Browse Exhibits · Duke University Library Exhibits

Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

INCREDIBLE INSECTS: A Celebration of Insect Biology

INCREDIBLE INSECTS

A Celebration of Insect Biology

June 13, 2017 – October 15, 2017
The Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC

Blomquist: The Professor, the Garden, and the Legacy

Blomquist anniversary exhibit Chappell Family Gallery 2018

Tear-gas emanating around the Allen Building .jpg

Black Students Matter: Taking Over Allen in '69

An online exhibit examining the Allen Building Takeover of 1969 through archival materials.

Allen Building Takeover

The Working Mom

Over the past several decades, women have entered the workforce in fields that were once off limits to them, within everything from business to medicine to culinary arts. With this influx of women has come new discourse of “The Working Mom”, a wonder woman who is successful both at work and at home. There are blogs, books, and almost the entirety of Pinterest dedicated to tips and tricks on how to juggle motherhood and work. Contemporary mothers have added their own career dreams to their existing societal expectations as a wife and mother. However, mothers have not been able to simply waltz into the workplace. Their entry into positions of prestige have been prefaced by countless of generations of women working, oftentimes out of necessity. This exhibit aims to show the journey of laboring mothers leading up to the contemporary; how mothers have had to fight for everything from bodily autonomy to sufficient maternity leave to the ability to control whether they want to be mothers or not. For all the organizing, protesting, and striking, mothers are still heavily discriminated against in the workplace, and the relationship between parenting and career remain a complex and intricate dynamic for women to handle. However, as women have become more and more aware of their capabilities, passed down from countless generations prior, they have carved a space for themselves where they want to belong. Hopefully, they will continue to do so.

-Gia Cummings

Duke University, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2021

The World's Oldest Profession: Labor Organizing in Prostitution

Since the second half of the 20^th century, the topic of the sex industry has never ceased to profoundly divide the feminist left. Prostitution, often termed the world’s oldest profession, has a nuanced place in both the feminist framework and that of women and labor.¹ The topic is ripe with tensions: tensions between a woman’s autonomy and her gender-based subordination, between the embrace of her own sexuality and the commodification of the female body. Some view it as empowerment that defies outdated Victorian morality, while others see it as enslavement that disproportionately affects the lower class. I was intrigued by the unique position that prostitution occupies in feminist labor history: Its very categorization as work is ambiguous, and its illegal nature adds a further layer of complication. Foucauldian biopower and state surveillance come into play with the monitoring of bodies and day-to-day private life. Did prostitutes have unions? How did they organize? I touch upon discourses in the suffrage era and in Chicago in the early 20^th century, before embarking on a journey into COYOTE, the first prostitutes’ rights group in the nation founded in 1973, to discover their goals, missions, organizing and advocacy activities and their vision of the profession.

-Elaine Zhong

Duke University, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2019

1. The vocabulary "prostitution" is used in this exhibit with the consideration that "sex work" is a more modern term and encompasses a wider range of professions.

Women and Labor Movements

"Women and Labor Movements" is an exhibit created by undergraduate students who participated in Duke's Story+ program in collaboration with the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture within the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. This project highlights the wealth of materials related to women, labor, and labor organizing within the Bingham Center and the Rubenstein Library. The acquisition of the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection in 2015 enhanced the historical context of these collections with a wide range of publications about women in labor movements as well as materials documenting women as workers over time, including a collection of letters and publications by labor activist Emma Goldman and her circle. The Baskin Collection, made up of more than 17,000 items, catalogs the enduring presence of women at work across five centuries. Central themes include early modern printed materials by or about women, suffrage and anti-slavery materials, history of medicine, women artists and makers, and women's literature. This combination of significant material from the Baskin Collection with long-held collections of the Bingham Center and other labor holdings of the Rubenstein Library offers a unique opportunity for scholars to make new connections among the histories and ongoing stories of women’s work in labor movements within and beyond the U.S.

This website offers an overview of Rubenstein Library materials connected to women and labor organizing. It showcases important collections including the records of the International Ladies Garment Workers Unions, the papers of Durham activist Theresa El-Amin, the Southeast Women's Employment Coalition Records, and the Lowell Offering, a newspaper published by and for employees of the Lowell, MA textile mills.

Students in the "Women and Labor Movements" project studied the intersection of feminism and labor organizing today as they examined expressions of these themes across archival collections. Each student explored a theme in depth and built an online exhibit showcasing how it is represented in Rubenstein Library collections: The World's Oldest Profession: Labor Organizing in Prostitution and The Working Mom.

