CAS: Russian and East European Studies Center

This collection is a bit of a mish-mash. It’s main interest, to me anyway, is its use in demonstrating the place the former Soviet countries held in the American imagination in the 1970s and 1980s. REESC funding came mainly in the form of Title VI money, and many students in the program had FLAS fellowships. Both of these programs are federal ones encouraging international studies and language acquisition; current priorities are Asian studies, Middle East studies, Asian languages, and Arabic. In the 70s-80s, however, US priorities were different; these files, for example, include letters from various Army recruiters seeking Russian linguists to work in intelligence. Anyone interested in US policy responses to the so-called Soviet threat can glean l lot of circumstantial evidence from this collection.

Accession #: 1996-8, Collection: CAS: Russian and East European Studies Center

University Women’s Club

Monday I stumbled on a small collection of material from the University Women’s Club. The records caught my eye because of who was allowed to join: wives of faculty and administrative staff and single (but not married) faculty women. The membership paper I saw specifically said “single faculty women,” leading me to believe that married faculty women were on their own. I don’t know why, although I can certainly speculate about reasons: married women shouldn’t have been working in the first place and therefore weren’t included, married faculty women wouldn’t have time for a social club because all their time outside of work would be taken up in taking care of their husbands/families, married faculty women’s social lives would revolve around their husbands’ activities (so if he was a professor, too, she could join the club, but if not she would socialize with the wives of her husband’s co-workers), etc. Certainly sexism was (and some would argue still is) commonplace in the academy; this mindset was apparently reflected even in a social setting.

From the looks of the materials, the main function of the club was social, with activities including sewing, needlecraft, bowling, afternoon teas, singles and couples bridge, and a morning walking/jogging group. For the years I was looking at, the women also had French and Spanish conversation groups. The women also spent a lot of their time supporting the university library through fundraisers and volunteer work. The records themselves seem to be mostly from the 60s and 70s, and the collection includes an artifact: the official club gavel!

Accession # 1996-389, Collection: University Women’s Club, 2 boxes

Will Be Missing for a Bit

I’ll be out of touch for the next few days – Sunday we’re going up to Portland to watch my fabulous sister in the REV3 Portland Triathlon and then Monday-Wednesday I’ll be in Vancouver, WA for the Orbis-Cascade Alliance Summer Meeting. Since I won’t be in the Archives I won’t have anything fun to share, but I should have something on Thursday.

And Now for Something Completely Different

I mentioned in an earlier post that I also design the Special Collections and University Archives exhibits. Right now we have two exhibits we’re working on: the Pulp Fiction exhibit (see previous post – this one should be going up in the next 2 or 3 weeks) and an exhibit for the fall that centers around our collection of Playboy magazines (working title: “Beats and Babes: Hugh Hefner’s Image of the American Gentleman”). One of the things involved in prepping this exhibit is sitting in my office going through back issues of the magazine. I’ve found some fascinating advertisements in the back issues, including this one from April 1956:

Six proof toothpaste in your choice of flavors: bourbon, Scotch, or rye. Don Draper would be proud.

That’s right: alcoholic toothpaste. It made me laugh.

I’ll leave you with a Burma Shave ad which proves that the underlying message of shaving ads hasn’t changed all that much in the past 60 years:

Burma Shave ad from a 1957 issue of Playboy. I forgot to write down the issue, sorry.

Student Life

This Journalism collection I went through today is a veritable gold mine of all kinds of interesting things. In addition to the Allen Hall materials, it includes a few student life pamphlets from the first half of the 20th century. One of them is called “Social Security” and instructs girls in “co-ediquette” (dressin’, datin’, plantin’, and rushin’) and boys in “man-erisms” (courtin’, dressin’, dancin’, and eatin’). A few images of the pamphlet:

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Accession #: 1996-377, Collection: School of Journalism and Communication, Box #: 1, Folder Title: Student Behavior Handbooks

Washington Hand Press

The UO School of Journalism has been the home of an iron Washington hand press since 1915, when it was donated to the school by Harrison Kincaid. When Allen Hall was completed in 1954, the hand press found a new home there. One of my interests is hand-press printing, so stumbling across a history and provenance of this hand press was a little like Christmas for me. Apparently, the press was used to print the Oregon Spectator of Oregon City, the first newspaper published west of the Missouri river. (The press itself is often called the “Spectator Press” after the first newspaper printed on it.) I snapped pictures of the press’s narrative history and of its timeline:

Narrative history of the "Spectator Press"

Timeline of the "Spectator Press"

Accession #: 1996-377, Collection: School of Journalism and Communication, Box #: 1, Folder Title: Journalism Building – Construction

Allen Hall

As I’m sure all you UO folks know, Allen Hall is undergoing extensive renovations right now. (Hello, Journalism people, how’s Agate Hall treating you? The only time I was ever over there it was devilishly hot on the second floor.) Appropriately enough, the most interesting documents I stumbled across today detailed the planning, building, and opening of Allen Hall in 1954. I was hoping to find some information about the printer’s marks that are on the facade of the building, but no such luck. I did, however, find a very thick folder full of congratulatory letters from other Universities and newspapers all around the world congratulating the UO on opening such a lovely new facility. I snapped some pictures of a few of the letters  (these were taken with my phone and in bad lighting conditions, so my apologies for the poor quality):

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and here’s a photo of Allen Hall under construction (it looks to be almost complete):

Allen Hall under construction, 1954

Accession #: 1996-377, Collection: School of Journalism and Communication, Box #: 1, Folder Title: Allen Hall – Formal Opening

Concrete? Bronze? Papier mâché?

The School of Architecture and Allied arts had a public arts education program for a while that involved surveying communities, holding workshops, working with public school teachers, and the like. We started off with six boxes’ worth of material, but once we discarded all the non-permanent pieces (purchase orders; requisitions; catering and travel arrangements; surveys-only the final survey summaries are permanent, not the individual surveys themselves; personnel files, etc.) we still have two boxes (record storage boxes, not manuscript boxes) of material describing the program and its activities. Materials include survey results from a number of communities (including Albany, Bend, and Newport), records of the America the Beautiful program, publications of the program, etc. Collection Name: AAA Records, Accession #: 1996-13, Boxes 1 & 2.

Also: this is not permanent, but someone at some point thought this message deserved its very own folder: “Dear XXXX, Where are we on the biennial report? For some reason that I don’t completely understand, I am supposed to review the text in draft form before we cast it in concrete (bronze? papier mâché?)” No context is given-the folder had no title, the surrounding materials give no indication of the identity of either the sender or the recipient of this missive. It’s not permanent, but I found it amusing enough to share.

ASUO

Student groups’ records are easy to sort: almost everything is permanent. However, it makes for not much of interest on the blog, because we don’t go through the boxes folder by folder like we have to with the other collections. We went through a lot of ASUO records today (Tuesday) and not much else. Maybe I’ll have something interesting for you tomorrow!

OIMB

Not a lot of discoveries today, since I was out at OIMB (Oregon Institute of Marine Biology) going through the librarian’s files rather than going through old stuff in Archives. Most of the things in her files are about the history of OIMB and about marine animals and ecology. The history stuff is permanent since it documents the development of the program and the institute; the rest of the stuff falls into the faculty papers category.

I’d never been out to Charleston before; the drive is beautiful and we saw an interesting Queen Ann house in Drain. Here’s a link to a photo of the house on Flickr. Tomorrow I have a couple of meetings and so won’t be messing about in the Archives then either. I hope to find some interesting things to share on Tuesday (provided I get any sleep Monday night-the dog does not like fireworks).