Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) 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.
Rare Books and Special Collections will be closed for Thanksgiving Break (November 23-24, 2017). In addition, RBSC will be closed December 5, 11:00am to 2:00pm due to the Hesburgh Libraries Christmas lunch.
The fall exhibit, Elements of Humanity: Primo Levi and the Evolution of Italian Postwar Culture, continues to be on display through December 15, 2017. Public tours of the exhibit are offered Tuesdays at noon and Wednesdays at 3pm, and are also available by request for classes or other groups, including K-12 audiences. 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 is Building A Colonial Mexican Tavern: Archive of the Pulquería El Tepozán, curated by Erika Hosselkus. This exhibit features a manuscript archive which includes real estate, licensing, and planning documents for the pulquería El Tepozán. It was one of four such establishments built by nobleman don Pedro Romero de Terreros, the Count of Regla, in Mexico City, beginning in the final years of the 1770s.
The summer spotlight exhibit, “Which in future time shall stir the waves of memory” — Friendship Albums of Antebellum America remains open for one more week.The winter spotlight exhibit, Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, will open in mid-November and highlights the department’s collection of approximately 400 pieces of baseball related sheet music.
We join the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Sergio Sánchez Santamaría is a printmaker, illustrator, and muralist who was born in Tlayacapan, Morelos, Mexico. Also trained in Mexico, Sánchez Santamaría has exhibited his work throughout Latin America and Europe, in the United States, and in Japan and China.
Among Sánchez Santamaría’s collections of linocut prints is a small volume called 500 años, México, printed at the San Jerónimo workshop in Tlayacapan. The 14 impressions comprising this piece offer a visual history of Mexico, from the age of the Mexica (Aztecs) to the late twentieth century. A jaguar and feathered serpent are among the engravings representing the nation’s indigenous past. Also portrayed are major figures historical figures such as national hero and president, Benito Juárez (in office 1858-1872), and the best-known female intellectual of the colonial era, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Rare Books and Special Collections holds the second of the six copies of 500 años, México produced by Sánchez Santamaría. Depicted here are two images from this copy.
A feathered helmet identifies this figure as an eagle warrior – a member of an elite corps within the formidable Mexica military.Emiliano Zapata, hero of the Mexican Revolution, is depicted with his signature bandolier over his shoulder.
Both prints illustrate the deep relief and heavy ink on cartridge paper characteristic of Sánchez Santamaría’s work. The style and the subject matter of his work tie him to the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a well-known artists’ print collective formed in 1937 that produced artwork designed to promote and advance the causes of the Mexican Revolution.
Sánchez Santamaría’s work often treats topics in Mexican history and popular culture. In 2016 he released a series of linocuts entitled Personajes de Morelos depicting figures central to the history of his home state. This collection was also printed in Tlayacapan. Rare Books and Special Collections holds copy fourteen of this collection, along with an actual linocut created by Sánchez Santamaría, shown below.
This image and linocut – number fourteen within this collection – depicts Zapatista colonel, Cristino Santamaría. According to Sánchez Santamaría, Cristino Santamaría, a musician and leader of the Banda Brigido Santamaría, fought alongside Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution. Santamaría’s face is obscured by his oversize sombrero, from under which his trumpet emerges. He is flanked by two figures wrapped tightly in traditional serapes. The print’s heavy lines contrast boldly with the white cartridge paper background.
Close examination of the linocut reveals something of Sánchez Santamaría’s technique. Cuts are of varying depth, to achieve different sorts of impressions. Outlines of the figures and blue pen shading can also be discerned.
Front covers of the Personajes de Morelos portfolio (left) and 500 años, México (right).
Along with these two collections, Rare Books and Special Collections holds copies of: “Los chinelos,” a series of 11 linocuts featuring “chinelos,” the masked, bearded figures that feature prominently in festivals in Morelos, especially Carnival; Cuaresma en la region Cuautla Morelos, a collection of Easter-related prints, and; Kamasutra de exlibris mexicanos.
