Tag: on this day & holidays

Comic Books in Special Collections: Los Supermachos

By Emiliano Aguilar, PhD, Assistant Professor History, University of Notre Dame

The first Saturday every May is celebrated as Free Comic Book Day. Since 2002, this annual event by the North American comic book industry aims to attract new readers to independent comic bookstores and a variety of titles. Books dedicated to superheroes, adaptations of television shows, frightening tales, and more are made available for visitors to these shops. This year, we are highlighting one of the historically rich comics in Rare Books and Special Collections. 

In June 1965, Eduardo del Río García (1934-2017), known by his pseudonym, Rius, released Los supermachos (published by Editorial Meridiano), which, at its height, reportedly sold 200,000 copies a week. The comic book served as a critical commentary on Mexico’s social problems from the perspectives of the fictional town, San Garabato de las Tunas, Cuc., and the eccentric inhabitants of the rural town. Over the issues, Rius introduced his readers to a wide array of characters, such as the central character, Juan Calzónzin. Often the guide for the reader, the indigenous Calzónzin possessed a rich understanding of Mexican and global affairs.

Some of the recurring characters in Los Supermachos, left to right: Arsenio (Don Perpetuo’s bodyguard or enforcer), Don Perpetuo Del Rosal (the local strongman), Chon Prieto (Calzonzin’s friend and the town drunkard), and Juan Calzónzin.

As a medium, comics served as a democratic equalizer for the Mexican public, as no one was barred by geography, class, occupation, or education – even literacy – from reading and sharing them. Another recurring figure in Los Supermachos, the mayor and jefe politico of San Garabato, Don Perpetuo Del Rosal, served as an icon to criticize one-party rule in Mexico. The local strongman, Don Perpetuo, is associated with the ruling party, the RIP, a mockery of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which dominated Mexico’s political landscape for seventy-one years (1929-2000). Throughout the series, Don Perpetuo served as a foil for Los supermachos as he personally organizes the elections — always sure to declare the ruling RIP the repeated winner, commands his own police force, and builds a collaborative relationship with the local landowners, all while claiming unconditional support from the people.

Ultimately, Rius would leave Los supermachos due to government censorship. During his time authoring the books, the publishing team at Editorial Meridiano often revised Rius’s work to avoid fines and bureaucratic burdens, such as the denial of subsidized paper or restrictions on postal service for distribution. When Rius left, the book kept the title and much of the cast of characters, but without crediting him.

The volumes in Rare Books and Special Collections are mainly from after Rius’s departure. However, each comic offers an opportunity to understand the medium as a form of commentary and education for the Mexican people in the 1970s. 

Published August 20, 1970, issue 242, is perhaps one of the more critical forms of political commentary. Los Supermachos: LA CIA follows Calzónzin, detailing the CIA’s history after he and his friends encounter a Gringo, who had just taken a ten-dollar bill that Calzónzin hoped to claim. Responding to their shock of seeing of seeing a Gringo in their community, he said, “No lo duden que ese billete que se llevo el Gringo sirva de pilón pa controlar a medio mundo. [Make no mistake: that bill the Gringo took is being used as a lever to control half the world.]

Mixing pop cultural icons, such as the Road Runner and Mickey Mouse ears, alongside real figures, the comic gives a grassroots history of the Central Intelligence Agency from a Mexican perspective. The comic uses the visual of two figures tossing a blue ball, which symbolizes the world, back and forth over a wall, as Calzónzin remarks that “Además, de fuentes oficiales norteamericanas se ha afirmado más de una vez la existencia en Moscu de un organism official de lucha sicológica contra la CIA. O lo que es lo mismo orta CIA, nomás que sovietica.” [In fact, U.S. official sources have stated more than once that there is an official agency in Moscow engaged in psychological warfare against the CIA. Or, in other words, another CIA – only Soviet.]

The creator uses each frame as a method to unravel how the CIA asserts its power and U.S. imperialism abroad. A military figure, bookended by the U.S. flag, details how the network of influence relies on three forms of action: political, psychological, and paramilitary. Merging the visual and textual allowed Los supermachos to present their point about the slow creeping Americanization of the world, even in Mexico. In the comic, the cultural changes wrought by U.S. business and pop culture epitomize the CIA’s war for influence. The deliberate use of actual photos, such as for Allen W. Dulles, the former Deputy Director of the CIA, or a Mexican father walking his children who are dressed as U.S. superheroes became ways for the comic to complement the visual and textual critique of U.S. influence.

