Shawn Sheehy to Speak on Tuesday, May 14, on "Concept to (Political) Action: Pop-Up Artists’ Books"

Please join us on Tuesday, May 14, 12:00–1:30 pm, for an artist talk by Shawn Sheehy: "Concept to (Political) Action: Pop-Up Artists’ Books. The talk, in 126 Memorial Library, 728 State Street, is one in a series of events surrounding the multi-venue "Text Support: A Library Exhibit About Paper."

This intricate example of Sheehy's paper engineering, currently on exhibit in Special Collections as part of "Text Support," hails from the large artists' book collection in Kohler Art Library. 

An earlier exhibit in Special Collections, "Lothar Meggendorfer and Movable Books" (2006),  showcased color lithographic proof sheets of movable children's books from the Lothar Meggendorfer Collection. Meggendorfer (1847-1925) created more than 100 children's books over the course of his career, many in multiple editions and translations. To set Meggendorfer's own paper engineering in context, this earlier exhibit also contained books with movable parts from the Renaissance through the 21st century, including treatises on cosmography, geometry, landscape design, and the automobile, as shown here:\

This multi-part illustration of the Daimler automobile comes from Les transformateurs d’énergie: Générateurs, accumulateurs, moteurs, avec les plus récentes applications à la navigation aérienne, assembled by a committee of engineers and published in Paris in 1910.

"Jesuits and Visual Culture": Center for Early Modern Studies Conference in Special Collections

On May 7, 2013, Special Collections will host a full-day session of a conference entitled " 'Spiritual Optiks': Jesuits and Visual Culture." This conference, organized by Prof. Sabine Mödersheim, director of the Center for Early Modern Studies (CEMS), builds on scholarly interests across campus as well as the exhibit "Jesuits and the Construction of Knowledge"  in Special Collections in 2011 and an ongoing project to digitize Jesuit iconography through the UW Digital Collections.

The CEMS conference program begins at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 6, 2013, with a public keynote lecture with the intriguing title, "Jesuit Emblems and Catholic Comics," by Laurence Grove, director of the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow. The lecture will be held in room L150 in the Elvehjem building, Chazen Museum.

Conference sessions on Tuesday, May 7 (held in Special Collections, 984 Memorial Library) will feature wide-ranging studies of Jesuit emblematica, analysis of specific images of lunar geography in the 17th century, exploration of a Jesuit "empire of knowledge," and a workshop investigating scholarly possibilities afforded by the UW-Madison digital Jesuit iconography project.

The latter project (undertaken through Special Collections and the UW Digital Collections in collaboration with Prof. Florence Hsia and graduate students Meridith Beck Sayre and Lynnette Regouby from the Department of History of Science at UW-Madison) aims at presenting high-quality digital images of illustrations from our strong holdings of scholarly works by Jesuit authors in conjunction with detailed, searchable descriptions. Such illustrations range from deeply symbolic frontispieces of Jesuit publications on mathematical sciences

to depictions of exotic animals encountered by Jesuit missionaries

and from fanciful (if mathematically accurate) sundials

to disembodied diagrams of mechanical experiments.

 

See the full program for details about the CEMS conference sessions.

Regiomontanus in the Nuremberg Chronicle

In a recent colloquium held in Special Collections, Prof. Michael Shank of the Department of History of Science, pointed out the portrait of the humanist astronomer Regiomontanus included in Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum (1493), the massive volume often called the Nuremberg Chronicle. 

Although many portraits included in this heavily illustrated work were more generic in nature, and were sometimes recycled for different historical figures, Shank notes that the woodcut portrait of Regiomontanus was probably a faithful likeness, since Schedel and his artist both knew Regiomontanus. For more about this huge volume, see such works as The making of the Nuremberg Chronicle by the noted California printer and book designer Adrian Wilson, available in the reference section in the Special Collections reading room. See also Ezra Brown's English translation (1990) of Ernst Zinner's biography of Regiomontanus.

Much of Shank's lively lecture centered on a manuscript by Regiomontanus, the "Defensio Theonis contra Trapezuntium," or "Defense of Theon against George of Trebizond." A preliminary digital edition of this manuscript, the original of which is held in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg branch, is an ambitious joint project undertaken by Shank and Richard Kremer at Dartmouth.

