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Event | Laura Stokes on Composer Fanny Hensel
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On Wednesday, April 24, 2019 at 12 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, Laura Stokes, Performing Arts Librarian and Head of Orwig Music Library at Brown, will give a talk based on her book Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide.
Free and open to the public. Q&A and reception to follow the talk.
Laura Stokes
Laura K. T. Stokes is the Performing Arts Librarian at Brown University, where she has also been a Lecturer in Music. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Indiana University. Her scholarly work examines music and cultural politics in the nineteenth century, including music for public ritual, opera, sacred music, gender and composition, and music publishing history. Her current projects are on the composers Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, as well as music and politics, historiography, and nineteenth-century medievalism. From 2012–2018, she was an Assistant Editor of the journal Notes.
Fanny Hensel
Drawing of Fanny Hensel by Wilhelm Hensel Fanny Hensel née Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1805–1847) was one of the most prolific female composers of the nineteenth century. The sister of the famous composer and conductor Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and granddaughter of the Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, she was educated alongside her brother, including in music composition. Upon reaching maturity, however, she faced restrictions on the pursuit of a public career—restrictions based on gender and social status. Hensel nonetheless continued to compose, with an output of over 450 musical works, and she became the organizer and hostess of a famous salon/private concert series.
After her death, Hensel’s work as a composer and musician was largely forgotten or dismissed; however, inspired by the field of women’s history, new research from the 1980s to the present day has promoted awareness of Hensel’s life and work. Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide helps researchers navigate the vast world of research on Hensel. The author will talk about Hensel and her music as well as challenges and conundrums in this research area.
Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect St, Providence -
Event | Renée Ater: Monuments, Slavery, and the Digital Humanities
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Contraband and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial On Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 4 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, Renée Ater will give a talk entitled, “Monuments, Slavery, and the Digital Humanities.”
Free and open to the public. A reception will follow the talk.
Monuments, Slavery, and the Digital Humanities
In this public lecture, Renée Ater discusses the processes and challenges of creating a digital project/publication about the memorialization of slavery. Her project, Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past: Race, Memorialization, Public Space, and Civic Engagement, investigates how we visualize, interpret, and engage the slave past through contemporary monuments created for public spaces. Through an examination of twenty-five monuments in the South, Midwest, and Northeast, she tells a diverse and multi-layered story about our engagement with slavery in the present. Arranged thematically, she considers six digital case studies that include monuments to the Transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, slavery and the university, resistance to enslavement, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, black soldiers and the Civil War, and emancipation and freedom.
Renée Ater
Renée Ater is Associate Professor Emerita of American Art at the University of Maryland. She holds a B.A. in art history from Oberlin College (1987); a M.A. in art history from the University of Maryland (1993); and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland (2000). Her research and writing have largely focused on the intersection of race, monument building, and national identity. Renée is currently a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, working on her digital publication project: Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past: Race, Memorialization, Public Space, and Civic Engagement.
Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence -
Announcement | Recipients of Undergraduate Prize for Excellence in Library Research 2019
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Each year, in partnership with the Office of the Dean of the College, the Brown University Library recognizes one or two undergraduate students for outstanding research projects that make creative and extensive use of the Library’s collections, including, but not limited to, print resources, databases, primary resources, and materials in all media. The project may take the form of a traditional paper, a database, a website, or other digital project. The prize winners receive $750 each, funded through an endowment established by Douglas Squires ’73.
2019 Prize Recipients
Maya Omori ’19 created “Hidden Portraits at Brown,” a Brown-focused walking tour for the statewide Rhode Tour mobile app. The walking tour examines overlooked or underrepresented people associated with Brown and offers closer inspection of some of Brown’s famous landmarks and traditions. Maya incorporated interviews with Brown faculty, curators, and staff with extensive research using our online databases and primary sources.
Maya Omori ’19 receives award certificate from Joseph Meisel, Joukowsky Family University Librarian Using primary sources from the John Hay Library as well as numerous secondary sources from Brown’s physical and online collections, Gabriela Gil ’20 wrote a research paper, “First Aid in South African Gold Mines,” which explores the rationale for European mining corporations to create first aid programs specific to Black laborers. The paper provides an in-depth discussion of a first aid manual (“Ikusiza Aba Limele”) in order to better understand how mining officials construed the roles and responsibilities in the provision of first aid in these settings, and how they evaluated the significance of these attitudes and policies for Black labor.
Gabriela Gil ’20 connects to the ceremony remotely to present her project and receive the award Congratulations to Maya and Gabriela!
Thank you to this year’s judges:
- Heather Cole, Curator, Literary & Popular Culture Collections
- Carina Cournoyer, Scholarly Resources Librarian for the Social Sciences
- Claudia Elliot, Associate Director of the International Relations Program and Senior Lecturer in International Studies
- Jessica Metzler, Associate Director of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Sheridan Center
More information about the Undergraduate Prize for Excellence in Library Research and past winners.