The Cristero Rebellion (La Cristiada) (1926-1929) was a major uprising by Mexican Catholics against the violently anti-clerical presidential administration of Plutarco Elías Calles. Together, the Cristero Rebellion Martyrs photo album and postcard collection include some 73 photographs, many of them portrait-style prints of individuals executed under authority of President Calles. These images, and others like them, document the persecution of clerics and lay devotees who protested against the closure of churches and restrictions on the exercise of faith during the Calles era. They were also collected by devout Catholics during and after the Cristero Rebellion and served as reminders, or even relics, of the courage demonstrated by the Mexican faithful in the face of persecution.
The Cristero Rebellion Martyrs photo album is a set of 32 silver gelatin photographs, each with a leaf of accompanying, semi-hagiographic, text. The Cristero Rebellion Martyrs postcard collection includes 41 black and white postcards and photographs, some with descriptive information. (Full descriptions of these two collections can be accessed at the linked finding aids.)
Since the late 1960s, Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi has written 5 novels, 10 collections of short stories, 18 books of poetry, 4 books of essays, and innumerable cultural articles published in major European newspapers. Her works have garnered critical praise and won her many international awards over the years.
In the early 1970s, Peri Rossi was exiled from Uruguay to Spain as the country came under control of a military regime. The political violence endemic in Uruguay and the broader Southern Cone during the 1970s and 1980s is allegorized in many of her works. This violence and censorship affected an entire generation of authors and intellectuals from Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile and influenced their work. In recent critical studies, these authors have been recognized as the “Generation of ’72,” with Peri Rossi often being identified as the leading voice of this group.
The Cristina Peri Rossi Papers at Notre Dame include manuscript drafts of her published novels as well as unpublished poems and short stories, handwritten diaries, photographs, recorded interviews, and correspondence with family, friends, and other major Latin American and Spanish authors and intellectuals.
Draft of Peri Rossi’s poetry collection, Estado de exilio, with note signed by the author and the book, published in 2003, by Colección Visor de Poesía. The collection won the XVIII Premio Internacional Unicaja de Poesía Rafael Alberti. City Lights Publishers produced a bilingual (Spanish/English) edition of the book in 2008.Top photo: Peri Rossi with Julio Cortázar and two friends, Barcelona, 1974. Bottom photo: Peri Rossi with publisher and poet, Carlos Barral, Barcelona, 1989.Letter to Peri Rossi from Uruguayan poet, essayist, and critic Hugo Achúgar.
In pursuit of building a complete collection of Ediciones Vigía, RBSC recently added nine hand-made books from the Cuban publishing house. Our collection now totals just under 200 books.
The press was founded in 1985 in Matanzas, a city just east of Havana, in response to a repressive period in the 1970s. During this time, artists who were seen as on the margins of society—gay, opposed to revolutionary values, outside the mainstream—were ignored or punished. A small group led by Rolando Estévez, a theater designer, and Alfredo Zaldívar, a writer, undertook a project to open a press to publish these types of works.
The nine new acquisitions are fine examples of Ediciones Vigía’s hallmarks. They are hand made from readily available, inexpensive materials. All nine are shown above, with detail views of Canción de redención below.
Front cover of Canción de redención by Bob Marley (lyricist) and Marialva Ríos (book designer, illustrator), closed.Inner front cover with cover flap folded down.Inside of front cover flap.Inside with left flap open and right flap closed.Inside center with right hand flap opened.Back cover.
Maintain that summer travel state of mind with a visit to our August Spotlight Exhibit, “Photograph Albums of Travel to Cuba, ca. 1900.” The recently acquired collection features two albums, the Liebee Family Cuba Photo Album and the Gómez Souvenir Album. The two albums illustrate the manner in which late nineteenth-century travelers memorialized their journeys through photography.
The exhibit is open to the public 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday, through September 30, 2015.
Among Sánchez Santamaría’s collections of linocut prints is a small volume called 