Text Support

Congratulations to Tracy Honn, director of the Silver Buckle Press, and Lyn Korenic, director of Kohler Art Library, on their three-venue exhibit, "Text Support: A Library Exhibit About Paper." The largest of the three parts of the exhibit, currently on display in Special Collections (976 Memorial Library), focuses on history of handmade and commercial paper. The exhibit includes examples ranging from mundane to highly decorative. In the latter category is an instance of decorative endpapers from a German publication of the Weimar period, Paul Renner's Typografie als Kunst (Munich: G. Müller, 1922):

 The same exhibit case, entitled "Decorative Techniques" also contains

• Paul Nash et al., In praise of patterned papers (1997)
• Yanya Schmoller, Remondini and Rizzi: A chapter in Italian decorated paper history (1990)
• Tokutaro Yagi, Suminagashi-zome (1991)
• Claire Bolton, Maziarczyk paste papers (1991)
• Ann Muir, Harvesting colour: The year in a marbler's workshop (1999)
• Josef Halfer, The progress of the marbling art, from technical scientific principles (1893)

The other two portions of the "Text Support" exhibit feature handmade paper with Wisconsin roots (at Kohler Art Library) and examples of paper engineering (Silver Buckle Press display cases on the 2nd floor of Memorial Library).

The recent Schewe Lecture by Timothy Barrett (director of the Iowa Center for the Book), who spoke in eloquent terms of  "The Future of [Handmade] Paper," drew an enthusiastic crowd to Special Collections in conjunction with the exhibit. We call your attention as well to an upcoming lecture by Chicago artist Shawn Sheehy, "Concept to (Political) Action: Pop-Up Artists’ Books," at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, May 14, 2013, in room 126 Memorial Library. Both lectures benefit from the sponsorship of the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries.

The exhibit runs through the end of June 2013.

"Parts and Wholes" Exhibit Ends on Friday, March 29

The Special Collections exhibit "Parts and Wholes" ends next Friday, March 29. We hope you will take the opportunity during spring break to see it. 

As we have noted in earlier posts, the exhibit features works of science and natural history, revealing examples of print culture, and specimens from campus museums. For example, it pairs (in separate but adjacent cases!) a so-called wet preparation of medusae from the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum  with striking color illustrations from publications of the prolific and controversial life scientist Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919):  

The term medusae (plural of medusa) refers to the head of Medusa in Greek mythology. Carl von Linnaeus is credited with coining the term; Haeckel's color illustrations helped to popularize medusae.

Special Collections is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. The exhibit area is located on the 9th floor of Memorial Library.

The next exhibit in Special Collections, entitled "Text Support: A Library Exhibit about Paper," opens on April 15.

Little Magazines and the Grolier Cub

The Libraries' own Susan Barribeau was one of the speakers at the Grolier Club symposium about little magazines on March 13, in conjunction with the Grolier's exhibition entitled “American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print.” Susan's witty presentation highlighted the history (long), extent (big), and strengths (many) of the Little Magazine Collection in Special Collections at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her examples ranged from early little magazines acquired by Marvin Sukov

to recent publications like Esopus and Forklift, Ohio: A journal of poetry, cooking, & light industrial safety. 

Susan also generously noted the collection development work of her predecessors, including Yvonne Schofer and Felix Pollak; called attention to related collections and programs at UW-Madison, including the

• Dobbertin Collection of Campus Humor Magazines in Special Collections 
• Library of Amateur Journalism, also in Special Collections 
• Silver Buckle Press
• artists' book collection at Kohler Art Library
• Center for the History of Print & Digital Culture 
• Tandem Press;  

and pointed to the distinguished (and diverse) history of print culture in Wisconsin, as demonstrated by such institutions as the

• Philosopher Press at the sign of the green pine tree in Wausau, Wisconsin, 
• Walter Hamady's Perishable Press Limited in Mt. Horeb
• Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee
• Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers.

Compliments to Susan!