Los supermachos, even after Rius’ departure, remained a relatively popular comic for Mexico’s public. The book offered an opportunity to educate various aspects of society, such as a later issue on the importance of vaccinations. The comic remained a biting cultural critique of Mexico, authoritarian rule, the Americanization of the world, and much more. Through engaging simple visuals and colloquial Spanish, the indigenous Calzónzin made the complex political, economic, and social issues digestible for a broad audience.

This vibrant and engaging comic run offers not only a window into Mexico, but an entertaining view into the countercultural influence on generations of political cartoonists, such as Lalo Alcaraz, an award-winning contemporary cartoonist known for his comical takes on Latino History and issues, who credits Rius as a major influence on his career as a cartoonist.   

Easter Cards from the Cuala Press

In honor of Easter, we are sharing two images from the Cuala Press Ephemera Collection (EPH 5002). The Cuala Press was founded in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats, sister of the poet W. B. Yeats and the artist Jack B. Yeats, who illustrated many of the books and broadsides published by the press. The press was operated in Dublin by Elizabeth and her sister Lily Yeats, and later by George Yeats (William’s wife), through the mid-1940s. In addition to their brother, the Yeats sisters employed various Irish women to create illustrations, including Beatrice Glenavy (Elvery), Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, Pamela Colman Smith, Dorothy Blackham, and Mary Cottenham Yeats.

Happy Easter to you and yours from all of us in Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame.

Left: Easter, text by Susan Langstaff Mitchell, undated (EPH 5002-120)
Right: [On Easter Day], text by Temple Lane, undated (EPH 5002-122)

After being closed April 3 in observance of Good Friday, Rare Books and Special Collections will return to regular hours and is open on Monday, April 6, 2026.

Éire Óg / Young Ireland — a spotlight exhibit in Special Collections

by Matthew Knight, Irish Studies Librarian and Curator

This St. Patrick’s Day and in the March–April spotlight exhibit, Rare Books and Special Collections celebrates the youth of Ireland, who were seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the true soul of the Irish Nation. After all, if Irish independence were to be achieved, nationalists would first have to win the hearts and minds of the next generation.

In 1842, a group known as Young Ireland founded a newspaper called The Nation to advocate for a politically independent Ireland. The Nation envisioned an Irish identity undivided by race or religion; united by Irish language and culture; and forged from a romanticized version of Irish history. To achieve these ends, Young Ireland sought a legion more formidable than a thousand men clad in steel: The young intellect of the country.1

One of our prized collections is a series of draft songs composed for The Nation newspaper by one of the founders of Young Ireland, Thomas Davis (Thomas Davis Collection, MSE/IR 1001). Although Davis tragically died of scarlet fever at age thirty, many of his compositions (“A Nation Once Again,” “The West’s Asleep,” and “Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill”), intended to inspire the Irish youth of his time, are still sung today.

“The Brigade’s Battle Eve”
MSE/IR 1001
Rare Books Large DA 950.2 .Y66 1876

Although the British banned the speaking of Irish and the teaching of Ireland’s history from the national school system, associations inspired by the Young Ireland Movement began to encourage children to study the Irish language, play Gaelic sports, and perform Irish drama and music. This alternative education included journals such as Young Ireland (1875-1891) and groups like the Irish Fireside Club (founded 1887), which helped foster a new national identity among the nation’s youth.

These activities served as training grounds for future nationalists and paved the way for the formation of Connradh na Gaedhilge (The Gaelic League) in 1893. This organization continued to solicit the support of Irish youth, and published numerous books, pamphlets, and broadsides intended to ensure children remained at the forefront of the revival of Irish language and culture.

Tadgh Ó Donnchadha, An tÁilleán. Dublin, 1924.
Rare Books Large PB 1399 .O42765 A5 1924

First published by Connradh na Gaedhilge in 1902, An tÁilleán was written by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (‘Torna’) with illustrations of the ideal country life by Seoirse Ua Fágáin.

