IWA Update – News from the Archives

Oct 15 2021

Community Collaboration brings Latinx History from the Archives to the Classroom

Posted on October 15, 2021October 19, 2021 by Anna Holland

This fall, Yamila Transtenvot, an instructor in Spanish at Cornell College, has been working with IWA, The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Council 10, and the Davenport Community School District (DCSD) to bring primary sources about Latino/a/x history to Iowa schools. I sat down with Transtenvot this Latinx Heritage Month to discuss this exciting collaboration.

Yamila Transtenvot, who created three lesson plans using IWA resources for elementary school classrooms

Transtenvot, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, has a background in education. She trained as a high school literature teacher and spent time working for the government of Argentina in an after-school program aimed at getting disadvantaged youth excited about reading and writing. Eventually, the University of Iowa’s Master of Fine Arts in Spanish Creative Writing pulled her to the United States. While completing her MFA, she taught Spanish at UIowa. When members of LULAC Council 10 approached her about writing lesson plans with IWA’s Latina collections, it seemed like a natural fit.

Davenport schools introduce migration as a topic to students in elementary school, but the current curriculum lacks stories about Mexican migration, which began in the 19^th century and accelerated in the 1910s during the Mexican Revolution. DCSD and LULAC Council 10 wanted to introduce new stories and more primary sources into migration lessons. IWA houses dozens of collections and over one hundred oral histories documenting the lives of Latinas in Iowa. Transtenvot used Migration is Beautiful, a website about these collections, and advice from IWA’s staff to choose just a few items and oral histories to highlight.

This image of Tilly Gomez from the Otilia Savala papers in IWA is just one of the primary sources students will analyze.

Transtenvot concentrated on the stories of young people. In one the three lessons that she’s created, students will use the memoir of Martina Morado, who immigrated to Iowa as a teenager in the 1910s, to learn about migration. In another, a childhood photograph of Otilia “Tilly” Gomez in Cook’s Point, a Mexican settlement in Davenport, Iowa, will help students think about cultural heritage and what life was like for immigrants in Iowa during the first half of the 20^th century. The way Transtenvot has planned the lessons offers several ways to engage with the topic including class discussion, a Kahoot quiz, and a migratory Monarch butterfly for them to color.

Above all, Transtenvot wants students to learn how to reflect on primary sources and form their own thoughts about them. The lessons are filled with questions that allow students to think and wonder. For example, after seeing a photograph of Angela and Martina Morado from 1913, classes will be invited to speculate in writing on the relationship between the women, how old the photograph is, and whether it reminds them of any old photographs they’ve seen of their own families. Transtenvot has also striven to center the voices of Latinas by using excerpts from oral histories by Rosa Mendoza and Otilia Gomez, and a memoir by Martina Morado. She says that the charm of primary sources is that they give a glimpse of people’s personal experiences. By making space for these voices and for reflection on what they say, Transtenvot hopes her lessons will help students build empathy.

The lessons will debut in Davenport, but Transtenvot sees this as a starting point. She’d like to see the project spread to other districts in Iowa and perhaps go further, resulting in lessons about other underrepresented groups in the state. Finally, she intends to have her lesson plans put on the Migration is Beautiful website, where they will become resources and inspiration for teachers across the country.

Sep 17 2021

IWA’s 2021 Kerber Grant Recipient Finds Personal Stories within Industrial Agriculture

Posted on September 17, 2021September 17, 2021 by Anna Holland

In Box 24 of the Lonabelle Kaplan Spencer papers, Andrew Seber finally found exactly what he was looking for: personal testimonies by rural citizens whose lives were turned upside down by the development of hog confinements near their Iowa homes. Seber’s dissertation, Neither Factory nor Farm: the Other Environmental Movement, will focus on industrial animal agriculture in Iowa, one of the world’s largest hog producers. As 2021’s Linda and Richard Kerber Travel Grant recipient, Seber was able to travel from the University of Chicago, where he is a doctoral student, to Iowa City and spend a week researching at the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Seber traces his interest in meat production back to high school, when an AP environmental science course first made him aware of meat as an environmental problem. He took this interest to college where he developed a scholarly interest in agriculture, ecology, and cultural studies. He believes that historically, the environmental movement has marginalized animal agriculture as a focus, in favor of fossil fuels and conservation. While recognizing that these are important issues, Seber says the irony is that animal agriculture is inextricably linked to both of them as it uses tremendous amounts of fossil fuel and causes air and water pollution. In his opinion, it cannot afford to be neglected, and he sees his work as a critique of the liberal environmental movement that became predominant in the 1970s and which informed the environmental social sciences.

For his research in IWA, Seber is relying heavily on the Lonabelle Kaplan Spencer papers to help him situate his work geographically. Spencer became an activist against Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in the 1970s when she learned that a hog lot was being built near a Girl Scout camp. Through her work, she discovered that hog confinement was more than an odor problem. It affected property values, poisoned ground water, polluted air, and overall amounted to a new health hazard for rural residents. This is where Seber’s favorite box 24 of the collection comes into play. Spencer built a network of Iowans experiencing this pollution and a network of scientists studying it. She lobbied for regulations that would limit hog odor and animal waste; her efforts were mostly unsuccessful.

Seber says Spencer’s 1970s activism is part of a larger pattern that tends to go in cycles. In the 1970s and 1990s there were movements that really pushed for regulations on CAFOS. He’s found similar headlines in both eras and similar outcomes. He posits that this is partly due to neoliberal businesses that capture the process when activists try to use, as Spencer did, government hearings and studies to build their cases. But this isn’t the only problem, in some cases hog manure storage needs increase more quickly than regulations can keep up with, and some people still don’t view agriculture as an industry, which thwarts regulatory efforts.

After his fruitful research in Iowa, Seber will work on writing his next chapter, tentatively called “A Plain Old Cesspool: Concentrating Animal Life in Neoliberal Iowa,” and then turn his focus to North Carolina, another state with large scale hog operations. He hopes to complete his dissertation and degree in 2023.

Are you interested in applying for the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives? We will be accepting applications again next spring. You can keep tabs on the deadline and learn more on our website.

Aug 10 2021

Student Reflection: Processing the Madgetta Dungy Papers

Posted on August 10, 2021August 10, 2021 by Anna Holland

The following post is written by University of Iowa senior, Jack Kamp.

Senior Jack Kamp spent his summer learning to process archival collections in the IWA.

When I started my internship at the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA), I knew I was interested in working with Black women’s history. As a student interested in the history of civil rights and social justice, I knew that this collection would give me the chance to gain some archival skills while also being immersed in a field that fascinated me. What I learned in the archives has added a layer of complexity to how I conceptualize historical research. My time at the IWA has allowed me to develop the skills that aid in analysis and organization regarding a wide range of materials in and contexts surrounding archival collections. Originally, I predominantly looked at research from the perspective of a student historian. My main concern was simply finding that certain document or photograph or piece of correspondence that would aid me in my research or simply out of interest. After first-hand experience with processing a set of papers, I can see that there are so many more connections to be made, even within one single set of papers.

Madgetta Dungy, pictured in this article from 2002, was an academic and higher education professional. She earned her PhD at the University of Iowa in the 1990s and later served as an Assistant Dean at the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine.

There are many decisions to make regarding the organization of a set of papers. How should I order the folders? Which folders should I make? How will each series fit into the larger collection? Should it be chronological? How should the original organization of the creator be preserved? Each of these decisions has the capacity to impact future researchers looking at those papers and how they are presented to the public through such means as written papers and presentations. My experience at the IWA has led me to pay attention to how materials are grouped and to consider why they may be organized the way that they are within the collection.

During my time as an intern, I processed the personal papers of Madgetta Thornton Dungy, a professional Black woman who found success in education administration at college campuses across the United States. She was the first Black woman to graduate from Cornell College in Iowa and went on to earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. in higher education administration. When I began to process her collection, much of my interest was in the older materials: old family photos from the 1940’s, old church programs from 1955, and a teaching certificate from 1968. As a history student, and a historian interested in the postwar era Black Freedom Struggle, I was most interested in these materials out of the whole collection. However, as I began the processing procedure and began sorting the materials into the established series’, I started to find more interest in the materials I might have passed over had I not been involved in the processing of Dungy’s papers.

This program from the 2007 Iowa African American Women’s Leadership Conference is just one of the examples of Madgetta Dungy’s activism in the regional Black community found in her papers.

Through processing Madgetta Dungy’s personal papers, I began to see how the singular pieces that I was most drawn to were related to the greater collection. As I placed the Dungy family photos next to the materials relating to Dungy’s involvement with The Links, Incorporated, a Black women’s national organization, I began to see the political and personal sides of Dungy come together. As I placed the 1955 church program next to the church program that Dungy produced herself in 1978, I was able to see some of the impact that religion had on Dungy’s life and the way in which she understood and considered her own religion. As I placed her teaching certificate from 1968 next to her CVs and academic transcripts, I saw the hard work and dedication Dungy put in her education and professional life. As I continued placing the materials I had initially found interest in next to other materials, I began to see more dimensions and more complexity within the person whose papers I was processing. Madgetta Dungy became more than a name on a file. She became a dynamic, complicated, and multifaceted person with interests, goals, and relationships.

Dungy’s educational, personal, and professional achievements and experiences play a crucial role in the story of Black Iowa women’s history. As a successful professional, her papers illustrate what it is like to be a Black woman in the professional sphere during the mid to late 20^th century. It is because of this that I hope Madgetta Dungy’s papers are researched and utilized by many historians in a range of areas. Additionally, the experience of processing Dungy’s papers has allowed me to expand my skill set and has exposed me to more ways of viewing and understanding archival collections and papers. My time at the IWA has certainly set me up for success, as it has allowed me to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes in an archives, what archivists have to consider when processing various collections, and allowed me to develop new skills in research and navigating archival spaces as a historian.

I would specifically like to thank Janet Weaver and Anna Holland for their guidance and assistance in the archives. Additionally, I really valued the support I received from Erik and Heather over the course of my internship in the archives and regarding prospective graduate study. I have greatly appreciated my time in the IWA over the summer and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to an archives so crucial to the University and the Iowa City community.

Jun 25 2021

IWA’s 2020 Kerber Grant Recipient: Yazmin Gomez

Posted on June 25, 2021June 24, 2021 by Anna Holland

After the pandemic postponed her research trip, Yazmin Gomez, the 2020 Linda and Richard Kerber Travel Grant recipient, finally made it to IWA! Linda Kerber, May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of History Emerita, and her husband Richard founded this grant to help researchers, especially graduate students, travel to the Iowa Women’s Archives. Thanks to the Kerbers, IWA can award $1000 every year to a promising researcher like Gomez, whose work would benefit from travelling to Iowa and using IWA’s collections for an extended period.

Gomez, graduate student from Rutgers University is focusing her dissertation research on the labor and educational activism of Latinas in the Midwest. Her work has been years in the making. As an undergraduate at Marquette University, she enrolled in the Ronald E. McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program, aimed at helping first generation students and students from underrepresented groups prepare for graduate school. It was her first taste of independent research and archival work. By the time she’d finished her senior thesis, “Viva La Raza, Viva Las Latinas: Late 20^th Century Female Activism in Milwaukee’s Latinx Community” she knew she wanted to keep studying Latina activism at Rutgers.

Kerber Travel Grant recipient, Yazmin Gomez, in the IWA reading room.

At IWA, Gomez is seeking to broaden the scope of the research she did on Latina activism in Wisconsin to include a larger picture of the Midwest. She believes that the region, though it has a smaller Latinx population than other areas of the US, has greater internal diversity within its Latinx communities that has created a unique situation for activism. She’s particularly interested in the intersection of gender and race among the Latinas she has studied. “They weren’t exactly Gloria Steinem, women’s liberation feminists, their activism was community-based,” Gomez said. They were focused on things like unionizing and expanding the role of women in established organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

Using collections like the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Council 10 (Davenport, Iowa) records, the Shirley Sandage papers and the Mujeres Latinas Oral Histories Project, Gomez is searching for connections and common themes shared by the dynamic community of Latinas she found in Milwaukee and Iowa. She’s found some promising materials on the shelves at IWA. For instance, while looking at some Migrant Action Program reports from Iowa she recognized the name of a Wisconsin activist she’d encountered before, who had helped to fund the report in another state.

She’s also finding connections to other civil rights activists and battles. The oral history of Mary Campos, whose work on behalf of Latinx people in Iowa earned her a place in the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame, introduced her to a wider web of activism. Campos worked for a Dr. Griffin, the husband of civil rights activist Edna Griffin, known for her fight to desegregate Katz Drug Store in Des Moines. Reading Griffin’s FBI file, Gomez found a familiar story in how female activists of the mid 20^th century were underrated. Even the government agents assigned to trail Griffin didn’t understand why they were following “just a housewife.”

Aside from the connections to her own research, Yazmin Gomez has enjoyed finding personal items in the collections she’s seen mixed in with community activism. While learning about Cesar Chavez’s visit to Iowa, she might see a graduation cap and tassel, photographs of a first communion, or her favorite, a newspaper clipping about a local man who grew a potato that looked kind of like an elephant. By encountering items like these in the Archives, Gomez has been able to spend the last two weeks in IWA immersing herself in the lives and community networks of Latinas over 50 years ago. She’s excited to take what she’s learned back to Rutgers as she moves closer to a PhD.

Apr 07 2020

Kerber Travel Grant Application Deadline Extended

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Anna Holland

Due to the ongoing closure of library facilities around the country, the Iowa Women’s Archives has extended the application deadline for the Linda and Richard Kerber travel grant to June 1st, 2020. Because we are uncertain about when the Archives will be accessible, the time period in which recipients can use the funds has been extended to December 31, 2021.

The Linda and Richard Kerber Fund awards $1000 to a scholar each year to help them travel to Iowa City and use the Iowa Women’s Archives for their research. The Archives accepts applications from graduate students, academic and public historians, and independent researchers and writers who reside outside a 100-mile radius of Iowa City, Iowa, and whose research projects would be substantially enriched by the use of materials held by the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Applications should be submitted to lib-women@uiowa.edu with the subject heading Travel Grant Application. For more information about our travel grant and the application process please visit our website.

Mar 13 2020

The IWA Reading Room closed for COVID-19

Posted on March 13, 2020March 17, 2020 by Anna Holland

In response to COVID-19, the Iowa Women’s Archives’ reading room will closed for the time being.

We encourage faculty, students, and the public to contact us by e-mail at lib-women@uiowa.edu, although reference services will be limited.

For more information on the University of Iowa’s response to COVID-19, please visit: https://coronavirus.uiowa.edu/.

Dec 13 2019

Ella Wagner: 2019 Linda and Richard Kerber Travel Grant Recipient

Posted on December 13, 2019June 19, 2020 by Anna Holland

Ella Wagner, a PhD candidate from Loyola University is this year’s Linda and Richard Kerber travel grant recipient. Linda Kerber and her husband Richard founded this Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives that awards $1000 annually to a researcher, especially a graduate student, whose work would benefit from travelling to Iowa and using IWA’s collections.

Ella Wagner of Loyola University, our Kerber Travel Grant recipient

Wagner, a public historian and graduate student, plans to use the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Iowa records in her dissertation, “’The Saloon is Their Palace’: Race and Politics in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1874 – 1933.” When Wagner entered the PhD program at Loyola in 2015, she knew her future would be in public history, but wasn’t sure what her dissertation topic would be. But a class assignment in the Frances Willard House Museum and Archives led her to the WCTU.

Frances Willard served as the president of the WCTU from 1879 – 1898, during which time it became one of the largest women’s organizations in the country. The Frances Willard House keeps the papers of Willard herself and a variety of records related to the national WCTU organization. After her class, Wagner worked part time at the Frances Willard House as a public historian to curate a digital resource entitled “Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells” that focused on racial conflict within the WCTU. Wagner realized that her dissertation topic was right there: the racial and sectional politics of the WCTU.

In the late 1800s, the WCTU under Frances Willard was striving to expand from its original strongholds of support in the Northeast and Midwest and become a larger national organization. They formed sections of the group to attract members among black women, immigrant women, and southern women. The racial and party politics were never far from this effort as some members made publicly racist comments and couldn’t tolerate any affiliation with the traditionally abolitionist Republican party.

Iowa’s role in this dramatic conflict drew Wagner to IWA’s holdings. In the 1880s, the WCTU in an effort to subvert the two party system, officially endorsed the Prohibition Party. In response, the Iowa chapter of the WCTU elected to separate itself from the national organization and still other Iowa members split from the Iowa chapter and affiliated with the national group as the WCTU of the State of Iowa. The two would Iowa organizations would remain separate until 1906. Wagner hoped to find details illuminating that schism here and also look for the voices and involvement of women of color within the WCTU at this time. She hasn’t been disappointed. She’s found the minutes of the WCTU of the State of Iowa and also found records of several black women’s WCTU chapters in Iowa all the way to the 1960s. After a week in the Archives, Wagner can see there is plenty left to do, but she’s already imagining using the WCTU of Iowa records in the conclusion of her dissertation in 2021.

