July 12th was the kickoff for the 2016 National LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) convention. Janet, assistant curator here at the IWA, attended the conference to promote “Migration is Beautiful,” a new website featuring vignettes, oral history interview clips, memoirs, letters, and photographs from the IWA’s Mujeres Latinas Project.
The new website highlights the experiences and contributions Latinas and Latinos have made to the state of Iowa. It also hosts an interactive map that shows the migration of Latinos through Iowa during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Recently, Hola Iowa, a news outlet focusing on Latinos in the Midwest, featured a vignette and photos from the Migration is Beautiful website.
We are very proud of Janet, and can’t wait to hear more about the convention when she returns!
Last week, the Iowa Women’s Archives welcomes Lauren Feldman, a doctoral candidate in history from Johns Hopkins University. Lauren is the latest recipient of the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives, a $1000 travel grant to bring researchers to the IWA.
Lauren hard at work.
In her research, Lauren looks at the changing conceptions of marital engagement in the 19th century. She argues Americans worried about the future of marriage as divorce rates rose. She believes that in response to this fear engagement increased in importance and became a trial period for the marriages that would follow. Lauren wants to expand the scope of her research to include minorities, rural women, and sources outside of the Eastern United States. After finding the Kerber Grant on H-Net, she felt the IWA’s Kerber Fund would be a good fit for her research.
When asked at the beginning of her week here what her favorite documents were so far she admitted that she hadn’t had much time to read them yet. However, she couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into Van Voorhis White’s and Riggs Cosson’s courtship correspondences with the men who they would marry. It isn’t common to have both sides of a correspondence and, as Lauren says, “that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
We were so happy to have Lauren visit us for the week as a Kerber Fund recipient, and cannot wait to hear about the scholarship she produces.
Jack’s postcard to Dorothy, on her 20th Birthday in 1935.
“Schöner Bruder,” “Ma Chère Petite,” “Sonny Boy,” Honey Child,” these are just a few of the salutations used by Dorothy and Warren “Jack” Wirtz in their letters to each other. Although their greetings may have been somewhat tongue in cheek, Dorothy and Jack’s correspondence reveals a relationship full of common interests, good humor, and affection. What helps make this so immediately apparent is that Wirtz kept her family correspondence separate from the rest. Additionally, she transcribed over 1000 pages of it, ensuring its legibility. In fact, the order of and attention Dorothy paid to her correspondence gives insight into how she prioritized her relationships and organized her life.
When I began to process this collection, I conducted a quick survey of its boxes and determined that Wirtz’s correspondence and diaries comprised over half of it. Normally, processing these portions of collections for use would involve a straightforward, chronological order. But, Wirtz was a little more complicated than that. She kept letters from her parents and her brother separate from her letters from friends and colleagues, and kept correspondence with students in a box on its own. Additionally, she kept postcards from her family distinct from all other correspondence.
Although the original letters remained, Wirtz also transcribed many of them, occasionally editorializing. After Jack’s “Hello. Hawaii?” she explained, “This must have been a greeting heard frequently on radio.” In a 1934 letter she had written to her brother about the notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, “At last you are in no immediate danger. ‘Pretty
Dorothy’s birthday card to her brother. The pianist in the sketch is probably Jack, a composer.
Boy’ Floyd has been killed.” Next to her transcription of that letter she wrote in red pen “Mother worried about him being at large while Jack hitchhiked to various places.”
Recognizing Wirtz’s arrangement of her letters as intentional, I chose not reorganize them, but instead followed the archival principle of original order. Except in cases where letters are misfiled, I maintained Wirtz’s order rather than imposing an artificial one. Not only is this simpler for me as a processor, but it gives future researchers the benefit of seeing Wirtz’s correspondence as she did, with the spheres of her life distinct from each other. Dr. Wirtz, professor of French is stern, incisive, and businesslike. But the letters of “Dot” to her family are more playful. It’s a delight to see her brother play right along without interruption. The siblings sprinkled their letters with French and German, closed them with phrases like “all agog” and “d’amour,” and generally infused their prose with a mock formality.
Dorothy (left) and Warren “Jack” Wirtz (right) as children.
“Would it derange you at all if we drop in on Sunday?” Dorothy asked her brother one September while he was living in Grinnell.
“Derange me?” he responded the next day, “Why I should say not. I’ll be tickled to have you come.”
Born one year apart, the siblings were as close in age as they were in everything else. Both pursued higher education, wrote poetry, spoke multiple languages, and traveled abroad. Dorothy outlived her brother by over 40 years. But you can conjure up parts of their relationship by traversing their correspondence, just as Dorothy might have each time she sat down to transcribe one of their letters.
As you had hoped, I have found your questionnaire interesting to answer. However, I cannot refrain from expressing my resentment at the phrasing of certain statements, which seem to me to reflect discrimination on the basis of sex.”