‘Torna’ dedicated the book to the youth of Ireland, saying, “Cuimhnighidh air gur i nÉirinn do rugadh sibh, gur ceart dúinn ár ndícheall do dhéanamh ar son Éireann; maireamhaint agus bás d’fhágháil i nÉirinn; agus ó’s í an Gaedhilg ár dTeanga féin, í labhairt í comhnuidhe.” [Remember that you were born in Ireland, and we must do our best for Ireland; to live and die in Ireland; and since Irish is our own language, speak it always.]

Rare Books Small M 1744 .F8 1913

Fuínn na Smól (Songs of the Thrushes) is a collection of Irish tunes drawn from manuscripts, oral tradition, and shorter printed works. An tAthair Pádruig Breathnach (1848–1930), a Catholic priest and member of the Gaelic League, collected Irish songs from his parishioners in his youth. He later published them in a series of works like this one, with each tune printed in the Gaelic typeface and set to a melody in tonic solfa.

Although dedicated to children learning Irish in school, these songbooks had much to offer adults committed to the de-anglicization program of the Gaelic League. Sales ran into the tens of thousands, and they had a lasting influence on the Irish oral tradition.2

Rare Books Small DA 954 .F53 1924

When Gaelic revivalism became more political, groups like Na Fianna Éireann (Boy Scouts of Ireland), founded in 1909, emerged to support a future military insurrection. First published in 1914, the Fianna Handbook served as the official guide and training manual for Na Fianna Éireann. The Fianna Handbook was the Irish nationalist alternative to the Baden-Powell Boy Scout handbook, with the Fianna portrayed holding rifles, in contrast to the Baden-Powell Scouts, who carried walking sticks.

The guide featured training in signaling, first aid, camping, and military drill, but also contained chapters devoted to a cultural nationalist education. Patrick Pearse contributed a chapter on the legendary Fianna; Countess Markievicz, the group’s founder and ‘Chief,’ wrote an inspiring foreword and designed the cover; Roger Casement penned an essay on chivalry; and Douglas Hyde submitted a chapter in the Irish language.

Current and former Fianna participated in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the organization later worked alongside the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21).

Eighty years after Young Ireland founded The Nation newspaper, the Irish Free State was declared, and Irish Independence followed soon after. The Gaelic revival survived largely because it recognized that nobody was too young to serve their country, and the new Irish state found many former “Firesiders” and Fianna members serving in leadership roles. These once pint-sized radicals ensured that their dream of a free, Gaelic Ireland would pass to the next generation of Irish children.

Footnotes

1 The Nation, 14 October 1842.

2 See Nicholas Carolan, ‘Fr Pádruig Breathnach and Irish Traditional Song’, Béaloideas: the journal of the Folklore Society of Ireland, vol. 87 (2019), pp. 82–99.

Previous St. Patrick’s Day blog posts:

2025: Discovering Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland
2022: The Breastplate of Saint Patrick — Thomas Kinsella and the Dolmen Press
2021: Competing with Finian’s Rainbow
2020: St. Patrick’s Day Postcards
2019: St. Patrick and the Nun of Kenmare
2018: St. Patrick’s Day in America, 1872

Women’s History Month 2026

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history by celebrating Women’s History Month.

Two Perspectives on African American Women Workers during the Great Depression

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

This March, RBSC celebrates Women’s History Month by highlighting two recent acquisitions about African American women and their place in the labor market during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both sources recognize the double bind of race and gender discrimination experienced by African American women, but their similarities end there. 

African American journalists and Communist Party members Eugene Gordon and Cyril Briggs produced The Position of Negro Women in 1935. It was published in pamphlet form by the Communist Party USA. The authors wasted no time in declaring on the third line, that “The Negro woman worker is double victimized. She suffers both from the general discrimination against women workers and from her identity as a member of a nationality singled out by the ruling class for special plundering, persecution and oppression.” (p. 2)

The authors described the precarious position African American women held in industrial jobs—largely in laundries, and food and clothing production—as well as in every other part of the labor market. They held up domestic service for special opprobrium, noting that day workers—those who didn’t live in—were the most exploited, making as little as $10 a month (for comparison, women factory workers made $14 a week). Gordon and Briggs also included professional workers in their survey, noting grimly that “The Negro professional woman worker finds it almost impossible to secure a job.” (p. 11) School teachers were the exception. Although African American teachers in the North were generally paid the same as their white peers, in southern states African American teachers earned less than half, or worse, than that of their white counterparts. 

