Jun 15 2020

Summer Seminar Series is Here

Posted on June 15, 2020July 10, 2020 by Elizabeth Riordan

On June 11 University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections started their Summer Seminar Series! This online series features Special Collections & Archives staff talking about what we know best: our collections and our favorite topics featured in the archives. This series of 15-30 minute presentations are recorded, so if you can’t join us for our regularly scheduled time of 2pm CT on Wednesdays and Fridays through the end of July, catch us later on our Youtube channel!

For more information or for how you can partake, please email Liz Riordan at elizabeth-riordan@uiowa.edu

Schedule of Talks:

June 11th–Special Collections in a Nutshell

Join Head of Special Collections, Margaret Gamm, to learn about what’s in Special Collections, how to discover our resources online, and what’s to come in our new Summer Seminar series.

June 12th– University Archives: Our Services and a Hawkeye History Sampler

The University Archives is UI’s institutional memory. Learn from University Archivist, David McCartney, about our holdings and online resources, as well as some Hawkeye history to share at your next (virtual) party.

June 17th–Shining the Limelight on Early Cinema and the Midwest Audience

In this presentation Outreach & Engagement Librarian Liz Riordan will show a few films from the Brinton Entertaining Company Collection, discussing their impact on cinema and a Midwest audience.

June 19th–Racial Injustice in Iowa and the Midwest

Learn from Assistant Curator of Iowa Women’s Archives, Janet Weaver, and IWA student worker, Erik Henderson, about the history of local civil rights movements from the perspective of Black and Latinx community leaders who fought for change between the 1940s and the present.

June 24th–Rediscovering Ruth Suckow: A Look Into Her Life and Hidden Materials

Processing Librarian Jenna Silver provides an introduction to Iowa Author Ruth Suckow, her works, her love for animals, and the “hidden” materials of her collection.

June 26th–Out in Iowa City: Lesbian Feminism in the University of Iowa’s Hometown

During the women’s liberation movement from the 1960s to the 1980s, lesbians in Iowa City became writers, printers, business owners, and activists. At this talk by Processing Librarian Anna Tunnicliff, you can learn how their incredible work changed the landscape of the University and the town.

July 8th–Who is Tigrina? Exloring Identity in Early SF Fandom

Olson Graduate Rich Dana will show that among the thousands of amazing documents in the Hevelin Science Fiction Collection there is a series of WWII-era letters from a remarkable woman with a mysterious name… Tigrina!

July 10th–Into the Vault: Iowa’s Privately Printed Peter Rabbit

Learn from Public Service Librarian Lindsay Moen the history of The University of Iowa’s privately printed Tale of Peter Rabbit, from Beatrix Potter’s concept, to the book’s arrival to the Iowa stacks.

July 15th–Processing Collections: A Look Inside the Archivist’s Process

Learn the steps and procedures that archivists must take to process materials, while also learning about the “fun” or “unique” items we have discovered while dealing with materials from Processing Librarian Jenna Silver!

July 17th–Cheap Copies:The Rise of the Amateur Printing, Fanzines and the “Mimeograph Revolution”

Olson Graduate Assistant Rich Dana will explain the use of “cheap copies” and the development of similar visual languages in SF fandom and the Avant-garde.

July 24th–No! Really?: Stories from the Stacks

Flying saucers, propeller beanies, rocket countdowns, Mary Shelley and the Holocaust…Peter Balestrieri has learned some great stories as Curator of Science Fiction and Popular Culture and he’d love to share them with you.

July 29th—One More Round

Join Outreach & Engagement Librarian as she looks into the fight for, and ultimate failed attempt, of Prohibition in Iowa.

July 31st–When Iowans Voted No: The 1916 Referendum on Women’s Suffrage

Although the Iowa General Assembly considered a women’s suffrage amendment in almost every session for over 40 years, the question wasn’t brought to the voters until 1916. The ensuing campaigns for and against women’s suffrage and the reasons for the referendum’s ultimate failure will be considered in this talk from Processing Librarian Anna Tunnicliff on women’s suffrage in Iowa.

Dracula's bat-like cape taking center stage

Oct 24 2016

Edward Gorey’s Reawakening of Dracula

Posted on October 24, 2016January 14, 2019 by Hannah Hacker

By Hannah Hacker

Dracula has been a name that has instilled fear and fascination in the imaginations of readers and viewers since its original publication by Bram Stoker in 1897. There have been many adaptations and remakes of the novel since then, including F.W. Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Graunens, the 1931 Universal Studios version of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula starring Gary Oldman and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992.