Banner photos: Southeast Women's Employment Coalition Records, Box 4, Folder "Women in the Southern Economy: Who are We?" 1982-1984

CAPTURING THE MOMENT: Centuries of the Passover Haggadah

February 23, 2017 – June 11, 2017
On display in The Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

haggadot, jewish studies, passover

I Sing the Body Electric: Walt Whitman and the Body

Biddle Rare Book Room

Duke University Libraries

Durham, NC

July 26-October 28, 2017

Reynolds Price: A Life in Arts & Letters

Love Thy Neighbor: Quandaries of the Edgemont Living-Learning Experiment

Good Neighbor, or Liberal Paternalism?

In the mid-1960s Duke University sent a group of White undergraduates into one of Durham’s “most blighted” areas. The Edgemont community was about 40% White, 60% Black, and entirely affected by poverty. It is here that some “children of the 60s”-type Duke students made their homes during the academic year. Driven by progressive personal politics, they answered the Duke Religious Council’s call to be a "good neighbor."

It can be shocking to read about the Edgemont Living-Learning Experiment (you mean Duke sent a bunch of bourgeois White kids to live with poor people… as an experiment?!) — until other Duke initiatives such as DukeEngage and DukeImmerse come to mind.

Upon first encountering the Living-Learning Experiment, I thought it to be an even more crass version of today's service-learning initiatives. I thought it was racially unbalanced, paternalistic, and frankly, audacious; even the terminology ("experiment") was indicative of White liberal perception of poor people as a project to take on for the sake of abstract principle.

And if not this, then what?

But even when comparing the Experiment to today's programs like DukeEngage and DukeImmerse, I am endeared to it. Unlike the programs above, the Experiment did not use exorbitant funding to send students to faraway locations. DukeEngage is service-oriented, but it can also function as an all expense paid vacation. The program advertises that students will be living as the local people do. But from what I've heard, local people can sometimes mean the bourgeoisie of the area. Similarly, DukeImmerse's most current program sends students to work with refugees in Jordan. Former participants have criticized the program's built-in lavish dinners (but only for the students) while refugees struggled with bare necessities.

The Edgemont Living-Learning Experiment was humble — students lived in actual houses within the neighborhood. Student entertainment was not in the budget; that's right, no day-trips to tourist locations!

And then there is the mere premise of the program: Living-Learning. Not service-learning. While service was a component of the experiment, but core goal was to integrate students into a community that they would never otherwise engage with.

While this doesn't actually alleviate poverty or solve any systematic issues, we have to examine it for what it was. It was a local, community-based effort to bring town and gown together. The Experiment did not aim to fix the world, but only to foster personal relationships that would never otherwise form. It endeavored to cultivate empathy and understanding that students could not find in the classroom while discussing political theory.

But regardless,

As you read about the Experiment, keep in mind the nuances I've articulated above, but remain critical. What is the role of an institution like Duke in local affairs? Especially with a surrounding population that's so different in race and socioeconomics? What is within Duke's power, and what is out of its hands?

divinity school, duke activism, edgemont community center, edgemont living-learning experiment, prophetic concerns, service-learning, town gown relations

"Black is Beautiful"

Closing the Gap: Professionals of Color in Advertising

Marketing to Minorities: Expansion and Development (1950s-1990s)

This is a featured digital exhibit for the Race and Ethnicity in Advertising website. Using materials from the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, this exhibit aims to educate and inform people about the evolution of marketing research targeted toward people of color in the United States.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't: A brief history of Duke international students

Race and Ethnicity in Advertising

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History is part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Established in 1992, the Hartman Center holds an extensive collection of print and television advertisements, market research, industry reports, multimedia materials, and more, and facilitates the research of scholars and students interested in a diverse array of topics related to advertising and media.

This project seeks to showcase materials related to race and ethnicity in advertising in America. Focusing particularly on underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, this website serves as a research resource that highlights relevant materials through item and collection descriptions, images, and featured exhibits. Researchers interested in studying race and ethnicity in advertising can learn about and locate specific documents and collections by browsing this website. You can also find out how to search for related materials through our “Research Tips” page.

[THIS IS NOT THE FIRST PAGE DISPLAYED ON THE WEBSITE. i.e. THIS TEXT DOESN'T GET SEEN BY THE PUBLIC!]

Browse Exhibits (105 total)