Events – Page 5 – RBSC at ND

Welcome Back

RBSC looks forward to an event-filled Spring ’20! As we welcome students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back from the holiday break, we want to let you know about a few things to watch for.

Spring ’20 exhibit: Paws, Hooves, Fins & Feathers: Animals in Print, 1500-1800

This exhibit features mammals, sea creatures, and birds from our early modern rare book collection and is enhanced by images from our botanical collection as well as plant and animal specimens on loan to us from Notre Dame’s Museum of Biodiversity. We would like to extend our appreciation to Barbara Hellenthal (Curator) and Ronald Hellenthal (Director) for their help to make this possible.

Spotlight exhibit featuring works by and related to John Ruskin

This exhibit will open in February in conjunction with the Ruskin Conference at Notre Dame John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene, February 7-8, 2020. Guest curated by Professors Robert Goulding (History and Philosophy of Science) and Sara Maurer (English).

Monthly rotating spotlight exhibits

Drop in every month to see what new surprise awaits you in our monthly feature.

Special Collections’ Classes

Throughout the semester, curators will teach sessions related to our holdings to undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College as well as from other local schools ranging from preschoolers to adults. If you’re interested in us doing instruction for your class or group, please contact Special Collections.

Italian Studies Research Seminar Series

The Spring ’20 series kicks off on Thursday, January 30 at 5:00pm. Join us for the first of four talks this semester.

Recent Acquisitions

We acquire new material throughout the year. Watch for announcements about recent acquisitions. RBSC has already received new materials for our Irish, Latin American, Medieval manuscripts, Eastern European, American, and European collections. We are awaiting the first installment of a new artist book, Birds of Acid by Parisian artist Didier Mutel some time this month.

Upcoming Events: January and early February

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

Thursday, January 30 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “The Artist and the Police: Decameron 8.3″ by Justin Steinberg (Chicago).

Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

The spring exhibit, Paws, Hooves, Fins & Feathers: Animals in Print, 1500-1800, curated by Erika Hosselkuss and Julie Tanaka, will open in January and run through the summer.

The current spotlight exhibit is: Irish Art and Literature from Graphic Studio Dublin (December 2019 – January 2020). The semester spotlight exhibit, featuring materials relating to the Ruskin Conference being held at Notre Dame in February, will be installed prior to the conference.

If you would like to bring a class or other group to Special Collections, schedule a tour of any of our exhibits, or schedule another event, please email rarebook @ nd.edu or call 574-631-0290.

Upcoming Events: December and early January

There are no events scheduled to be hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections in December 2019 or early January 2020.

Rare Books and Special Collections will remain open for our regular hours during Reading Days and Exams (Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm). We welcome those looking for a quiet place to study.

The fall exhibit Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance is open for just under three more weeks, closing December 19.

The current spotlight exhibits are Touchdowns & Technology: The Evolution of the Media and Notre Dame Football (September – December 2019), a display of selected materials from the University Archives, and Irish Art and Literature from Graphic Studio Dublin (December 2019 – January 2020) in conjunction with the Snite Museum’s exhibit “Looking at the Stars”: Irish Art at the University of Notre Dame.

RBSC will be closed during Notre Dame’s Christmas & New Year’s Break (December 21, 2019 – January 1, 2020) and will resume regular hours (Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm) on Thursday, January 2, 2020.

Finnegans Wake and Other Books: James Joyce in the Special Collections

by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian

Visiting scholar Enrico Terrinoni will contribute to a round table discussion here in our reading room. On this occasion, he will present the Library with a valuable addition to our James Joyce collection, the six-volume Italian translation of Finnegans Wake, which he, along with Fabio Pedone, completed and which was published on May 4 this year.

The event, ‘Finnegans Wake: On Infinite Translation’, will be held at 4:30 on Monday, November 18, and is sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Center for Italian Studies. It is open to the public. Beginning at 3:30, we plan to host a ‘pop-up display’ of books from our Joyce collection, so those who come early may enjoy seeing rare and interesting items from our special collections.

A decade ago, a professor enquired about the sixty-three volume James Joyce Archive, a major publication containing facsimiles of manuscripts by Joyce, edited and annotated by Joyce scholars. As this was published before the establishment of Irish studies at Notre Dame, the Hesburgh is not one of the libraries that had purchased the expensive collection in 1978, and it was next to impossible to find a set on the market at this stage.

Having followed a number of online bookseller descriptions advertising expensive publications described as the James Joyce Archive, only to find that the publisher’s prospectus alone was the usual item for sale (and highly priced), eventually a phone call to Ohio resulted in a conversation with bookseller Daniel Wenzel. Not only did Mr. Wenzel have a large number of these volumes for sale, he had been collecting books related to Joyce and particularly to Finnegans Wake for many years, and was ready to part with his collection. So a purchase was made, greatly enriching the Hesburgh Library’s collection of Joyce, with critical works, editions of Joyce, translations, and adaptations.

Translations acquired at that time include Finnegans Wake in Japanese, Korean and German, and a Czech translation of Anna Livia Plurabella. There are also creative works based on Joyce’s books, including musical arrangements, drawings, and fine press productions.

1922 first edition of Ulysses with original slipcase (Special Collections Vault PR 6019 .O9 U4 1922).