There was even a play adaptation about the captivating vampire. In 1924, Hamilton Deane adapted Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula into a stage play with the permission of Stoker’s widow. The play toured in England and was brought to Broadway in 1927.

Dracula was revived in 1977 under the direction of Dennis Rosa. Sets and costumes were designed by Edward Gorey, who is well-known for his quirky cat drawings on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and other Gothic illustrations that have graced the covers of numerous classics, poetry books, and various other publications. With the set and costume design for Dracula, Gorey channeled his obsession with bats. Bats can be found in the walls, in the cobblestone, in the furniture – there are even bats incorporated into the characters’ clothing, like Renfield’s bat-buttoned pajamas.

The set and costumes were so enthralling that the play soon became known as “Edward Gorey’s production of Dracula,” instead of being fully credited to the director. Gorey’s designs were nominated for Tony Awards, and the production received a Tony in 1977 for the best revival of a play.

Dracula closed in 1980 after a strong run of 925 performances.

Edward Gorey’s vision of Dracula did not die with the close of the play. The designs rose once again in 1979 when Scribner’s published them as a spiral-bound book called Dracula: A Toy Theatre. The book contains Gorey’s original designs of the sets and characters, as well as a synopsis of the characters, scenes, and acts. The images of the characters, furniture, and set could be cut out from the pages and taped together so the reader could create their own interactive version of the original stage.

More recently, Pomegranate Communications picked up the book and made it into a box set of the toy theater with loose leaves of die-cut fold-ups and fold-outs. Once the theatre is constructed, the reader can have a full 3-D model of all three acts of the play.

Here at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections, we not only have a copy of Scribner’s publication of Dracula: A Toy Theatre, but two copies of the Pomegranate publication as well.

If you want to see them in person, you can swing on by to the Special Collections on the third floor of the Main Library. Otherwise, on October 28^th, 11:00am – 3:00pm, we will be hosting a Halloween Pop-Up Exhibit on the first floor of the Main Library, where the complete construction of Dracula: A Toy Theatre will be the star of the exhibit, along with a showcase of some of our spookiest comics and fanzines.

Read more about the event at the link below, and we hope to see you there!

A ‘Gorey’ Good Time: Pop Up Exhibit

Works Cited

“Dracula (1924 Play).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

“Dracula (1977 Play).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

“Dracula.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

Miller, Patrice. “Bat Ambassador: Edward Gorey.” The Edward Gorey House. Edward Gorey House, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

Popova, Maria. “When Edward Gorey Illustrated Dracula: Two Masters of the Macabre, Together.” Brain Pickings. Brain Pickings, 17 Sept. 2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

Jun 03 2016

Meet the Manuscript

Posted on June 3, 2016January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

By Heather Wacha

28 beaver fur hats.
6 panels of tapestries.
Wool from Flanders.
Silks, cloths and linens.
Furniture, paintings, and sculptures.
Gold and Silver.
All manner of carriages.

If you had been an heir of the estate of Don Francisco Muñoz Carillo, a nobleman from Cuenca, Spain who died in 1687, you may have received some part of these items. However, before you get too excited, you would have also inherited the many debts that Don Francisco’s left his heirs.

In the past two weeks, graduate students from the University of Iowa have been participating in a paleography workshop entitled “Meet the Manuscript” and working intently on the transcription and translation of Don Francisco’s last will and testament, held in the University of Iowa’s Special Collections Library (xMMs.Doc2).

But this is not a simple project. Students have been working on multiple levels: transcribing, translating and TEI encoding each page of the document, with a view to providing an online digital edition and resource tool for a broad range of viewers who might benefit from using this document, as well as making a historic model of the document with which they are working. Thanks to the UI Center for the Book’s Tim Barrett, Melissa Moreton and Cheryl Jacobsen, eleven new books were born, filled with hand-made paper, held together with a tacketed binding with alum taw laces (case paper replaced the original parchment cover), and sporting examples of an Italic script.

Additionally, students from three Iowa high schools are interacting with the manuscript either through digital images and translations or through their visit with the original document in UI Spec Coll.

The work from both UI graduate students and high school students will be available on the Meet the Manuscript website.

What a wonderful collaborative experience with much thanks to UI Spec Coll, UI Studio, UI Center for the Book, Ana Rodriguez and Amber Brian from the UI Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the multiple UI departments and divisions that sponsored the fellows! Muchas gracias from all of us and all of Don Francisco’s predecessors and successors.

The University of Iowa Libraries

News & Announcements

Tag: special collections

Summer Seminar Series is Here

Schedule of Talks:

Edward Gorey’s Reawakening of Dracula

A ‘Gorey’ Good Time: Pop Up Exhibit

Meet the Manuscript