Upcoming Events: October and early November

Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Friday, October 12 at 3:00pm | Frankenstein and Medical Ethics: A Panel with Faculty from Notre Dame and Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend (IUSM-SB).

• Mark Fox, MD PhD MPH (IUSM-SB), Modern Day Re-animation: Revisiting the Moral History of Transplantation

• Joseph Kotva, PhD (IUSM-SB), Frankenstein and an Ethics of Virtue

• Gary Fromm, MD (IUSM-SB), Frankenstein, Film, and Medical Education

• Kathleen Eggleson, PhD (IUSM-SB), Teaching Frankenstein Today:  The Moral Imperative to Reform the Education of Medical Scientists

• Chair, Eileen Hunt Botting, Professor of Political Science (Notre Dame)

This event is part of Operation Frankenstein, a semester-long series of interdisciplinary events taking place at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s novel.

Tuesday, October 23 at 4:00pm | Public Lecture: “La primera entrada al Río de la Plata: Maldonado y su historia” / “The First Entry to the Rio de la Plata: Maldonado and Its History” by Silvia Guerra (Uruguayan poet and scholar).

Wednesday, October 24 at 4:00pm |Un mar en madrugada / A Sea at Dawn: Bilingual Reading by Silvia Guerra and Jesse Lee Kercheval.

Thursday, October 25 at 5:00pm | Italian Lecture: “Primo Levi e Dante: quattro casi (più o meno noti)” / “Primo Levi & Dante: Four Cases (More or Less Known)” by Fabrizio Franceschini (Pisa). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

Wednesday, November 7 at 3:30pm | Black Catholic History Month public lecture by Fr. Clarence Williams, CPPS, Ph.D. Co-sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and Hesburgh Libraries/University Archives

Thursday, November 8 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “Fascist Im/Mobilities: A Decade of Amedeo Nazzari” by Alberto Zambenedetti (Toronto). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.


The exhibit In Solzhenitsyn’s Circle: the Writer and his Associates runs through the end of the semester. The exhibit will be open special hours during the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s 19th Annual Fall Conference “Higher Powers” (November 1–3, 2018).

The current spotlight exhibits are Frankenstein 200 (August – December 2018) and A Modern Prometheus: Balancing Science and Ethics (September – October 2018).


RBSC is open regular hours during Notre Dame’s
Fall Break (October 15-19, 2018)
.

Recent Acquisition: The life and martyrdom of the first Mexican saint and patron of Mexico City

by Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

Rare Books and Special Collections has acquired a first edition of Vida, martyrio, y beatificacion del invicto proto-martyr del Japon San Felipe de Jesus, patron de Mexico, by Baltasar de Medina. The work treats the life and martyrdom of San Felipe de Jesus, the first Mexican saint and patron of Mexico City.

Medina, a member of the Order of the Brothers of St. James of Mexico City, details Felipe’s birth, his initial affiliation with the discalced Franciscans in Puebla, his missionary work in Manila, the omens preceding his martyrdom, the martyrdom itself, and his beatification.

Felipe found himself in Japan when a storm pushed his ship, destined for Mexico, off course. He and companion friars and a number of Japanese Christians were taken prisoner on orders of Japanese regent, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. After weeks in prison, these men were crucified as an example to others who might consider conversion.

Medina includes an image of the type of cross used in the crucifixions in his work. It was comprised of a crossbeam on top, one on the bottom, and a smaller piece of wood that the victims sat astride, as if riding a horse, in Medina’s words. A metal hoop encircled the neck and, in Felipe’s case, nearly choked him to death as his feet failed to reach the lower support. Executioners ran lances through the bodies of the Christians as they were suspended from the cross.

The title page is printed in red and black ink, but the highlight of this work is the engraved plate depicting San Felipe as he was crucified. The drawing depicts the martyr on a cross, pierced by lances, and with the ring of metal encircling his neck. Interestingly, the group of symbols representing the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and later Mexico City—an eagle with a snake in its beak atop a nopal cactus—appears in front of the cross. An almost whimsical rendering of Mexico City including a cathedral, a bridge, and small human figures, decorates the bottom of the image.

This is the only copy of this work in the United States and one of the few copies anywhere containing the engraved plate.