Gordon and Briggs called for African American and white worker unity through the Communist Party, for workers to rally together to fight discrimination, unemployment, and hunger. 

Three years later, Jean Collier Brown, Public Information Assistant of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, published The Negro Woman Worker. Brown’s was the first report by the department (headed by Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a cabinet) to establish basic facts about where African American women were employed in the labor market, numbers employed, employment opportunities, hours, wages, and working conditions. Although not comprehensive, the report offers significant detail about wage discrimination and terrible working conditions of African American women workers. 

Like Gordon and Briggs, Brown began by noting that “Though women in general have been discriminated against and exploited through limitation of their opportunities for employment, through long hours, low wages, and harmful working conditions, such hardships have fallen upon Negro women with double harshness.” (p. 1) From there, the report moved systematically through the major parts of the labor market in which African American women worked: domestic and personal service, agriculture, manufacturing and mechanical industries, and white-collar workers. 

While Gordon and Briggs’ pamphlet aimed to organize workers and rally them to the Communist Party, Brown suggested a multi-pronged approach of social and labor legislation, better education and training opportunities, and trade union organization to address the critical status of African American women workers. Both reports brought much needed attention—for the first time but in quite different ways—to the crisis facing African American women workers during the Great Depression. 

Post Script:

Jean Collier Brown later left the Department of Labor and by 1943 worked as an organizer for the United Domestic Workers Union of the CIO, Baltimore branch, a union of African American domestic laborers.

Other Women’s History Month posts on the RBSC blog:

2025: The First Women’s Political Party
2024: Second-Wave Feminist Articles from an Underground Newspaper
2023: Women for Peace and Disarmament
2022: The Feminine “Math-tique”
2021: Writing to Rehabilitate in the House of Detention for Women in New York City
2020: Mary Taussig Hall and Social Reform
2017: A Woman’s Sardonic Eye

Black History Month 2026

We join with The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

“Play Ball With Jackie”: Unboxing the Jackie Robinson Doll for Black History Month

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In recognition of Black History Month, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight its recent acquisition of the Jackie Robinson Doll, a 13-inch plastic composition doll of the baseball icon manufactured by the Allied-Grand Doll Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1950.

The moveable and posable doll was sold fully accessorized with Robinson’s complete Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, miniature baseball equipment, and other accompanying commemorative items. The Jackie Robinson Doll was one of the earliest realistic African American dolls aimed at the general mainstream toy market and was a testament to the popularity and importance of Robinson, who several years earlier had famously broken major league baseball’s long-standing color line against Black players.

Despite Robinson’s widespread celebrity, the Jackie Robinson Doll was unusual on toystore shelves in 1950. Although African American designers and companies had long made dolls specifically targeted at the Black community, most mainstream American toy manufacturers at the time did not create realistic dolls depicting African Americans. As historian Rob Goldberg explains in his book Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children’s Toys in 1960s and 1970s America for most of the early twentieth century there had “been a painful history of demeaning representations and unjust exclusions of African Americans by the nearly all-white producers of mass-market toys” (page 86).

The story of the Jackie Robinson Doll began after the 1949 season when Robinson had won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Over that winter, Robinson sought opportunities for extra income—especially during the off season—to support his growing family. He partnered with entertainment lawyer Martin Stone in hopes of capitalizing on his success and popularity to supplement his baseball salary. As later explained in a 1951 New York Herald Tribune article: “One day in 1949, Jackie Robinson walked into his [Martin Stone’s] penthouse office and wondered how he could make some money during the winter—up to then he’d been selling television sets in the off-season.”

Within the next couple of years, Robinson and Stone built a successful marketing campaign that produced the Hollywood motion picture The Jackie Robinson Story, a series of six Jackie Robinson comic books (featured in a previous RBSC blog post), the Jackie Robinson Radio Show broadcast on New York’s WNBC, t-shirts, and, in total, “about thirty franchises,” according to the Herald Tribune.