Are you interested in applying for the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the IWA? We’re accepting applications until April 15, 2020. See our website for more information.

Dec 06 2019

Encountering Soul in the Iowa Women’s Archives: Scholar Taryn D. Jordan and the Aldeen Davis Papers

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Anna Holland

Taryn D. Jordan was researching Ella Fitzgerald at the Schlesinger Library in the Radcliffe Institute when she first encountered the papers that would bring her to the Iowa Women’s Archives. Jordan is a doctoral candidate in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Emory University and an ACLS Mellon Dissertation Completion fellow who has been researching in the papers of Aldeen Davis this December.

Taryn D. Jordan of Emory University exploring the Aldeen Davis papers

Her dissertation, A Peculiar Sense: Feminist Genealogy of Soul is drawn from her interest in the domestic work black women did in their homes and how this created “soul,” which Jordan defines as “black collective feeling.” Soul provided a space of respite from racism and anti-blackness and helped to articulate a philosophy of endurance within black communities.

Jordan’s dissertation initially only touched on the concept of soul broadly, but after receiving an e-mail from a friend of friend she was inspired to dig deeper. The Ella Fitzgerald papers at the Schlesinger Library contained a number of cookbooks, the friend said, that complemented Jordan’s work. Although her prospectus was complete, Jordan arranged for a trip to Massachusetts to see these books and the three folders donated with them. Within one of these folders was a draft of ‘Miss Aldeen’s cookbook,’ by Muscatine, Iowa woman, Aldeen Davis. It captivated Jordan because unlike so many of the other cookbooks about black cooking that she had encountered, it treated cooking as more about feel than measurements, something that came from the soul. Jordan tracked down a published copy of the book, now titled Soul Food for Thought, at the University of Alabama but discovered that it had radically changed from the draft in Ella Fitzgerald’s papers that had been so captivating. Why were the books so different? This was the question that drove Jordan to the IWA and the Aldeen Davis papers.

Aldeen D avis, the author of Soul Food for Thought was a writer and community activist who moved to Muscatine, Iowa in the 1940s. She became thoroughly involved in Muscatine and its black community, serving on the Muscatine Human Rights Committee and the Equity Committee of the school board, and published articles in The Iowa Bystander, an African American owned newspaper. Her book was based on her long running column “Soul Food and Thought,” that combined recipes with African American history and descriptions of daily life.

In the late 1990s, Davis donated scrapbooks of her columns along with personal papers that recorded her community involvement in numerous causes and women’s clubs to the Iowa Women’s Archives. In these papers, Jordan found the answer to the question that had brought her to Iowa. The published book substantially changed from its draft, but not because Davis had changed her mind about it. In fact, she had written the draft in response to a soul food cookbook that she didn’t like because it was too precise. But the publishing world wouldn’t print a cookbook that measured by feel. Davis was forced to re-write. Soul, Food for Thought was published in 1984.

After spending a week immersed in Davis’ papers, it’s an open question how much of this will find a place in Jordan’s final dissertation. But she says the trip to Iowa has been worth it, to get to know Aldeen and her work. It’s “like she found me,” Jordan said, “I feel like we’re talking to each other across time.”

Jul 03 2019

Feminist Activism on Display in IWA

Posted on July 3, 2019July 3, 2019 by Anna Holland

The current reading room exhibit displays artifacts of feminist activism.

Over the next year, we’ll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. Already, we’re marking important dates. 100 years ago on June 4th, Congress passed the 19th amendment, and July 2nd was the 100th anniversary of Iowa’s becoming the tenth state to ratify it. Women’s suffrage is one of the United States’ greatest and perhaps best remembered women’s movements. In the Iowa Women’s Archives latest reading room exhibit, we tip our “pussy hats” to the many times since suffrage that women in Iowa have protested for rights and respect as equal citizens of their county.

The small exhibit draws from four IWA collections, touches on several women’s rights issues and protests and opens the doors to many IWA collections!