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recent Acquisition by the Library’s 2018 Foik Award Recipient

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

Next week the university will confer the 2018 Rev. Paul J. Foik Award posthumously on David Dressing, who was Hesburgh Library’s Latin American Studies Librarian from 2011 through 2017. We’d like to mark the occasion by highlighting a remarkable collection David purchased jointly with the American History Librarian for Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). It is an assemblage of pen and ink caricature drawings and watercolor paintings that show scenes captured by travelers to Latin America and the United States during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

John Bateman (b. 1839) was a young Englishman from a wealthy, landowning family in Staffordshire when he traveled to the United States and Latin America around 1860. He created a series of drawings in ink of scenes he observed along the way, to which he Image of vulgar Americanadded wry descriptions. An example, shown here, from June 1860, depicts Bateman’s version of a vulgar American—a gun-toting, spitting, overly-familiar buffoon who complained about the new Republican Party’s opposition to slavery’s extension in the west. The young traveler created a funny and alarming image of American political affairs a few months before Lincoln’s election in 1860 and the start of southern secession. Bateman made caricatures like this one as he traveled through Central America and the Caribbean.

Even more intriguing, however, is the fact that Bateman’s collection includes a second group of visual works: a handful of watercolor paintings signed simply, “G.U.S.” They date from between 1838 and 1840 and depict Central and South American people and scenes.

Image of kneeling woman and in tapada poseHighlighted here are three vivid paintings of veiled women of Lima, Peru. One is depicted kneeling in church, another is shown from the back, and the third is in the typical tapada pose, her head veiled, Image of veiled womanmysteriously and coquettishly revealing a single eye. Each wears the traditional saya, an overskirt showing the feet and ankles, and manto, a thick veil secured at the waist and raised to cover the face. The latter was popularly used, even among married women of Lima, as a prop with which to flirt.

G.U.S.’s paintings are reminiscent of those by the famous mulato painter of Lima, Pancho Fierro. Albums of Fierro’s drawings were marketed to tourists in Lima from the 1840s to the 1860s, so G.U.S. could have known Fierro’s work and incorporated it into his own pieces.

The presence of G.U.S.’s paintings in the Bateman collection raises intriguing connections for further study of related items held in Special Collections. We hold a copy of the French painter, A. A. Bonnaffé’s “Recuerdos de Lima” album (1856), which he sold to tourists and which features the tapada of Lima. More elaborate and detailed than the small depictions by G.U.S., these wonderful images highlight even more flirtatious poses, including a woman (shown here) who intentionally drew the viewer’s attention to her exposed and slender ankle.

Image of woman with exposed ankleimage of two of woman from Bonnaffé albumimage of three of woman from Bonnaffé albumimage of four of woman from Bonnaffé album

 

 

 

 

The Bateman collection and Bonnaffé album are just two examples of David Dressing’s thoughtful and expert acquisitions for RBSC over nearly a decade. His work has made an enduring contribution to research, teaching, and scholarship at Hesburgh Libraries and the field of Latin American Studies.

Upcoming Events: May and through the summer

Currently there are no events scheduled to be hosted this summer in Rare Books and Special Collections.

The exhibit In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines and the Print Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Peru will run through the summer and close on August 10, 2018.

The current spotlight exhibits are Chaste, Choice and Chatty: Irish‑American Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century (April – August 2018) and Jesuit Science in 17th and 18th Century China (May 2018).

Rare Books and Special Collections is open
regular hours during the summer —
9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.

RBSC will be closed Monday, May 28th, for Memorial Day and Wednesday, July 4th, for Independence Day.

Upcoming Events: April and early May

Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, April 5 at 5:00pm | A talk on the reception of Medieval Catalan poet Ausiàs March in Early Modern Iberia, by Albert Lloret (UMass Amherst). Sponsored by Iberian and Latin American Studies, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Wednesday, April 11 at 4:30pm | “Centering Black Catholics, Reimagining American Catholicism” by Matthew Cressler (College of Charleston). Sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.

Thursday, April 19 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “From Surface to Symptom and Back Again: Reading Isabella d’Este’s Correspondence” by Deanna Shemek (University of California, Santa Cruz). Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.

Thursday, April 26 at 5:00pm | “Towards a New Biography of Dante Alighieri” by Paolo Pellegrini (Verona). Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.

Friday, May 4 at 1:00pm | Awards ceremony for the annual Undergraduate Library Research Award (ULRA), followed by a reception in the Special Collections Seminar Room (103 Hesburgh Library).