The Jackie Robinson Doll, which was sold individually or as a packaged set with the first issue of the recently published Jackie Robinson comic book, was another popular branded item that received considerable public attention. The doll was one of only a handful of items mentioned by name in a March 1950 newspaper article, “Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View.”

Advertisements from 1950 Alabama Tribune (left) and 1950 Harrisburg Patriot-News (right).

Toy dealers widely advertised the doll in newspapers around the country. An ad in the Alabama Tribune, an African American newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama, informed potential customers: “Here he is! Jackie Robinson in doll form dressed in his Dodger’s uniform. Doll comes boxed with ball bat, sweatshirt, baseball game, and the life story of the great hero!” Similarly, the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News daily newspaper ran an ad for the local Bill’s department store that described Robinson as “America’s Favorite Athlete.” The store declared, “First time in Harrisburg … everybody can have a doll of America’s Athletic hero.” In May 1950, the Associated Negro Press reported that the Jackie Robinson doll was even in stock at the famous Macy’s department store in New York City.

RBSC’s example of the Jackie Robinson doll apparently includes all of the original accessories that accompanied the doll. Housed in its original 15X15 inch square cardboard box, the doll wears a Brookyln Dodgers hat and jersey, uniform pants, socks, and shoes. The set also includes a wooden bat with a facsimile of Robinson’s signature, a promotional tag shaped like a glove, a plastic ball, a copy of the Jackie Robinson comic book, and a simple spinner-based Jackie Robinson baseball game.

The Jackie Robinson Doll is open and available to researchers during regular RBSC business hours. So stop by if you would like to “Play Ball with Jackie!”

Sources Cited

Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, “New York Up Close: Martin Stone, Lawyer in Show Business,” New York Herald Tribune 30 July, 1951, p. 7.

“Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View,” New York Herald Tribune 7 March 1950, p. 23.

“Jackie Robinson Doll and Life Story!” [advertisement], Alabama Tribune 15 December 1950, p. 6.

“Bill’s” [advertisement], Harrisburg Patriot News 2 July 1950, p. 44.

“Robinson Dolls at Macys,” [Lincoln, Nebraska] The Voice 6 May 1950, p. 3.

Previous Black History Month posts:

2025: Remembering the Harrisburg Trojans, Champion African American Football Team

2023: African American Women Activists and Athletes in 1970s Feminist Magazines

2022: Searching for Claude Monroe Paris, Unheralded African American Basketball Pioneer: Documenting Black History Using Notre Dame’s Joyce Sports Research Collection

2021: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s New Literary Tradition Packaged to Sell

2017: African Americans and Populism

Happy Holidays from Special Collections!

Rare Books and Special Collections is open this week through Friday, December 19, 2025. However, the reading room will be closed on Thursday and Friday (December 18–19). Over the holiday break, the department will be closed from Monday, December 22, 2025, through Friday, January 2, 2026, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.

RBSC will reopen on Monday, January 5, while the reading room will reopen on Wednesday, January 7, 2026. It’s always best to make an appointment if you plan to visit us.

This is the last blog post for 2025.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!

by Sara Weber, Special Collections Digital Project Specialist

Page from “An American Original” by Carol Stevens (Print magazine, v. 42 no. 1, 1988), showing the use of the above illustration as an advertisement.

As a final installment of our look at the materials in the Special Collections’ Edward Gorey Collection (EPH 5004) in recognition of the centenary of Edward Gorey’s birth and the 25th anniversary of his death, we turn to some of his Christmas images.

Gorey created title pages and book covers, greeting cards, advertisements, magazine articles, and even a book he authored and illustrated himself (The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas, published in 1997). An illustration of the last three verses from the Twelve Days of Christmas was used as a holiday subscription advertisement for The New York Times—our holdings include a poster of the illustration alone, as well as an issue of Print magazine from 1988 that includes a reproduction of the ad in an article about Gorey.

1975
1979
1981

Over the years, Gorey designed various Christmas cards. Above are three of the limited run cards he created with Albondocani Press (only four hundred to four hundred and fifty copies printed). These cards were not sold at the time, but rather were “to be used as a holiday greeting by the artist and publisher.”

