News from the Archives – Page 8 – News from the Iowa Women's Archives

Celebrating Iowa City’s Feminists

Join us this weekend, July 14-15, for the Iowa City Feminists Reunion! Many of the women who created Ain’t I a Woman, the Iowa City Women’s Press, Nahuatzen, and other publications featured in the Main Library’s current exhibit, Power to the Printers, will be here to reflect on their experiences as activists in Iowa City in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.

Festivities over Friday and Saturday will include a gala dinner, a variety of panel discussions, an open house at the Iowa Women’s Archives, and a reception at the Women’s Resource and Action Center. For a full schedule, please visit the event’s site.

Feel free to drop in this Friday and Saturday for the panel discussions in Shambaugh Auditorium in the Main Library. We hope to see you there!

Travel Grant Applications due April 15, 2017

Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives

In honor of Linda and Richard Kerber’s enduring support for scholarship in the history of women, the Iowa Women’s Archives (University of Iowa Libraries) announces a grant of $1000 to fund travel to Iowa City, Iowa, to conduct research in the Iowa Women’s Archives. We welcome applicants from a variety of backgrounds, including graduate students, academic and public historians, and independent researchers and writers, although preference will be given to graduate students. The grant is intended to offset travel and lodging expenses of researchers whose work will benefit from using collections in the archives. The strengths of the Iowa Women’s Archives include rich collections on the history of the women’s movement, political activism, African Americans, rural women, and Latinas, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collections are global in scope. (See http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/viewshare/).

Grant recipients are expected to donate a courtesy copy of any publications that make use of the collections, and to acknowledge support of the Iowa Women’s Archives in any theses, dissertations, and publications.

Applications should be sent to lib-women@uiowa.edu with the subject line TRAVEL GRANT APPLICATION. Applications must be received via email by April 15, 2017. Notification of awards will be made by May 1, 2017.

APPLICATION GUIDELINES

Who is eligible?

We welcome 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.
Research topics should be strongly supported by the collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives. We encourage each prospective grant applicant to discuss his or her research project and the collections that might support it with the Iowa Women’s Archives staff before submitting an application.
For information about the collections, please see our collection guides.

What expenses does the award cover?

The award may be used for travel and lodging but not for meals or photocopying. Prior to applying, non-US citizens should contact the library regarding visas or other required paperwork.

How do I apply?

The application packet consists of the following:

- A one-page letter of application. Be sure to state your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number.
- A research proposal of no more than 500 words describing the purpose of the research, the Iowa Women’s Archives holdings to be consulted, and the significance of these holdings to the overall project.
- A curriculum vita of no more than two pages.
- A proposed budget (not to exceed $1000) indicating how the funds will be spent.

Submit application to lib-women@uiowa.edu with the subject line TRAVEL GRANT APPLICATION. If you do not receive an email within 3 days confirming that your application has been received, please contact karen-mason@uiowa.edu or janet-weaver@uiowa.edu and write TRAVEL FUND in the subject line.

What dates do I need to remember?

Applications must be emailed by April 15, 2017.
Grant recipients will be notified by May 1, 2017.
Funds must be spent between June 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018.

For questions about the program, please contact: karen-mason@uiowa.edu or janet-weaver@uiowa.edu and write TRAVEL FUND in the subject line.

Iowa Women’s Archives
The University of Iowa Libraries
125 West Washington Street
Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420

319-335-5068

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/

lib-women@uiowa.edu

Every Girl Has a Voice: 8-14 Year Old Girls Explore IWA

Quilt squares about Iowa women, by Iowa girls.

Every girl has a voice. Every woman has a story!

This month the IWA held an event for area girls from ages 8 – 14. The girls learned about Iowa girls and women from decades past like Dora Martin Berry, the first black student to be named Miss State University of Iowa; Dorothy Fox Wurster, who joined the local boys 4-H club in order to competitively show cattle; and Phyliss Henry, Des Moines’ first police woman.
Using photocopies of what they found, the kids made their own mini-exhibits and decorated a quilt square about a girl or woman of their choice.

All who participated had a blast, and we hope to have a similar event in the future.

The girls examine our current exhibit "History as it Happens: Women's March 2017 — The girls examine our current exhibit “History as it Happens: Women’s March 2017

Curator Kären Mason shows the girls some artifacts from IWA collections.

Assistant curator Janet Weaver helps a girl write her exhibit caption, "And the women powered through it!" — Assistant curator Janet Weaver helps a girl write her exhibit caption, “And the women powered through it!”