The main exhibit this spring is In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru. This exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.

The spotlight exhibits during early April are From Distant Waters: Whaling Manuscripts in Special Collections and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, both curated by George Rugg. The baseball exhibit will end mid-month, with the exhibit Chaste, Choice and Chatty: Irish-American Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century, curated by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, opening for the second half of the month and continuing through the summer.

Who’s Who in RBSC: Erika Hosselkus

The periodical press claimed to civilize Peru. The first, official news periodical, Gazeta de Lima, described itself as something that quickly disseminated “a brief accounting of occurrences.” Then, in less than two centuries the literary magazine, Prisma, appeared. On the front cover of the September 1906 issue is a photograph depicting the civilizing power the press could have—two boys from among an aristocratic elite in Peru are attired in velvet suits with lace collars and leather shoes reading an issue of Prisma. It seemed that the periodical press accomplished what it claimed to do. Yet, at the same time, other periodicals argued that Peru was the exact opposite—uncivilized. This became the subject of articles filling the pages of periodical after periodical. What exactly did it mean to be civilized?

Photograph of Erika Hosselkus, taken outside the Hesburgh Library, with the golden dome of the Notre Dame administration building visible in the background.Moving from being a source of general news to a resource that generated thought, discussion, and public discourse, Peruvian periodical literature—newspapers, magazines, circulars, and other similar types of imprints—was used to show how Peru could become a civilized nation. This development of the periodical press in Peru is examined in Special Collections’ current exhibit, In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Peru curated by Erika Hosselkus (Curator of Latin American Collections).

Featured in this exhibit are materials from Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History Collection. Durand (1925-90), a native of Lima Peru, professor of Spanish literature, writer, and bibliophile, amassed an impressive research library. His library reconstructed the type of library the important 16th-century Peruvian writer Garcilaso Inca de la Vega possessed. In addition, Durand built a significant collection of early printed books and literary, historical, economic, and ecclesiastical manuscripts. Distinguishing this collection are numerous unique items, including the only existing copy of a 17th-century play, Tragicomedia de la Ystoria de Joseph, and a dialogue between two friends discussing conditions in colonial Peru. Another important part of the Durand collection is his personal collection of rare literary and historical journals pertaining to late Colonial and 19th-century Peru. Noteworthy is Peru’s first newspaper, Gazeta de Lima—more than fifteen of the Gazeta issues in the Durand collection are held only at Notre Dame.

Selections of these materials document both the history of periodical literature in Peru and the wealth of research opportunities in the Durand collection. Hard-to-find circulars from the Independence period provide a window into political interests of the time while rare cancioneros (popular song and verse imprints) featuring polkas, waltzes, and Latin American music show how cultures were intersecting and what people were interested in buying. Lithographs in periodicals and books show the advances in technology beginning in the 1860s. The development in types of illustrations used in official periodicals—lithographs, engravings of city scenes, portraits of important Peruvian leaders and other figures—culminates around the turn of the century with the introduction of color lithographs and photographs.

In a Civilized Nation features only a small portion of the materials held in the José E. Durand Peruvian History Collection. Erika lamented how difficult it was to select materials because there were so many items that could and should be on display. Her dilemma speaks to the breadth of this collection.


“I extend my thanks to David  for introducing me to the Durand collection and for his always thoughtful and enthusiastic collaboration. He is missed in so many ways.” -EH

In memoriam
David Dressing (1964-2017)
Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian

Erika would also like to extend special appreciation to Sara Weber for her visual design work.


In a Civilized Nation runs through August 2018. The exhibit is free and open to the public, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. An expanded digital exhibit is forthcoming in late spring.

Weekly exhibit tours are offered Tuesdays at noon through the end of April. Special tours can also be arranged for classes or other visiting groups, including K-12 audiences. To schedule a group tour, please contact Erika Hosselkus.

Upcoming Events: March and early April

Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, March 1 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar:  MA Presentations — “Alessandro Blasetti’s Cinema and the Fantastic: A Closer Look at the Unmarried Woman” by Genevieve Lyons, and “Representations of Self: Dante’s Use of First Person in the Vita Nova” by Katie Sparrow. Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.