The collection acquired from Daniel Wenzel complemented the Joyce collection already in existence. Highlights of this collection are the first edition of Ulysses, the limited edition of Joyce’s Mangan, and a Limited Editions Club printing of Ulysses with illustrations by Henri Matisse. This book was a gift of Donald and Marilyn Keough at the time the Keough Institute (now the Keough-Naughton Institute) was founded, and it currently features in the Snite Museum’s Irish art exhibition, Looking at the Stars: Irish Art at the University of Notre Dame.

The Italian translation will be a very welcome addition to this collection, and we expect this collection to add to the enjoyment and inspiration of many scholars in the coming years.

Upcoming Events: November and early December

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

Thursday, November 7 at 5:00pm | “Professor Ege. With the Knife. In the Library. Solving the Murder of 200 Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Twentieth-Century America” by Scott Gwara (University of South Carolina).

This lecture is co-sponsored by Rare Books & Special Collections and the Medieval Institute.

Monday, November 18 at 4:30pm | Finnegans Wake: On Infinite Translation’. The event will include a roundtable on the issues of translatability and reading as a modality of “infinite translation,” featuring Enrico Terrinoni (Professor at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia and Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies).

This event is sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Center for Italian Studies.

Thursday, November 21 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar – ” ‘In arts it is repose to life: è filo teso per siti strani.’ The Role of Anglophone Culture in Primo Levi and His Times” by Valentina Geri (Ph.D. Candidate, Notre Dame).

The Italian Research Seminar is sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.

The fall exhibit Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance is now open and will run through the end of the semester.

The current spotlight exhibits are Touchdowns & Technology: The Evolution of the Media and Notre Dame Football (September – December 2019) and Knute Rockne All American (October – November 2019). Both spotlight exhibits feature materials from the University Archives.

RBSC will be closed during Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break
(November 28 – December 1) and will resume regular hours (Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm) on Monday, December 2, 2019.

Announcing: The Florence & Richard C. McBrien and Richard C. McBrien, Jr. Special Collections Lecture Series

Rare Books & Special Collections pleased to announce a new lecture series, The Florence & Richard C. McBrien and Richard C. McBrien, Jr. Special Collections Lecture Series, beginning this fall. All events are open to the public and admission is free.

Please join us for our inaugural lecture of the series on Thursday, November 7 at 5:00pm in Special Collections, featuring Scott Gwara, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina. Gwara will deliver a lecture entitled “Professor Ege. With the Knife. In the Library. Solving the Murder of 200 Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Twentieth-Century America”.

This lecture is co-sponsored with the Medieval Institute.

Scott Gwara is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, where he is completing his 25th year of service. At South Carolina, Scott regularly teaches graduate Old English and Beowulf, and undergraduate courses as diverse as King Arthur, Shakespeare, the 21st-Century British bestseller, American Apocalyptic fiction, and medieval manuscripts. He is the author of six books and 50 refereed articles. He is perhaps best known for Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, which he calls a “bio-bibliography” on the Cleveland rare book dealer who established the North American market for framed pages of early manuscripts.

Professor Gwara is currently completing a history of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in North America from the beginnings to ca. 1875. Over the past decade he has established a teaching collection of early manuscripts at his university, and his efforts were recognized in October by a “Fresh Voices in the Humanities” award from the Humanities Council of South Carolina. As part of his effort to publicize the South Carolina collection, and manuscript culture more broadly, he has been filming a series of 20 podcasts for release in 2020.

Upcoming Events: October and early November

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

Thursday, October 3 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar – “Reading the Medieval Mediterranean: Navigation, Maps, and Literary Geographies. Questions, Approaches, and Methods” by Roberta Morosini (Wake Forest).

The Italian Research Seminar is sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.

This lecture is co-sponsored by Rare Books & Special Collections and the Medieval Institute.

The fall exhibit Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance is now open and will run through the end of the semester.

RBSC is open regular hours (Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm)
during Notre Dame’s Fall Break (October 19 – 27)

Upcoming Events: September and early October

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

Thursday, September 5 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar – “‘Gli occhi della fantasia.’ Mental Images and Poetic Imagery in Leopardi” by Sabrina Ferri (Notre Dame).

Thursday, September 19 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar – “Parabola in Boccaccio (I.1; X.10)” by Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja (Harvard).

The Italian Research Seminar is sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.

The fall exhibit Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance is now open and will run through the end of the semester.

The current spotlight exhibits are Libros de Lectura: Literacy and Education after the Mexican Revolution / Alfabetismo y Educación después de la Revolución Mexicana (June – August 2019) and Art in a 19th-Century Household in Ireland: The Edgeworth Family Album (August – September 2019).

RBSC is closed Monday, September 2nd,
for Labor Day.

Upcoming Events: August and early September

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

Thursday, September 5 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar – “‘Gli occhi della fantasia.’ Mental Images and Poetic Imagery in Leopardi” by Sabrina Ferri (Notre Dame).

Sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.

The exhibit Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance will open mid-August and run through the fall semester.

RBSC will be closed Monday, September 2nd,
for Labor Day.

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 As Printers Printed Long Ago: The Saint Dominic’s Press, 1916-1936 will run through the summer and close in late July.

The current spotlight exhibits are The Work of Our Hands: A Multi-Venue Exhibition of Liturgical Vestments (March – May 2019) and Blasphemous Fun: Late Medieval and Early Modern Games of Chance and Fortune (May 2019).

Category: Events