So begins Dr. Dorothy Wirtz’s 1969 letter to The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. She followed her opening statement by citing precisely when the Commission assumed that the professors they surveyed would be men. She told them, quite directly, that “Women are people, too, and even manage to exist in the profession.” By 1969, Wirtz knew about existing in “the profession” as a woman, and had been a professor of French at Arizona State University for 10 years.
Dorothy Wirtz had been an outstanding student with a talent for writing and linguistics. While still an undergraduate at Culver-Stockton College, she won the Vachel Lindsay prize in poetry. After transferring to the University of Iowa, her letters home displayed focus and diligence concerning her studies in French and German. She packed her bags for the University of Wisconsin almost immediately upon graduation. There, after writing a dissertation on Flaubert, she received both a Master’s and a PhD in French by 1944.
The path from school girl in Keokuk, Iowa to doctoral candidate in Madison, Wisconsin was exceedingly unusual for a woman in the 1940s. According to a National Science Foundation report from 2006, women received only 27% of doctorate degrees from 1920 – 1999, and 43% of those were issued in the 1990s. As an aspiring professor of French in a field dominated by men, Wirtz must have known she did not exactly meet prospective employers’ expectations.
Part of a letter from Warren “Jack” Wirtz to his sister, suggesting colleges where she could look for work, 1950.
This fact was made clear when, after a few years at the University of Minnesota, she tried to join her parents and brother in Arizona. In 1950, Wirtz’s brother, Warren, sent her a list of colleges where she could apply including two Catholic institutions, jokingly adding “if you’d buy a rosary.” Dorothy noted her progress on the job search in pencil with check marks, but had no luck. A friend of Warren’s made inquiries on Dorothy’s behalf but confessed in a letter “The trouble was simply (with some question about ‘research’) that there was not a position open in the upper brackets to a woman. I doubt very much that they would appoint a woman assistant professor in our department. She probably knows this.” He went on to suggest that she try “various junior colleges” in Los Angeles. The job market wasn’t just tight. It was practically impassable.
Without a job offer and only vague plans to teach, Dorothy Wirtz moved to Arizona. For several years she worked outside of academia, eventually serving as the Deputy State Treasurer of Arizona. But the tenacious Wirtz never gave up and in 1959, she secured a position at Arizona State University. She was four years from retirement when the Carnegie Commission sent her their biased survey. Although she did not shy away from making a political point in her letter, true to her field of study, she ended her letter by suggesting that the impersonal pronoun would have been the best choice linguistically and wished them well in their survey.
Thurgood, Lori, Golladay, Mary J., and Hill, Susan T. “U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century.” National Science Foundation Special Report (2006). http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/pdf/nsf06319.pdf.
A talk by Jeannette Gabriel, Graduate Research Assistant, Jewish Women in Iowa Project, Iowa Women’s Archives
Join us to hear the untold stories of Jewish women’s involvement in community activities throughout Iowa history, whether in cities with robust Jewish populations or in small towns where only one or two Jewish families lived.
Thursday, March 24, 2016 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor, Main Library, University of Iowa
Reception at 4:00 p.m. — Talk will begin at 4:30 p.m.
Save this event to your profile on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events.
Presented by the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries in celebration of Women’s History Month.
Jeannette Gabriel is a PhD candidate in the department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education. Her dissertation is ‘I Don’t See Race’: Examining History Teachers’ Use of Images through the Teaching Amerian History (TAH) Grant to Study African-American History”. The Jewish Women in Iowa Project has helped develop her understanding of historical memory and consciousness. Jeannette is deeply grateful and appreciative for the warmth and graciousness with which I have been received by the Jewish families and communities that have become part of this project.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact (name of person or department) in advance at (telephone number).
Dorothy and Warren “Jack” Wirtz, students at the University of Iowa, 1938
A few years after the Iowa Women’s Archives opened, Dr. Dorothy Wirtz [1915 – 2013] donated some pieces of her college years at the University of Iowa. Dorothy Wirtz’s 1997 gift to the IWA includes her academic articles and a selection of her poetry. However, the papers mostly concern the exploits of Wirtz and her brother, Warren, as students at the University of Iowa in the late 1930s. Both French majors, the siblings balanced classes with extracurricular activities, worried about finances, and wrote home frequently. Dorothy’s letters are especially candid about her determined penny-pinching, and reflect the struggle of affording college during the Great Depression. “Do you realize,” Dorothy wrote to her mother in 1937, “that I am going to be able to maintain myself for the entire year and also probably pay Ed back within the year? What a woman! After this, remember that I am not to be discouraged in anything I want to do.” Her letters also describe an active social life with parties for French and German students and even seeing “the much talked of Black Angel,” a statue at the local Oakland Cemetery rumored to be cursed.
