Brown University Library News

Orwig Music Library, March 2008 » Hours of Operation Between 1860 and 1865, music about Abraham Lincoln proliferated. Lincoln appeared in campaign pieces, war and memorial numbers, emancipation songs, and minstrel music. Some songs lauded Lincoln, others lampooned him. Much more than simply suggesting 19th century musical fashions, Lincoln songs are an important source for understanding popular attitudes towards the 16th President and his policy agenda. The exhibition displays materials from the Lincoln Collection at the John Hay Library and is part of the Library’s celebration of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial. For more information contact orwig@brown.edu Image: Union [pseudonym], “Vote for Abraham: Campaign Song of ’64”. Published at Burlington, Vermont by H. L. Story, 1864. Cover engraving by H. F. Greene, Boston.

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 13, 6:30 p.m.
John Hay Library, 20 Prospect Street
Providence, RI

Please join us for a reception celebrating the opening of the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives Exhibit. The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women is celebrating Women’s History Month 2008 with an exhibit at the John Hay Library at Brown. On display will be materials highlighting the historical achievements of Brown and Rhode Island women as well as documents tracing the intellectual gains made by feminist theorists working in universities across the country. Spanning several generations of activists and scholars, the collection recognizes the courage and intrepidity of women who dared to challenge and thereby disturb the status quo–through interrogation, agitation, and persistence.

Featured in the exhibit are the stories of such figures as Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, a Native-American/African American sculptor who battled with poverty as well as her own inner demons to create lasting works of art, and Annie Peck, who was refused admission to Brown in the 1870s but went on to become a celebrated mountaineer. The exhibit highlights the successful efforts of Sarah Doyle, the moving spirit behind the Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Education of Women, and the highly controversial work of such feminist scholars as historians Joan Wallach Scott and Louise Tilly and literary scholars Naomi Schor and Elaine Marks. Each of these theorists questioned conventional approaches to knowledge and contributed to making gender and sexual difference crucial categories of analysis. On display will be artifacts bearing witness to the bold Pembroke College and Brown University women athletes who insisted on playing “men’s” sports such as hockey and activists who staged walk-outs to protest racial injustice on campus.

The exhibit runs from March 14 to April 9, 2008 and is free and open to the public during normal library opening hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday (except March 24-28, Brown’s spring break, when the library closes at 5 p.m.). The Library is also open on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., except for March 23 and 30th.
RSVP by Friday, March 7, 2008 for the opening reception to: Pembroke_Associates@brown.edu or by calling (401) 863-3433. Kindly provide your name, class year if applicable, and number of guests.
This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center.

More information:
http://www.pembrokecenter.org/associates/events.html

A volume of John James Audubon’s master work, The Birds of America, is on display on the main floor of the John Hay Library. Each plate will be on display for only one month. This month’s bird is the Slender Billed Guillemot. The library is open 9 to 6, Monday through Friday and Sundays between 1 and 5.

This elephant folio edition of The Birds of America, bound in six volumes, was presented by Albert E. Lownes to the Library on the occasion of his 50th class reunion in 1970.
For more information please contact Hay@brown.edu