For more information, see the new blog Little Magazine Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (collection manager Susan Barribeau, web editor Oliver Wendorf).

Gallery Talk on March 8 for "Parts and Wholes" Exhibit

On March 8, 2013, at 4:30 p.m., Judith Kaplan, Ph.D., guest co-curator for the exhibit “Parts and Wholes,” will offer a gallery talk in Special Collections (976 Memorial Library). Kaplan will describe the process of selecting books, periodicals, and museum specimens to illustrate part/whole relationships in the sciences and print culture, drawing upon a wide variety of collections around campus. We hope you will be able to join us for this event.

One of the exhibit cases sure to attract attention pairs a multi-layer lift-the-flap illustration of the anatomical structure of the escargot, enlarged to 28 cm., with a decidedly oversize papier-mâché model of a May beetle, open to show its internal organs. The former, Jules Philippe Lewis Anglas' L'escargot (anatomie et dissection): Planches coloriées à feuillets découpés et superposés (1916) is a new acquisition in Special Collections made possible by the Reeder Family Fund. 

Here is the snail in two-dimensional form:

and with various flaps lifted: 

The model of the May beetle (Melolontha vulgaris), produced in Paris by L. T. J. Auzoux (1797-1880), hails from the Zoological Museum on campus, and features the artist's signature under one of the wings. Both halves of its head rest on a maroon book weight some 24 cm. long. We are grateful to Laura A. Halverson Monahan, Curator of Collections for the Museum, for her willingness to lend this and other museum objects for the exhibit. (For more about Auzoux' anatomical models, see web exhibits by the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and the Whipple Museum in Oxford, UK.)

Throughout “Parts and Wholes,” works from Special Collections, Silver Buckle Press, and the Ebling Library Historical Collections, sit alongside materials from the Zoological Museum and the Insect Research Collection, highlighting questions of individuality and individuation, “colonial” organisms and composite forms, print serials and metamorphosing creatures. For more on materials from Silver Buckle Press on display, see an earlier post in this blog.

The exhibit, which runs through March 2013 in Special Collections, was co-curated by Judith Kaplan; Lynn Nyhart, Professor of History of Science; and Robin Rider, Curator of Special Collections, with exhibit installation by Kaplan and Cindy Lundey, M.L.S. Daniel Joe of the library graphics office designed the striking exhibit poster.

The exhibit was installed in conjunction with the workshop, “What is an Individual? Where Philosophy, History, and Biology Coincide,” which has enjoyed generous support from the Anonymous Fund, the Department of the History of Science, the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Work of Silver Buckle Press on Display — and Kudos to Tracy Honn

The current exhibit in Special Collections, “Parts and Wholes,” explores part/whole relationships, weaving together examples from the sciences and from print culture. In the latter category, one exhibit case highlights moveable type, and in particular, the work of Tracy Honn and holdings of the Silver Buckle Press.

As Ephraim Chambers wrote in his Cyclopaedia (published in London in 1728 and digitized as part of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection), printing is “the Art of taking Impressions with Ink, from Characters and Figures moveable, or immoveable, upon Paper, Velom [vellum], or the like Matter.” Taking off from the basic notion of moveable type comprising words, lines, paragraphs, and pages are borders composed of individual decorative sorts (composite ornaments), and chromatic type, in which one sort occupies the negative space of the other, often used in two-color printing. The exhibit case features a broadside deploying chromatic type

Complete Specimen of 10 line Van Lanen Type Designed by Matthew Carter and Produced by Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. Design and printing by Tracy Honn for Silver Buckle Press in 2011,

along with with samples of Carter’s “W” and sets of composite type, all courtesy of the Silver Buckle Press.

Tracy Honn's work with the Van Lanen font has also received praiseful notice in the blog Design Envy — congratulations, Tracy!