A portion of Wirz’s recent donation
Born in Keokuk, Iowa and a 1939 graduate of the University of Iowa, Wirtz left her home state for an impressive and lengthy academic career. She and her brother Warren “Jack” Wirtz, a composer, led lives that reflected their artistic passions. Professor of French, pianist, published poet, and deputy treasurer of the state of Arizona, Wirtz’s life was full, but her single box of papers at the Iowa Women’s Archives did not match the extent of her accomplishments. We know that the Wirtz siblings made their home together in Phoenix, Arizona from the 1950s until Warren’s death in 1972. But after 1939, the correspondence and their collection nearly stops. Aside from a few poems, compositions, and papers, Dorothy and “Jack” Wirtz might as well have disappeared.
But that is about to change. Dorothy Wirtz bequeathed the IWA approximately 12 linear feet of materials: letters, diaries, and artifacts from an extraordinary life. The materials in these 16 boxes should fill in the gaps, giving a more complete picture of the lives of two incredible University of Iowa alumni. Wirtz’s gift included enough funds to hire me as the Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant. This year, I will process these papers for researcher use and share my progress on the IWA blog and tumblr. Stay tuned for updates!
— Annie Tunnicliff, Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant
Saturday, March 5, 2016, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Join us in the Iowa Women’s Archives to learn about the rich history of Latinas, their families, and organizations in Iowa.
~Bring a memento from your past to share with the group.
~Learn how to preserve it.
Refreshments will be served!
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor Main Library, University of Iowa
Presented by the Iowa Women’s Archives and Kirkwood Community College
Latino Americans: 500 Years of History has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.
See this event on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events
We Did So Much Beyond the Home:
Jewish Women and Community Life in Iowa
Thursday, March 24, 2016, Reception at 4 p.m., Talk will begin at 4:30 p.m.
A talk by Jeannette Gabriel, graduate research assistant, for the Jewish Women in Iowa Project
Join us to hear the untold stories of Jewish women’s involvement in community activities throughout Iowa history, whether in cities with robust Jewish populations or in small towns where only one or two Jewish families lived.
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor Main Library, University of Iowa.
See this event on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events.
Accommodations
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the sponsoring department or contact person listed in advance of the event.
The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society and the Iowa Women’s Archives
invite you to hear:
Injections, Itches, and Institutions:
The Experience of Rural Medicine in Iowa, 1910-1950
Jennifer Gunn
History of Medicine Endowed Professor
Director of the Institute for Advanced Study
University of Minnesota
Thursday, January 28, 2016, 5:30-6:30
Medical Education Research Facility (MERF) 2117
Free and Open to the Public
When Clara Skott, an Iowa farm wife living in South Dakota during the 1918 influenza pandemic, received a series of injections to stave off the flu, the hypodermic needle was a symbol of modern medical practice. Iowa doctors’ ledger books show “hypos” were a staple of their treatment repertoire. What was in the hypo was not always clear. Clara was given a homegrown influenza vaccine; other patients received barbiturates, vita-mins, or placebos. $1.00 for an injection was beyond the reach of many Iowans. This talk explores country doctors’ practices and the range of ways rural Iowans handled health issues in the first half of the 20th century.
If you are a person with a disability requiring an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Donna Hirst, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences (donna-hirst@uiowa.edu), 335-9154. The UI History of Medicine Society website is located at: http://hosted.lib.uiowa.edu/histmed/
Season’s greetings from the Iowa Women’s Archives! This is the time of treats and parties. Seen below are photographs of children in the 1960s – partaking of all the joys of holiday parties.
These images come from the Iowa Women’s Archives LULAC (League of United Latino American Citizens) Council 10 records. Active since 1959, LULAC Council 10 has made great progress in advocating for the human, civil, and labor rights of the Latino communities in the Quad Cities’ area from the very beginning of its history. In the 1960s, Council 10’s priorities included education and activism that led to fair housing and inclusion, as well as cultural and social programming like its annual holiday party featured here. Notable achievements from the 1960s era included working with other activists to secure fair housing legislation, raising money to support scholarships for further education, and advocating for a full-time director of the Davenport Human Relations Commission. Iowa LULAC members worked with other civil rights organizations to form the Quad City Grape Boycott Committee to support the boycott of California table grapes led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
Today, LULAC Council 10 continues to advocate for social justice and enjoys a wide range of social activities. For the coming election year, Council 10 has created initiatives to encourage political involvement, such as mock caucuses to educate voters on the unique political involvement privileges that allow Iowans to shape their parties’ agendas. One of just five Iowa chapters of LULAC at its inception, Council 10 is now one of 11 chapters in the state. The Iowa Women’s Archives’ LULAC Council 10 records span the years from 1959 to 2009.
See the finding aid for more information at IWA’s website.
July 12th was the kickoff for the 2016 National LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) convention. Janet, assistant curator here at the IWA, attended the conference to promote “Migration is Beautiful,” a new website featuring vignettes, oral history interview clips, memoirs, letters, and photographs from the IWA’s Mujeres Latinas Project.