Janet Weaver wins 2017 ACRL WGSS Significant Achievement Award

via Association of College and Research Libraries: http://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2017/02/weaver-wins-2017-acrl-wgss-significant-achievement-award

CHICAGO – Janet Weaver, assistant curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa, is the winner of the 2017 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Award for Significant Achievement in Woman’s Studies Librarianship. The WGSS award honors a significant or one-time contribution to women’s studies librarianship.

A plaque will be presented to Weaver at a WGSS event during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

“The Awards Committee was greatly impressed by Weaver’s creation of the Migration is Beautiful website, which is a project constructed from oral histories and other archival material housed at the Iowa Women’s Archives,” said award chair Stacy Russo, librarian and associate professor at Santa Ana College. “Migration is Beautiful was developed from the Iowa Women’s Archives’ Mujeres Latinas project that launched in 2005. The committee especially noted Weaver’s level of collaboration with her colleagues and undergraduate students. The students selected documents for the website and also wrote vignettes. The introduction on the website reads: ‘Migration is Beautiful highlights the contributions Latinas and Latinos have made to Iowa history. Migration is central to understanding and interpreting the past, shaped first by Native Americans, and later by immigrants from around the world.’”

The Migration is Beautiful digital humanities project highlights the contributions of Latinas, their families, and their organizations to Iowa history. Visitors can navigate the site in multiple ways to access hundreds of digitized primary documents and audio clips from oral history interviews through historical topics, life stories, and a migration map.

“Weaver’s work has brought accessibility to primary source documents that were previously only available to visitors at the Iowa Women’s Archives,” continued Russo. “After its launch in 2016, Migration is Beautiful debuted with a travelling exhibit at the national League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) convention in Washington, D.C. In her continued emphasis on outreach, Weaver has made presentations to Latino groups around Iowa regarding the project. Her work has also been featured on Hola Iowa, a news outlet that focuses on Latinos in the Midwest.”

Weaver received her M.A. in Modern History from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

CONGRATULATIONS JANET!

IWA Graduate Assistant Rachel Black Graduates from SLIS

Rachel Black, IWA graduate assistant completed her studies and graduated from the School of Library and Information Science. She will walk tomorrow at graduation.

Earlier this month, Rachel successfully defended her poster, “Community Building and Humanizing Social Media.”

Earlier we highlighted Rachel’s work on her blog, “@ Your Local Library.” You can read more about the project here.

Please join us in congratulating Rachel and wishing her the best in her future career.
Two SLIS students at their poster sessions

“At Your Local Library” Interviews with IWA

Rachel Black is a graduate assistant in the Iowa Women’s Archives. As part of her graduate work in the School of Library and Information Science she has been working on a project called “@ Your Local Library.”

“@ Your Local Library” is a series of photo essays bringing to life stories of the important work going on behind the scenes in libraries around the area, and posting about them on a WordPress site as well as Tumblr and Facebook.

On the “About” page for her website, Black describes her goals:

“Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t aware of everything their local library has to offer. They see the books and the computers, but not the new programs or initiatives librarians are working to provide in order to create a happy and healthy community. I started this website in order to share with everyone the different ways librarians are working to benefit their communities.”

As part of the project, Black posted a six part series featuring librarians and staff from the Iowa Women’s Archives. The posts are embedded as a series below. Be sure to check out her pages to read all of the compelling stories of work going on in libraries around The Corridor.

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152566097429/my-mother-was-a-librarian-in-elementary-school

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152596425799/about-a-year-after-i-finished-my-dissertation-my

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152643829869/currently-im-processing-the-collection-of-a

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152686111664/weve-had-very-special-projects-to-preserve-the

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152728897074/whats-your-favorite-part-about-working-at-iowa

http://atyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com/post/152768035209/i-think-one-of-the-biggest-challenges-of-archives

Do Not Miss Three Events from October 24th – 27th

From October 24th – 27th Trudy Huskamp Peterson, the former Acting Archivist of the United States, and Jane E. Schultz, Professor of English and Medical Humanities at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, will visit the University of Iowa.

A longtime friend of the Iowa Women’s Archives, Trudy Huskamp Peterson has made an international career of archives and human rights. Besides serving as the United States’ Acting Archivist, Peterson has consulted with truth commissions in South Africa and Honduras and worked for three years with the police archives in Guatemala. She is currently the chair of the International Council on Archives’ Human Rights Working.

On Monday the 24th Peterson will host an archival workshop for graduate students and researchers from 4:00 – 5:30 in 302 SH Commons. She will follow this on Tuesday the 25th with a public lecture entitled “What Every Citizen and Historian Should Know: How Governments Shape Archives.” The lecture will take place in 302 SH Commons from 12:30 – 1:45 and will include a light lunch.

Finally, on Thursday the 27th, the Universty of Iowa History of Medicine Society and the Iowa Women’s Archives will jointly present Jane E. Schultz. Schultz, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, formerly consulted for the PBS miniseries “Mercy Street” and has written extensively about women and the Civil War. Her lecture “Civility on Trial: Nurses, Surgeons, and Medical Extremity in Civil War Hospitals will take place in the Medical Education Research Facility (MERF) 2117 from 5:30 – 6:30.

Hope to see you there!

New Furniture in the Iowa Womens Archives

The Iowa Women’s Archives is approaching its 25th Anniversary in 2017. In preparation, through a series of fundraisers our donors have helped make it possible to update the Reading Room with new paint, tables, and technology. Most everything is place though some finishing touches like hanging artwork still remain. Sincere thanks to all of our supporters. Be sure to stop by and see our new look.

Below you can see a live video from just when the new furniture was put into place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqwz8mZKv4

Meet Annessa Babic

Dr. Annessa Babic, coordinator of interdisciplinary studies at the New York Institute of Technology and Dr. Tanfer Tunç of Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey are the most recent recipients of a research grant from the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives, a grant that helps researchers travel to the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Collaborators since 2008, Tunç and Babic met in graduate school at SUNY Stony Brook where each produced feminist scholarship. In 2008, the pair co-edited The Globetrotting Shopaholic: Consumer Products, Spaces, and Their Cultural Places. Since then they have continued to produce articles together and apart examining consumerism, nationalism, and Wonder Woman, among other subjects. Although the two collaborators had planned to travel to Iowa City together, the political unrest in Turkey stifled Tunç’s plans at the last minute. Nevertheless, Dr. Babic had a fruitful week in the archives hunting for places where feminism and food activism collide.

Tunç and Babic’s current project will extend “common discussions concerning food waste, overabundance, and safety by connecting food activism to consumer activism and social and civil rights, particularly the environmental and women’s movements.” Babic believes that movements surrounding food safety and packaging are gendered due to the heavy marketing of food products to women. She and Tunç hope to explore the parallels they see between the environmental and women’s movements of the late twentieth century. Although this project is in its early stages, Babic and Tunç expect that it will result in an article that will put food activism in the cultural context of the United States from 1970 – 1990.

The duo were drawn to the Iowa Women’s Archives by its diverse holdings about grassroots movements as well as its collections of oral histories. Additionally, they were interested in exploring resources of the Midwest, a region less studied than the American coasts. Babic, who is also a travel writer, confessed that she had never been to Iowa before, and expects to produce work about the trip itself as well as the resources she found in the archives.

While here, Babic looked at the papers of farm activists such as Denise O’Brien, Carol Hodne, Ericka Peterson-Dana, and Janette Ryan-Busch, as well as the records of food activist organizations like the Mothers for Natural Law and the Women, Food and Agriculture Network. What was her favorite collection? With three days of research behind her, Babic said she most enjoyed reading oral histories from Voices From the Land, a collection produced as part of the Iowa Women’s Archives’ Rural Women’s Project. It includes interviews with rural women who were politically active in the 1980s farm crisis. Babic said she found the farm women’s take on that era interesting and refreshing. We look forward to finding both qualities in the future work of Tunç and Babic.

Meet IWA’s Graduate Assistants

While these two fabulous ladies aren’t brand new to IWA, they both recently accepted positions as graduate assistants for the up-coming semesters.

Rachel Black grew up in the southwestern corner of Iowa in a tiny town that had more ponies than people. Now living in the Iowa City area, she hopes to graduate with a MLIS this December.

Her archives journey began last summer as a volunteer working on the Myrtle Hinkhouse papers. She is excited to tackle more collections this fall.

Outside of the archives, Rachel can be found knitting poorly constructed hand towels, messing up her kitchen while baking, losing arrows on the archery range, and just generally enjoying her life.

Katie Gandhi still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up, but she does know she loves libraries, history, people, and archives. Other past-times include hiking, painting, weaving, and playing cello.

Since being hired in January, her primary focus has been helping Janet prepare content for the IWA’s “Migration is Beautiful” project Omeka site, which went live on July 5th.

Katie just finished an M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning and will be working to complete her M.A. in Library and Information Science this year.