In 1979, with royalties from the New York Dracula production, Gorey purchased a home in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, traveling there for the summers from the one-room apartment he rented in Manhattan, close to his publishers and the New York City Ballet. In 1983, he left New York City to live there exclusively. Below are two card sets from 1989-1990 featuring illustrations by Gorey and sold to raise funds for “Cape Cod’s neediest citizens during this holiday season”.

Five More Years of RBSC Blog Posts

Since July 2015, when we first welcomed readers to the Rare Books and Special Collections blog, we have enjoyed using this forum to tell readers about recently acquired and newly described items, as well as well-known materials and hidden gems. We publish posts to help you—our readers—better know who we are and what we do, and we provide regular updates on exhibitions and events hosted by RBSC.

To mark the ten-year anniversary of our blog, we have selected a few of the 471 posts we have published so far, written by a variety of curators, librarians, and guest authors. Continue scrolling to find a sample of interesting topics from our second five years.

Recent Acquisitions

All of our Recent Acquisition posts can be browsed by clicking on the “Recent Acquisition” tag at left.

Modern European Cultures

All of our Modern European Cultures posts can be browsed by clicking on “Modern European Cultures” in the Categories menu at left.

RBSC scholars

The tag “RBSC scholars” gathers posts relating to, and sometimes by, the people who do their research within Notre Dame’s Special Collections. (A sometimes related category are posts in the Category “Instruction and Class Visits.”)

Sports Research

All of our Sports Research posts can be browsed by clicking on “Sports Research” in the Categories menu at left.

Exhibits and Events

All of our Exhibits and Events posts can be browsed by clicking on “Exhibits” or “Events” in the Categories menu at left.

Italian Literature

All of our Italian Literature posts can be browsed by clicking on “Italian Literature” in the Categories menu at left.

Holidays and Just for Fun

The tag “on this day & holidays” will bring up more such posts, or you can use the search to look for a specific holiday (e.g., Halloween or Thanksgiving).

A Farmer’s Prayer of Thanksgiving

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

In 1955 the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, an organization established to support the spiritual needs of people and parishes in rural communities in the United States, published Blessings and Prayers of Thanksgiving for the Family & Parish Observance of Thanksgiving Day. It offered parishioners prayers and a program of spiritual observance for the day.

The Conference first organized in November 1923, when a group of priests, bishops, and laity met in St. Louis, Missouri to address a need for more official church attention to rural Catholics in the United States, as well as the lack of priests and parochial schools in rural parishes. By the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Conference added concern for social and economic justice, as it promoted solutions to problems of farm tenancy. In 1940 the Conference moved its headquarters to Des Moines, Iowa. Currently, it operates from St. Paul, Minnesota. 

This mid-century pamphlet provides prayers and biblical readings that farm families could use throughout Thanksgiving day. One prayer, composed by Archbishop John Carroll in 1791, was “For Church and State,” another was “A Farmer’s Prayer of Thanksgiving.” The publication ended with a novena in honor of St. Isidore, “the patron of all farmers and rural people.”  

Blessings and Prayers of Thanksgiving is part of Hesburgh Library’s Catholic Pamphlet Collection, an assemblage of more than 5,500 publications, mostly produced in the United States. 

Happy Thanksgiving from everyone in Rare Books and Special Collections!

A Closer Look at the Gorey-est of Vampires

by Sara Weber, Special Collections Digital Project Specialist

Merriam-Webster defines a vampire as, “the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep.” The Oxford English dictionary gives the middle of the eighteenth century as their earliest evidence for the word vampire, but the concept far predates that in the folklore of various cultures. While characters of a vampiric nature occur as early as Babylonian poems recorded on cuneiform and the ancient Greek writings of Philostratus, the folklore that is most significant to the development of the Western concept of a vampire was that of the Slavic cultures of Eastern Europe. These malevolent beings were seen as gruesome and frightening, because death, disease, and degeneracy were all attributed to their actions and influence. As the vampire became a more familiar figure in Western cultures during the eighteenth century (by 1740 Alexander Pope compared himself to “one of those vampires in Germany” when he went out at night), they were initially perceived in a similar, grotesque manner. However, over time the vampire—though still a villain—came to be portrayed as charismatic and seductive.

