#lcpblog

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Mocking the “Other”: The Irish American Experience

This year the Print Department acquired a set of four cards mocking the experience of Irish immigrants in America. In size and appearance they are similar to advertising trade cards, but there is no particular product associated with these late 19th-century collecting cards. 

Today on the Library Company blog, Sarah Weatherwax, Curator of Prints and Photographs, examines how this set of cards uses both visual and textual tropes to demean the Irish, playing off commonly held stereotypes that would have been readily understandable to the cards’ intended audience.

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Jennie Collins (1828-1887) started Boffin's Bower to help the working women of Boston. This past summer, Library Company intern Lydia Shaw researched Collins and her remarkable project, which was featured in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (June 26, 1875). Read more in Lydia's blog post for Women's Equality Day 2019.

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Looking for some summer travel inspiration? Head over to the Library Company blog to read Print and Photographs Department intern Emma O’Neill-Dietel’s post about Janet Morris’ two-volume travel diary, which chronicles a family trip from Philadelphia through the northwestern United States and Canada in July and August of 1921.

Diary of Janet Morris. Summer 1921. Trip West. 

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Save the date! On July 16, 2019 the Visual Culture Program will welcome artist Rebecca Kamen to the Library Company to talk about her recent art project PLOT. Inspired by the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission, PLOT seeks to evoke new insights about our relationship to the moon prior to the advent of the camera.

Head over to the Library Company blog to read about Kamen’s artistic process, and stay tuned to learn more about how you can join us for the event in July.

Plate “Fig. R” in Johannes Hevelius, Johannis Hevelii Selenographia Gedani, 1647.          

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Head over to the Library Company blog to read 2019 Mellon Scholar MaDeja Leverett’s experience as a research intern last month:

“Through the Eyes of Black Women: Intersectionality, Sexual Violence, and Reproductive Rights”

Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mellon Scholars Research Fellowship Program aims to promote research in the collections of the Library Company and to enhance the production of scholarly work in African American history of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These competitive programs are designed to increase the participation of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds and others in the field of African American history prior to 1900.

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In January 2019, Zachary M. Schrag, a professor in George Mason University’s Department of History and Art History, examined a range of 19th-century nativist material in the Library Company’s collections. One item in particular—an issue of a short-lived and little-known Philadelphia newspaper— proved especially relevant to his research. 

Read Professor Schrag’s views on why the Native Flag, especially its front-page engraving, offers new insight into how Philadelphia nativists understood themselves and their opponents in 1844, the year of the city’s nativist riots, on the Library Company blog.

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LIbrary Company volunteer, Ann Nista, illuminates the 17th Century naturalist Francis Willughby (1635-1672) through his posthumous publication De Historia Piscium (1686).

You can read more about his contribution to science HERE.

Willughby, Francis. De Historia Piscium.  Oxonii : e Theatro Sheldoniano, anno Dom. 1686.

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Getting One’s Due: An Episode in the 19th-Century Book Industry

In honor of #WomensEqualityDay today, we take a look at Reading Room Intern Lydia Shaw’s research into 19th-century author Mary Abigail Dodge. Check out Lydia’s blog post to learn how Dodge called out her publisher, Ticknor & Fields, for pay inequality in the 1860s.