You may recognize the pink “pussy hat” from the 2017 Women’s March. Women knitted these pink (or sometimes purple) hats to wear to the January protest during President Trump’s inauguration. Some estimates say that 4.1 million women participated in Women’s Marches around the world, including sister marches in Iowa! This is just one of four examples of pussy hats preserved at the Iowa Women’s Archives along with photographs and protest signs of women who marched in Iowa City, Des Moines, and Washington D.C.

A selection of political buttons from the Ruth Salzmann Becker papers

Right below the hat is a Daily Iowan article by Iowa City activist, Barbara Davidson, about the 1979 Take Back the Night rally Iowa City. The women who rallied in College Park that night dreamed of a community where women could walk at night safe from fear and from sexual violence. Davidson said, “… women of Iowa City will have a chance to support each other in a move to reclaim the freedom that comes from being unafraid.” Take Back the Night rallies are still held around the country and in Iowa City. You can see more recent examples of Take Back the Night activism in the Miranda Welch papers.

In the back of the case, you can see a large photograph from the National Organization for Women (NOW) Dubuque Chapter records. This particular chapter, founded in 1973, spent a large portion of its efforts on passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA states simply that, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In this photograph, you can see two young Iowans joining the campaign. Although Iowa ratified the ERA in 1972, it has struggled to pass a state ERA. State ERA legislation went to the ballot in 1980 and 1992 and lost both times. You can learn more about these campaigns in the Iowa ERA Coalition records, the Iowa Women Against the Equal Rights Amendment records, and the ERA Iowa 1992 records at the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Finally, the display features a sampling of political buttons from the Ruth Salzmann Becker papers. Becker was a nurse and community activist in Iowa City who was involved in the Johnson County Democratic Women’s Club. Becker’s papers have dozens of political buttons and this selection promotes some well known feminist topics such as the ERA and reproductive rights. For other political buttons, take a look at the Sarah Hanley papers and the Unbuttoning Feminism collection.

Does anything here peak your interest? You can see the display and any of the suggested collections during IWA’s open hours T – F 10 – 12 and 1 – 5.

Mar 25 2019

Playing, Pretending, Becoming: Iowa Girls and Their Dolls

Posted on March 25, 2019April 16, 2019 by Anna Holland

Shirley Briggs with her stuffed animals and dolls (Bunty far right) c. 1920s

Shirley Briggs had a lot of toys. As a very little girl in the early 1920s, Shirley had dozens of pictures taken of her ensconced in an oversized chair with children’s book, playing in a wheel barrow, sitting in the sun, all with a coterie of stuffed animals and dolls. The most frequent companion, and perhaps the most cherished, was Bunty, a baby doll in a bunny-like suit. Of all her toys, only Bunty made it into Briggs’ papers at the Iowa Women’s Archives. Today, you can clearly see that Bunty was a well-loved doll, with re-stitching around its face and a felt suit obviously different from its original clothes. You can see Bunty and a number of other dolls from IWA collections in our latest exhibit: Playing, Pretending, Becoming: Iowa Girls and Their Dolls, on display in the corridor cases on the third floor of the Main Library.

Playing, Pretending, Becoming invites visitors to connect these Iowa girls to the women they would become. Looking at an image of Briggs sitting outside with her line of stuffed animals, you can see the beginnings of a life-long love of nature. Briggs studied art, art history and botany at the State University of Iowa, earning a B.A. in 1939. While working as an Information Specialist/Illustrator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Briggs met and befriended Rachel Carson, the future author of the conservation classic Silent Spring. Later, Briggs would paint backgrounds for dioramas at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History and the U.S. National Park Service.

Betty paper dolls cutout book, Naomi Novick papers

Naomi Novick, another woman whose toys are on display, was mayor of Iowa City from 1996 – 1997. She served on the City Council from 1990 – 1997. Her papers reflect her years in politics and her commitment to organizations like the League of Women Voters. But tucked away in the artifacts is a book of paper doll cutouts. “Betty” the doll in the book, looks like a perfect example of 1930s beauty and fashion. She has outfits and accessories for activities in every season and a wedding dress at the end of the book. Before she got into politics, Novick had a brief career in fashion, standardizing bra and girdle sizes for the Formfit company.

Novick and Briggs are just two of the women whose artifacts you can see in Playing, Pretending, Becoming: Iowa Girls and their Dolls. We invite you to see the exhibit in the cases outside of the Iowa Women’s Archives between now and October and to consider the girl at play behind every woman’s mind at work.

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