Bram Stoker, Dracula. Eighth edition. London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1904.
(Rare Books Small PR 6037 .T617 D7 1904)

Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula was not the first vampire in English literature, Robert Southey’s 1801 poem “Thalaba the Destroyer” is generally given that title. Polidori’s short story “The Vampyre” (1819), Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (1845–1847), and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872) all preceded it as well. But Stoker’s vampire has become the template against which all modern vampires are compared. The Count is initially described as,

“…a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. …his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man.” (Dracula, Chapter 2)

He is gracious and courteous, however, and as the novel progresses, and he feeds, he becomes less corpse-like. When Mina and Johnathan see him in London, she describes him as “a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard… His face was not a good face; it was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.” (Dracula, Chapter 13)

Count Dracula has become more immortal in popular culture than he was in Stoker’s novel, the subject of numerous theatrical adaptations and cinema classics. The first play—more of a staged reading of the book, really—ocurred the same year as the book was published, as a way of securing copyright protection. In the 1920s, Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderson created their own adaptation, and in 1977 a revival of this version arrived on Broadway. This production featured the design work of Edward Gorey in its sets, costuming, posters, and playbills. He won a Tony Award for the Costume Design, and was nominated for Set Design. The play also won a Tony for Most Innovative Production of a Revival. (Frank Langella was nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, while Dennis Rosa was nominated for Best Direction of a Play.)

As the play became a popular success as well as a critical one, Gorey’s designs appeared on a variety of merchandise from t-shirts and bags to puzzles, toys, and even a miniature theatre, examples of many of which are found in Notre Dame’s Special Collections.

The Suzy Conway and Robert M. Conway Collection of Gorey Ephemera (EPH 5004) also includes articles and article illustrations, drawings, picture postcards, posters, and correspondence. There are materials relating to his work illustrating book covers for Doubleday, including a few other vampire themed or related texts.

Fronts and back of the dust jackets for Vampires : Two Centuries of Great Vampire Stories, edited by Alan Ryan (Rare Books Medium PS 648 .V35 V3 1987) and 13 Plays of Ghosts and the Supernatural, selected by Marvin Kaye (Rare Books Medium PN 6120 .G45 T45 1990).

In recognition of the centenary of Edward Gorey’s birth and the 25th anniversary of his death, RBSC’s September-October spotlight has highlighted Gorey’s engagement with the New York City Ballet in his distinctive noir style. Although the exhibit officially closes today, it will remain viewable through early next week, before the installation on November 5 of the November-December spotlight. Come visit Special Collections for a further look at some of Gorey’s distinctive work.

Happy Halloween to you and yours
from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!

Halloween 2024: An Irish Story Produces a Halloween Icon
Halloween 2023: Demon Horses and How to Tame Them
Halloween 2022: A Halloween Tale: “John Reardon and the Sister Ghosts”
Halloween 2021: A Welsh Witch in the Woods
Halloween 2020: Headless Horsemen in American and Irish Legend
Halloween 2019: A Halloween trip to Mexico
Halloween 2018: A story for Halloween: “Johnson and Emily; or, The Faithful Ghost“
Halloween 2017: A spooky story for Halloween: The Goblin Spider
Halloween 2016: Ghosts in the Stacks

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.

From our Latin American and Latino Studies Archives: Celebration and Resistance

by Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian and Curator

2025 has seen various local and community-based annual public celebrations of Latino heritage scaled-down, postponed, or cancelled altogether out of fears for the safety of participants and community members. Other public celebrations have gone on as planned, with some organizers even rearticulating their yearly “Grito de Independencia” (the September 15th commemoration of the “Cry of Independence” from Spanish colonial rule, specific to the Mexican context) as “Grito de Resistencia” (“Cry of Resistance”). Both paths, however, are guided by a spirit of solidarity, and informed by a history of perseverance, that predate—and are poised to persist beyond—any formal federal recognition of the diverse cultures, accomplishments, and contributions of Latinos in the United States.

Inspired by that same spirit and history, we present three examples, preserved in Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections, of historical moments when Latino communities organized celebrations of resistance—both public and private, and throughout the calendar year—in direct response to histories and realities of persecution, oppression, exclusion, and erasure.  