Irish manuscript included in exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library

An exhibition entitled "Nobility and newcomers in Renaissance Ireland," which explores the Ireland of Shakespeare's time, opened on January 19, 2013, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Included in the exhibition, curated by Thomas Herron and Brendan Kane, is a modest manuscript volume (MS 179) from our holdings, part of the Myles Dillon collection (MS 175-179):

In particular, on display at the Folger in a case entitled "James and the Three Kingdoms," is a page opening from this manuscript volume, which contains Ossianic verse transcribed y Domhnall ac Mothanna/Domhnal ac Taig (ca. 1603?):

Our holdings in this area were described in considerable detail by Cornelius G. Buttimer in a Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published by the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, in 1989.

40 years since the last issue of LIFE

December 29, 2012, marked the 40th anniversary of the last issue of the original LIFE magazine. An  exhibit in the 1st-floor lobby of Memorial Library (on display through March 1, 2013) commemorates that anniversary and highlights the fact that Special Collections holds some 40 examples of the curved metal printing plates used to print the last issue in December 1972. The printing plates were the gift of John and Barbara Dobbertin, who also donated examples of the first (November 23, 1936) and last issues of LIFE included in the display. As he describes it, Dobbertin discovered "printing plates from the last issue of LIFE stacked on the ground floor of the 440,000-square foot printing plant" of R. R. Donnelley & Sons in Chicago and purchased the plates in 1973 "for the scrap metal price of 3¢ per pound."

The color cover, "The Year in Pictures 1972," required multiple color plates, one of which is shown here. Like movable type, such electrotype printing plates are reversed or wrong-reading; the pages printed from them are right-reading.

Use of curved printing plates was just part of a complicated technological system that made possible a weekly photographic news magazine printed on coated paper and produced in enormous quantities.

Henry R. Luce, who recognized the possibilities at R. R. Donnelley & Sons, launched LIFE in the midst of the Depression, as recounted by James L. Baughman, professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in Henry R. Luce and the rise of the American news media (1987). George H. Waltz, Jr., described the printing processes at R. R. Donnelley in The house that quality built (1957).

We invite you to take a look at the exhibit, which John Dobbertin generously curated. It features LIFE articles of signal importance in late 1972, from the launch of Apollo 17 to latest on the war in Vietnam, alongside the printing plates used to produce them.

More of the printing plates await you in Special Collections.

A video recording entitled Craftsmanship & automation, originally produced in 1960, contains footage about presses and plates used by R. R. Donnelley & Sons in various large publishing projects. Acquisition of this DVD, among scores of documentary films on printing crafts, was supported by a grant to the the Libraries' Silver Buckle Press from the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries.  

Hooke's Micrographia makes multiple appearances

The copy in Special Collections of Robert Hooke's influential Micrographia: Or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses [that is, microscopes] (1665) has made multiple appearances of late.

This copy is part of the Daniel and Eleanor Albert Collection on optics and ophthalmology.

A view through the microscope in Micrographia of a cross-section of cork figures, for example, in the case on cells in our new exhibit “Parts and wholes,” alongside a volume of Ledermüller's Amusement microscopique of a century later. Look for more on that exhibit in a subsequent post.

Illustrations from the Albert copy appear as well in Meghan Doherty's prize-winning study, “Discovering the “true form:” Hooke’s Micrographia and the visual vocabulary of engraved portraits,” in Notes and records of the Royal Society, 66:3 (September 2012), 211-234. Shown here: the fly eye, as viewed through Hooke's microscope,

and the “stinging points of Nettles.”

We add our congratulations to Doherty on her Notes and records prize. She also served as guest exhibit curator for “Under the Medicean stars: Medici patronage of science and natural history, 1537-1737” in Special Collections in 2007.

Special Collections is also fortunate to hold, as part of the Thordarson Collection, a copy of the Micrographia with a title page that reads “Printed for John Martyn...” with a publication date of 1667.

This is probably the same edition as the Allestry printing but for the new title page. The page facing the title page in the Thordarson copy reads “Ordered, That the Book ... Be Printed by John Martyn, and James Allestry, Printers to the said [Royal] Society. Novem. 23. 1664.”

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center has produced a digital version of the Thordarson copy.

Holiday cookery from the Peter Pauper Press

One of the mainstays of the Peter Pauper Press was the slim cookbook, attractively designed, and usually running to 60-some pages. From the extensive Special Collections holdings of the Peter Pauper Press, we feature here examples of holiday cookbooks from the 1950s: Holiday party casseroles (1956), Holiday cookies (1954), and Holiday party desserts (1956). Titles in this collection are gifts to the Library from steadfast friends James and Nancy Dast.

The volume entitled Holiday cookies, compiled by Edna Beilenson and drawn by Vee Guthrie (1954), featured cheery “Greetings!”:

     Mix your batter gaily,
     Choose a colored bowl;
     Make a cheerful clatter,
     Whistle as you roll!

     The cookies will be better,
     The afternoon less long,
     If you do your baking
     To a tuneful song!

These volumes are but three in our collection of some 400 works published by the Peter Pauper Press. In 1928 the Peter Pauper Press began issuing works of prose and poetry — often in small format and always carefully designed — at “prices even a pauper could afford.” We exhibited many of them in 2011, in an exhibit entitled “Peter Pauper Press: Highlighting the gifts of James and Nancy Dast.” For more information about the collection, see “Peter Pauper Press Collection: Gift of James and Nancy Dast,” page 27, and  Beth Kubly's article, “The Peter Pauper Press,” pages 21-25, both in The Friends of the Libraries Magazine (2011).

Edna Beilenson, wife of  Press founder Peter Beilenson, was responsible for compiling and/or producing numerous cookbooks issued by the Press. Our collection includes such seasonal favorites as The holiday cook book (1950), Holiday goodies (1952), Holiday punches, party bowls, and soft drinks (1953), Holiday candies (1954), The Merrie Christmas cook book (1955), and Merrie Christmas drink book (1955).

Holiday greetings from all of us in the Department of Special Collections!

Geographies

For this year’s annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Meridith Beck Sayre and Nicolas Jacobson, graduate students in history of science here at UW-Madison, organized a session entitled "Spiritual Geographies." In it they presented a joint paper, “A Place Where No Men Dwell, Nor Souls Pass Away: Defining Spiritual Landscapes in Giambattista Riccioli’s Selenography." They made use of our copy of Riccioli's Astronomia reformata (Bologna, 1665), 

paying particular attention to Riccioli's moon map, both in its full extent, occupying two facing pages, 

and in such details as the position of the names of Riccioli and his Jesuit colleague Grimaldi (near the left edge of this image) 

Riccioli's book figured in the exhibit "Jesuits and the Construction of Knowledge, 1540-1773," which Beck Sayre co-curated in 2011 along with Florence Hsia, James Lattis, and Robin Rider. Beck Sayre has also selected titles for a larger digital humanities project on early modern Jesuit iconography pertaining to scholarship and travel. A prototype of that image database is available through the UW Digital Collections.

For his part, while a student in Rider's history of science course in 2009, Jacobson attended to another sort of geography. His exhibit case for the class-curated exhibit “Science Circa 1859: On the Eve of Darwin's Origin of Species,” focused on the relationship of taxonomy and classification to philology, including geographical considerations in Josiah Clark Nott's Types of mankind (Philadelphia, 1854) and Friedrich Max Mueller's The languages of the seat of war in the East, 2nd ed. (London, 1855).  More about that course and exhibit: http://www.news.wisc.edu/17388.

Willughby's turkey

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, we offer here the turkey from The ornithology of Francis Willughby, as edited for publication by John Ray (London: Printed by A.C. for John Martyn, printer to the Royal Society, 1678). This title is part of the Thordarson Collection, among the strong holdings of history of science in the Department of Special Collections. The Department also has the Latin edition of 1676.

From another hotly contested election

As the nation watches election returns, we call your attention to an example of political print culture from an another hotly contested election eighty years ago. This small "Presidential Puzzle" from 1932, with printed wooden pieces housed in a printed cardboard box, highlighted campaign issues and claims from the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, and the challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Presidential puzzle of 1932, showing box and wooden puzzle pieces.

The inside of the box presents the challenge: "Bet you can't get your candidate into White House corner." 

We were able to acquire this unusual puzzle, in its original box, through the generosity of the Shirley E.  Cherkasky and Jessie M. Christensen Special Collections Fund.    

Little books of secrets

Alerted by a reference in William Eamon’s Science and the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton University Press, 1994), a scholar in France recently inquired about one of the little books of secrets in the Duveen Alchemy and Chemistry Collection here in Special Collections. In response, we have made available a digital facsimile of I maravigliosi et occulti secreti naturali by Benedetto, il Persiano, from 1613. This 8-page pamphlet (only 15 cm. tall) is one of 42 such works of Secreti italiani (1580-ca. 1640) in the Duveen Collection.

Essay on flower painting (1810) now on exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art

A book from Special Collections entitled A practical essay on flower painting in water colours by Edward Pretty (London: For S. and J. Fuller 1810) is currently on exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, as part of The Golden Age of British Watercolors, 1790–1910 (http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/visit/events-calendar/event/british-watercolors/). 

As Pretty explained, “Flower Painting has at length become a particular study; and when we consider the immense field laid open to us, what can be more gratifying than an opportunity of copying nature in her gayest and most fanciful decorations! The variety and abundance of the Vegetable part of the Creation has engaged the attention and called forth the pencils of many Artists. The necessity of an Improved Essay on Flower Painting is obvious.” To demonstrate how colors "may be produced by a judicious mixture” of three basic colors, his “Tablet of Colours” showed degrees of shading with Indian ink and laid out both “Primitive Colours” and “Tints & Compounds [sic] Tints.” 

The final version of the engraving chosen for the exhibition at the Chazen depicts three roses in fully-colored form; to make clear the progression, we show here all three versions (without color, with some color, and with full color) as included in our copy of the book: 

Pretty envisaged more entrepreneurial opportunity, “should this Essay meet with encouragement from a generous and discerning Public.” He proposed to publish a supplement containing “highly-finished Groups of Flowers” for those who had completed study of A practical essay, promoting the project by exhibiting his original drawings “at the Publishers, for the receiving of Names of Subscribers.” WorldCat shows no copy of that supplement, however. 

The Department of Special Collections was able to acquire Pretty’s Essay through the generosity of the Reeder Family Fund. 

The exhibition at the Chazen Museum also includes three other books from the Department of Special Collections:

• Sir John Barrow, Travels in China, 2^nd ed. (London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies), 1806.
• George Brookshaw, A new treatise on flower painting, or, Every lady her own drawing master [etc.]. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown [etc.], 1818) from the Thordarson Collection.  A digital facsimile made possible by the Chipstone Foundation is also available through UW Digital Collections (http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/DLDecArts.BrookFloPai). 
• In fairy land: A series of pictures from the elf-world  by Richard Doyle; with a poem by William Allingham (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer, 1870), gift of Ada Margaret Stoflet.

For more on the The Golden Age of British Watercolors, 1790–1910, see http://www.arthistory.wisc.edu/exhibitions/victorian-watercolors/index.html.

Gallery Talk, 4 p.m., September 14, 2012

It is a pleasure to launch the Special Collections blog with the announcement of a gallery talk by Rachel Melis at 4 p.m. on September 14, 2012, in the Department of Special Collections, 976 Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 728 State Street. 

Melis, a book artist and UW-Madison Art Department alumna, will point out highlights in the exhibit she created and curated:

Expanding the Home Circle:
An exhibit of artists books
paired with illustrated books
from the Cairns Collection
of American Women Writers

September 14 also marks the closing date for the exhibit. Those without UW-Madison ID will need to show a photo ID with current address to obtain a day pass at the entrance to Memorial Library.

Melis has been engraving and letterpress-printing contemporary versions of texts by 19th-century women authors — focusing on those who sought to expand the domestic sphere in response to what they witnessed on the American frontier. This exhibit pairs 19th-century illustrations and caricatures of women and nature with Melis’ surreal combinations of women and birds.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to examine copy 1 of Melis’ artist's book, Unsexed & unsphered. Volume I: A chapter from A new home & an essay from A book for the home circle  by Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, which Melis has generously donated to Special Collections.  

The Cairns Collection of American Women Writers, 1650-1940, which now numbers over 10,000 titles by some 2500 writers, is available for use in the Special Collections Reading Room.