakespeare; and also to herald our fall exhibition honoring the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which King John put his royal seal to in 1215, and to which Connecticut can honorably trace its constitutionalism.

The PERFORMANCE will be on April 22, at 7:00pm in the Joslin Family 1823 Room.