Thursday, March 8 at 3:00pm-5:00pm | A Celebration of the Life of David Dressing (Latin American Studies Librarian). An opportunity to share memories will begin at 3:30pm. Friends, colleagues, and students of David’s from across campus are welcome.

Thursday, March 29 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “Atlantic Libraries: Renaissance Italy and the American Colonies” by Diego Pirillo (University of California, Berkeley). Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.

Thursday, April 5 at 5:00pm | A talk on the reception of Medieval Catalan poet Ausiàs March in Early Modern Iberia by Albert Lloret (UMass Amherst). Sponsored by Iberian and Latin American Studies, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

 

The main exhibit this spring is In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru. This exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.

The spotlight exhibits during March are A Beneventan Fragment, curated by David Gura, and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, curated by George Rugg.

Upcoming Events: February and early March

Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, March 1 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar:  MA Presentations — “Alessandro Blasetti’s Cinema and the Fantastic: A Closer Look at the Unmarried Woman” by Genevieve Lyons, and “Representations of Self: Dante’s Use of First Person in the Vita Nova” by Katie Sparrow. Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

 

The spring exhibit, In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru, officially opens on February 9. The exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.

The spotlight exhibits during February are Reading the Emancipation Proclamation, curated by Rachel Bohlmann, and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, curated by George Rugg.

Happy National Puzzle Day!

January 29 is National Puzzle Day, a day to appreciate puzzles of all sizes, shapes, and forms. This holiday was started in 2002 by Jodi Jill, a syndicated newspaper puzzle maker and professional quiz maker. In honor of the holiday, the curator of our next exhibit, “In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru,” shares a couple of puzzles from two of the serials that will be featured in the exhibit. The exhibit will open in early February.


by Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

The periodicals of nineteenth-century Peru often featured puzzles, from riddles (charadas) to rebuses (geroglíficos).

The March 13, 1875 issue of La Alborada, a weekly magazine on literature, art, education, theater, and fashion, featuring the writing of Peruvian women, contains a word puzzle in the middle of the third column. Readers decoded riddles such as this one to discover a one-word or multi-word solution. In this case, the puzzle creator provides clues about the three syllables comprising the word camisa (shirt), her one-word solution.

A loose translation:

Although foreign, it is known
That when I join my first syllable to my third,
It results in a familiar mansion.

Creating a similar union
Between my third and my first syllables;
I obtain a verb and a “sack,”
“larger than” any other.

My second (syllable) is a pronoun
And it runs into my third,
Each week, every person
Should go (to this) at least once.

I will say, in conclusion
That something that you find on me
And that you find also on yourself
Will turn out to be the solution.

A.A.A.

The author of this puzzle offered up a prize to be given to one of the first four subscribers to submit a solution.

Solutions to the puzzle (Soluciones á la charada del núm. 22) appear in a later issue, shown below. Some answers, like the one sent in by Ubalda Plasencia, are written in verse, like the puzzle itself. As Ubalda points out, the syllables indicated by the puzzle are “ca” “mi” and “sa,” resulting in the word camisa, or “shirt.”

Word searches (laberintos) are also featured in Peruvian periodicals, as are rebuses, like the one found at the bottom of the page below from El Perú Ilustrado of June 16, 1888. The prize for decoding this puzzle was 200 packs of cigarettes. Fittingly, the sponsor of the puzzle was a tobacco vendor. In English, the solution to the puzzle (shown at the bottom of the last image) is: “If you know what is good, in terms of tobacco, I advise you to buy the brand «El Sol de Oro» from Oliva brothers.”

Upcoming Events: January and early February

Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, January 25 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Afterlife: the Two Picos and Later Transformations of Renaissance Humanism” by Denis Robichaud (University of Notre Dame). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

 

The fall exhibit, Elements of Humanity: Primo Levi and the Evolution of Italian Postwar Culture, has been extended into January. If you are planning to bring a group to Special Collections or would like to schedule a special tour, please email rarebook @ nd.edu or call 574-631-0290.

The monthly spotlight exhibit for November and December, Building A Colonial Mexican Tavern: Archive of the Pulquería El Tepozán, has also been extended through mid-January. Watch for a new exhibit to be installed later in January and continue through February.

The winter spotlight exhibit is Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, curated by George Rugg. This exhibit features highlights from the department’s collection of approximately 400 pieces of baseball related sheet music.