1969: “La Fiesta de los Barrios”

“The Fiesta De Los Barrios is the Fiesta of all of our people. For the first time the heritage of our cultural past and the richness of our cultural present will be expressed through the creative talent and skill of our barrio artists, writers and performers. […] It is this pride in ourselves and confidence in our future that has made this magazine and indeed the entire Fiesta possible.”

The name “La Fiesta de los Barrios” carries multiple references: it was a community celebration, a literary journal, and an aspiration for the future. The actual “fiesta” took place in early May, 1969, at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the LA Walkouts: a watershed movement through which Mexican American students protested systemic racism, abuses, and neglect on their campuses, and demanded inclusive and unbiased curricula. (For an introduction to the Walkouts, we suggest you watch this Retro Report hosted by PBS, or this excerpt from PBS’s Latino Americans.)

The journal by the same name, or Fiesta Magazine (MSH/LAT 0099-61), memorialized select verse, prose, and drawings created by community members and event participants, representing a diversity of voices and experiences. And finally, it was the hope, as articulated by photographer Pedro Arias in one of the journal’s opening essays, that all peoples of Mexican descent living in the United States could overcome generational and cultural divides to work together toward common goals: “Y entonces será un día de fiesta, será una FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, pero una Fiesta de Los Barrios permanente […]” (And then it will be a day of celebration, it will be a FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, but a permanent Fiesta de Los Barrios […]) (7).    

1984: “A benefit for Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí”  

“Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí is a solidarity committee of Salvadoran refugees living in the U.S. Our goals are to inform people about the situation in El Salvador and Central America, to promote friendship with our people, and to discourage U.S. intervention in our country.”  

In December 1984, the Chicago-based, refugee-led organization called Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí hosted a benefit dinner and invited allies and supporters to “share this season of peace with the people of El Salvador.” El Salvador itself, rather than celebrating a season of peace, was deep in a brutal civil war marked by widespread human rights abuses: far from a conflict confined to fighting between armed factions, the government’s military and paramilitary death squads—trained and funded by the United States government—broadly targeted civilian non-combatants. Meanwhile, only a minuscule portion of refugees fleeing El Salvador were granted asylum in the United States. This combination of domestic U.S. policies, enabled by controversial Cold War rhetoric, sparked passionate peace, solidarity, and anti-intervention movements across the country. A snapshot of those efforts, and the array of allies that were involved in them, are captured in this small poster (MSH/LAT 0120 U.S./Central America Cold War Ephemera Collection).

(If this historical moment and its relationship to “sanctuary” activism is unfamiliar to you, an article published earlier this year in The Conversation is a good place to start reading.)

2001: “Encuentro del Canto Popular”

“A Tribute to 20 Years of Culture and Resistance”

San Francisco’s first annual “Encuentro del Canto Popular” (“Gathering of Popular Song”) was organized by volunteers from the community newspaper El Tecolote in 1982. The event was inspired by the life and legacy of Víctor Jara, a Chilean educator, activist, and singer-songwriter who was one of the founding figures of Chile’s—and, ultimately, Latin America’s—nueva canción (new song). This folkloric genre was imbued with such deep social commitment that it became an international movement (the Smithsonian offers an introduction to la nueva canción in their Folkways series). Jara was kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and executed by Chile’s military just after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende, and which began the 17-year military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Acción Latina, a community organization based in San Francisco’s Mission District that grew out of El Tecolote, took part in U.S.-based protests against Pinochet’s regime (as can be seen in this post from the Bancroft Library, which now preserves a substantial Acción Latina archive), as well as later solidarity movements. The poster featured here was created for the Encuentro’s 20th year, celebrated in 2001 under the stewardship of Acción Latina. Its lineup of musicians from Nicaragua for this “tribute to 20 years of culture and resistance” was a nod to the protest and dissent expressed in both Nicaragua and the United States following the CIA-led formation in 1981 of the Contras (an umbrella organization of anti-Sandinista combatants), a covert project that ultimately culminated in the Iran-Contra Scandal. The musician wearing the symbol of the United Farm Workers on her shirt speaks to solidarity within and between Latino communities.

Previous Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Posts: