Rare Book Collection Recent Acquisitions Evening

On April 9, the UNC Rare Book Collection (RBC) will host a display of additions to the collection from the past two years.

The 5:30 p.m. event in the Wilson Special Collections Library’s Grand Reading Room is free and open to the public.

“These materials demonstrate the continued growth of UNC’s Rare Book Collection and the many ways it supports intellectual inquiry at the University,” said Claudia Funke, Curator of the Rare Book Collection. “It’s an exciting way for the community to find out what’s new at RBC.”

Selected Items from the Exhibit

Material will range in date from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Among the items on display will be:

• The first book by the first feminist of the New World, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Inundación castálida de la única poetisa, musa dezima (1689);
• Galileo Galilei’s last book, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno à due nuove scienze (1638), a gift of UNC Professor Lawrence Slifkin and Miriam Slifkin;
• One of the early and extremely rare bookseller’s catalogues issued by the great scholar-printer Robert Estienne (1546), an important addition to the RBC’s collection of over 500 Estienne imprints;
• William Wordsworth letters, Romantic literature, and Lake District guides from the collection of UNC professor Mark L. Reed III;
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (‘41) sketchbook with original drawings and the first and early versions of his poem “The Canticle of Jack Kerouac” (1987);
• Classic modern fine-press books including Robinson Jeffers’s Granite & Cypress (1975) from the collection of James R. Patton (’48) and Mary M. Patton;
• James Malcolm Rymer’s The String of Pearls, or, The Barber of Fleet Street (1850), the expanded edition of the best-selling serial that created the enduring Sweeney Todd legend, known in only one other copy.

Visitors to the event will also have a chance to view the exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room, starting at 5 p.m. The exhibition examines the human desire to assemble and organize the world’s information.

Learn More

The event is sponsored by the Rare Book Collection and Friends of the Library. For information about the Rare Book Collection, contact Claudia Funke at cfunke@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-1143.

Related Links

• Rare Book Collection
• The Encyclopedic Impulse exhibition information

The human desire to assemble and organize the world’s information is the inspiration for The Encyclopedic Impulse, an exhibition at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

The exhibition marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Denis Diderot, editor and principal author of the great eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, which sought to bring together and disseminate the world’s knowledge. Visitors to the exhibition can see multiple volumes of the Encyclopédie from the Rare Book Collection.

Other materials will explore the process of defining and compiling knowledge and the literal translation of “encyclopedia” from the Greek as a “circle of learning.” Publications on view will include an early printed edition of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, the ancient text often identified as the first encyclopedic work; writings on knowledge by scientist, philosopher, and statesman Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare; Athanasius Kircher’s Turris Babel (1679); and Pierre Bayle’s Projet et fragmens d’un dictionaire critique (1692), a forerunner of the Encyclopédie.

The exhibition will also probe how encyclopedias relate to other reference works, such as Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, and to one another. The famous 11^th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica will be on view, as well as encyclopedias from Germany, China, and Spain.

Twentieth-century works including H. G. Wells’s The Idea of a World Encyclopedia (1936); Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel (1943); and Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus (1981) will reflect on the concept of the encyclopedia.

For hours and exhibition information, contact the Wilson Special Collections Library, (919) 962-3765 or wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Related Links

• Rare Book Collection
• Mythic Quest for the Universal Library is Topic of Feb. 27 Lecture

From Alexandria to Google: The Mythic Quest for Universal Libraries
Talk by Prof. Ken Hillis
Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
5 p.m. Exhibition opening | Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room
5:30 p.m. Program | Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

“From Alexandria to Google: The Mythic Quest for Universal Libraries” will be the title of a talk by UNC professor Ken Hillis on Feb. 27 at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

Hillis will trace Google’s quest to organize the world’s information through a lineage of mathematicians and metaphysicians, from the Atomists of ancient Greece to medieval philosopher Ramón Llull, from science fiction writer H.G. Wells to the contemporary wizards of search. Hillis will uncover the magical thinking that undergirds online search and draw on the lessons of the library at Alexandria and the Tower of Babel to offer a cautionary tale in the mythic quest for universal libraries.

The talk celebrates the opening of the exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room. The exhibition marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Denis Diderot, editor and principal author of the great eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, which sought to bring together and disseminate the world’s knowledge.

Hillis is professor of media and technology studies in the department of communication studies. He is co-author of the recent book Google and the Culture of Search (Routledge, 2012). His other books include Online a Lot of the Time (Duke University Press, 2009) and Everyday eBay (Routledge, 2006).

Related Links

• The Encyclopedic Impulse

Ancient and Living Maya in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Archaeological Discovery, Literary Voice and Political Struggle
On exhibit through Jan. 27, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Alia Wegner (919) 962-1143

The remarkable history of the Maya and their culture, as told through rare books, pamphlets, maps, and recent publications, is the topic of an exhibit now on view in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Ancient and Living Maya in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Archaeological Discovery, Literary Voice and Political Struggle will run through Jan. 27, 2013.

The exhibit features materials from the George E. and Melinda Y. Stuart Collection in Wilson Library’s Rare Book Collection. Stuart (UNC Ph.D. ’75), the author of numerous books and articles on the Maya, worked for National Geographic for nearly forty years.

The Maya peoples of Southern Mexico and Central America developed the most enduring writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas. After the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, Maya hieroglyphic writing—which originated around 500 B.C.—came to an end. Fearful of texts that they could not read, Spanish conquerors and missionaries destroyed countless books.

The free public exhibit relates the struggle of the Maya people for autonomy and equity in the volatile era of new nation-states, alongside the story of European peoples’ discovery of Maya sites and Mayan languages and literary traditions.

Materials on display document the activities of archaeologists and linguists, as well as the dramatic political history of the region, including the Caste War of Yucatán, one of the longest-running insurgencies of the nineteenth century. Recent novels and poetry by Maya writers give witness to the current Maya cultural renaissance, which has origins in the 1970s and 1980s.

Photographs of Maya peoples and sites from the 1950s on, as well as Maya garments and textiles from the same period from the personal collection of George Stuart, are featured in a concurrent exhibit at the FedEx Global Education Center, on view through Dec. 14.

Viewings of the exhibits will be part of 13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012, a free public symposium at UNC on Oct. 25 and 26. The symposium includes the voices of Maya people in lectures, open classes, and readings of Maya poetry.

Visit the symposium website for complete schedule information.

Related Links

• 13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012 (symposium website)
• Symposium, exhibits examine new Maya perspectives in 2012 (UNC News release)

Visit the symposium website

The end of the Maya Long Count calendar cycle on Dec. 21, 2012, is the inspiration for a free public symposium at UNC on Oct. 25 and 26. “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012” will place the 2012 date within a larger historical and cultural context that includes the voices of Maya people.

The events for the symposium are free and open to the public. The website maya2012.unc.edu contains complete schedule information. Registration is recommended but not required.

The Maya word bak’tun signifies a calendar cycle of 400 years of 360 days. Ancient inscriptions indicate that once the 13th bak’tun is reached, the cycle starts over.

Exhibits

The symposium will include two exhibits. Ancient and Living Maya in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries: Archaeological Discovery, Literary Voice, and Political Struggle will open Oct. 8 in the Wilson Special Collections Library and will be on view in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room through Jan. 27, 2013. The exhibit features Maya materials from the Rare Book Collection’s George E. and Melinda Y. Stuart Collection.

Ancient and Living Maya Through the Photographic Lens will be on view from Sept. 18 through Dec. 14 in the FedEx Global Education Center. The exhibit will feature twenty large images of Maya people and sites, as well as a display of Maya garments and textiles. National Geographic staff members took the photographs while on assignment from the 1950s onward.

Symposium keynote and highlights

• A keynote address by Victor Montejo, a Maya Pop’ti novelist, poet, and scholar from Guatemala. Montejo, Professor Emeritus of Native American Studies at UC Davis, will open the symposium Oct. 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the Wilson Special Collections Library. Beginning at 5 p.m., attendees can view the exhibit Ancient and Living Maya in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries: Archaeological Discovery, Literary Voice, and Political Struggle.
• A curator’s talk by former National Geographic archaeologist George E. Stuart, Ph.D. ’75, at the FedEx Global Education Center at 6 p.m. on Oct. 26.
• Contemporary Maya poetry readings on Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the FedEx Global Education Center. Poets Briceida Cuevas Cob (Maya Yucatec) of Mexico and Rosa Chávez (Maya K’iche’-Kaqchikel) of Guatemala will read in Spanish and their native Maya languages. Translation will be provided.

Lectures and learning

Lectures and open classes by UNC professors and Maya scholars will take place on Oct. 26.

• 11 a.m, Wilson Library - Emilio del Valle Escalante (Romance Languages and Literatures) will lead an open class on how contemporary Maya conceive the end of the Maya Long Count calendar and represent it in current literature.
• 12 p.m, UNC School of Law (Van Hecke-Wettach Hall) – Maya activist Cristina Coc will discuss indigenous land rights in Belize.
• 2 p.m., Wilson Library - Patricia A. McAnany (Anthropology) will lead an open class on classic Maya use of the Long Count calendar at major capitals that supported strong scribal traditions between AD 275 and 919.
• 3:30 p.m., Morehead Planetarium and Science Center – David Mora Marín (Linguistics) will give a lecture about Mayan hieroglyphic writing.

The symposium is hosted by the Douglass Hunt Lecture of Carolina Seminars, the Friends of the Library, the Institute for the Study of the Americas, the Rare Book Collection at Wilson Library, and UNC Global, with additional support from the American Indian Center, the Carolina Digital Library and Archives, the departments of Anthropology, Linguistics, Romance Languages and Literatures, Latin American and Iberian Resources at the University Library, the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, and the School of Law.

Related Links

• 13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012 (symposium website)

Download event flier (pdf)

First Amendment Day: Banned and in the Rare Book Collection
Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012
Wilson Special Collections Library
5 p.m. | Book Display, Main Lobby
5:30 p.m. | Program, Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

Members of the UNC community will read from original editions of banned and censored books in the Wilson Special Collections Library as part of UNC’s fourth annual First Amendment Day celebration on Oct. 2.

“First Amendment Day: Banned and in the Rare Book Collection” will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room of Wilson Library. A display of banned books from the Rare Book Collection will be on view at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Among the readers will be Hugh Stevens, Raleigh-based First Amendment attorney and former chair of the board of directors of the UNC Friends of the Library; University Librarian Sarah Michalak; UNC professors Emilio del Valle Escalante and Sharon James; and Kashif Powell, actor and UNC Ph.D. student in Performance Studies.

“How does a book become rare?” asked Claudia Funke, curator of rare books at UNC, and organizer of the event. “One way is for it to be banned. Great research libraries exist to collect the historical record, and their rare book collections are replete with controversial texts. The UNC Rare Book Collection is no exception.”

Readers will share excerpts from a variety of rare books, including:

• A fifteenth-century edition of the Ars Amatoria of the ancient Roman poet Ovid;
• The 1861 first printing in alphabetic K’iche’ of the Popol Vuh, a sacred Maya text that survived the Spanish Conquest’s destruction of indigenous books in only one transcription;
• Alton Trials: Of Winthrop S. Gilman, Who was Indicted . . . for the Crime of Riot . . . While Engaged in Defending a Print Press From an Attack . . . by an Armed Mob (1838);
• The short story “Dexterity,” by Russian émigré Nadezhda Teffi, whose works were banned under Stalin in the Soviet Union; and
• Walker Percy’s copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

First Amendment Day, organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, is designed to celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. The center is a collaboration between the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Law.

The reading also coincides with Banned Books Week, Sept. 30 – Oct. 6, an annual national celebration of the freedom to read.

Related Links

• First Amendment Day at UNC
• Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library
• Banned Books Week 2012

For event information, contact Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, liza_terll@unc.edu, (919) 548-1203.

August 25, 2012
The Banjo: Southern Roots, American Branches (read more)
Symposium and concert inaugurating the Southern Folklife Collection’s Instrument Series. The concert will feature Tony Trischka; Riley Baugus with Kirk Sutphin; and Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
10 a.m. – 4 p.m. – Symposium
7:30 p.m. – Concert
Concert in Memorial Hall. Free tickets required from the Memorial Hall box office: 919-843-3333.

August 29, 2012
The Carolina Parakeet and Relatives: A Look at Some Natural, Un-natural, and Cultural Histories (read more)
A talk about the exotic extinct bird, with scientists from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. In conjunction with the exhibit The Carolina Parakeet in Art: Images from the Powell Collection.
5:15 p.m. – Exhibit viewing; reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:45 p.m. – Program

Sept. 6, 2012
Preserving Your Intellectual Legacy at UNC: An Information Session for Faculty and Staff Nearing Retirement (read more)
Retiring faculty and staff members can get answers to the question “What do I do with my books and papers?” Spouses and guests are welcome.
4 p.m. – Program followed by reception

September 13, 2012
Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Maffitt, and the Coming of the Civil War (read more)
UNC professor Bland Simpson shares a grand tale of race and maritime culture in the antebellum South.
5 p.m. – Reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:30 p.m. – Program

September 14-15, 2012
“To Gain Attention to Their Various Claims”: Historic Political Campaigns in North Carolina (read more)
An examination of significant North Carolina campaigns from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Dinner will feature a moderated discussion between Republican strategist Carter Wrenn and Democratic political consultant Gary Pearce. (Conference: $10 per person. Dinner: $50 per seat.)
Visit the conference website for schedule information.

September 20, 2012
Rufus Edmisten Watergate Materials (read more)
Chancellor Holden Thorp interviews Rufus Edmisten, Deputy Chief Counsel to the Watergate Committee, honoring the donation of Edmisten’s papers to the Southern Historical Collection.
5 p.m. – Display of selected materials from the Edmisten papers and related collections; reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:30 p.m. – Program

October 2, 2012
First Amendment Day: Banned and in the Rare Book Collection (read more)
Readings from original editions of banned and rare books.
5 p.m. – Display of rare editions; reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:30 p.m. – Program

October 7, 2012
Honoring Doris Betts
A remembrance of the beloved North Carolina writer and UNC professor, sponsored with the Department of Creative Writing.
3 p.m.
Program in Alumni Hall, Hill Alumni Center

October 11, 2012
Knowledge Capital and Human Flourishing: Educating North Carolinians, 1865-1970 (read more)
Yale historian Glenda Gilmore delivers the keynote address for the second New Voyages to Carolina conference, organized by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History.
5 p.m. – Reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:30 p.m. – Program

October 25-26, 2012
13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012 (read more)
A symposium on Maya civilization in recognition of the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar. Programs and exhibits in Wilson Library, the FedEx Global Education Center, and the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.
Symposium website: http://maya2012.unc.edu/.

October 27, 2012
Gridiron Glory at Carolina (read more)
An encore presentation of archival videos, along with photographs, programs, and memorabilia.
Begins three hours before kickoff.

November 1, 2012
Photojournalist James Wallace (read more)
The James A. Hutchins Lecture, sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South. In conjunction with the exhibit Photographic Angles: News Photography in the North Carolina Collection.
5 p.m. – Exhibit viewing; reception for Friends of the Library and guests
5:30 p.m. – Program

November 13, 2012
Help Me to Find My People
Heather Williams, associate professor of history at UNC, will discuss and read from her new book about the African American search for family lost in slavery.
5:30 p.m. – Program

December 6, 2012
20^th Annual Winter Stories for Children of All Ages
Special anniversary presentation of a beloved Chapel Hill tradition.
5 p.m. – Cookies and juice
5:30 p.m. – Program

Download event flier (pdf)

Saturday, May 12, 2012
1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Free and open to the public
Information: (919) 962-0104

The Wilson Special Collections Library will take Commencement visitors to UNC’s past with an open house on Saturday, May 12, from 1 to 5 p.m.

A selection of yearbooks and other materials from Wilson Library’s historic collections will be on display.

The exhibits are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Special archival exhibits in the lobby will include:

• A photographic slide show with music, highlighting the class of 1962, in honor of the class’s 50th reunion;
• Yearbooks and other memorabilia from the classes of 1952, ’57, ’62, ’67, and ’72;
• “Treasures from Alumni,” a Rare Book Collection exhibit of early printing and significant literary editions;
• A collection of University-related materials from the Southern Historical Collection

In addition to the lobby display, visitors are also invited to view the following exhibitions in Wilson and Davis libraries:

• A Dialogue Between Old and New: Notable Buildings on the UNC Campus (North Carolina Collection Gallery, main floor)
• Nature and the Unnatural in Shakespeare’s Age (Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room, 3rd floor)
• Southern Roots, Enduring Bonds: African American Families in North Carolina (Southern Historical Collection, 4th floor)
• Knowledge Building(s): The Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Davis Library Gallery, 1st floor)

Wilson Library is located on the south side of Polk Place, opposite South Building. It is home to the North Carolina Collection and North Carolina Collection Gallery; the Rare Book Collection; the Southern Historical and Southern Folklife collections; and University Archives and Records Management Services.

The exhibits are sponsored by the Wilson Special Collections Library and Friends of the Library.

Lecture by Adrian Johns
Tuesday, Apr. 10, 2012
Wilson Special Collections Library
5:30 p.m. Program | Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

An expert in the field of the history of the book and intellectual property and piracy will give a lecture on the topic of scientific reading Tuesday, Apr. 10.

The 5:30 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public. It will take place in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Adrian Johns will also discuss the transition in the seventeenth century between natural philosophy and experimental philosophy, with a focus on the works of Newton, Hooke, Descartes, and others. He will also examine efforts to automate discovery by having computers “read”’ millions of scientific papers in order to find patterns, gaps, and laws.

Johns is the Allan Grant Maclear Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where he chairs the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science.

His books include Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age (W.W. Norton, 2010), Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (University of Chicago Press, 1998).

The Nature of the Book was the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy Award, the Association of American Publishers: PROSE Award, and the George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP).

The event is sponsored by the Rare Book Collection, the UNC English and Comparative Literature department, and the Friends of the Library. It is part of the English and Comparative Literature department’s Critical Speakers Series.

Related Links

• Adrian Johns’s faculty page

Upload exhibit flier (pdf)

UPDATE: Extended through Aug. 26, 2012

February 27 – June 8, 2012 August 26, 2012
Wilson Special Collections Library, Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room
Free and open to the public
Information: wilsonlibrary@unc.edu, (919) 962-3765

Early Shakespeare editions are on view this spring in the Wilson Special Collections Library. The Rare Book Collection will display the Second, Third, and Fourth Folio collections of the bard’s plays.

The rare showing is part of the exhibition Nature and the Unnatural in Shakespeare’s Age. The exhibition examines tensions between the natural and artificial world in the imagination during the age of Shakespeare.

The Second Folio was printed in 1632 as a response to high demand for the First Folio. It compiled thirty-six plays and a new prefatory poem by a young John Milton.

The 1663 Third Folio (reprinted in 1664), and the 1685 Fourth Folio each contain seven additional plays attributed to Shakespeare. Of the seven, only Pericles continues to be sanctioned as part of the playwright’s canon.

Along with the folios, visitors will find  sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books published in England and on the European continent. These include:

• herbals, natural histories, and travel accounts;
• works on cosmetics and agriculture; and
• magic and witchcraft treatises.

According to guest curator Jennifer Park, a UNC Ph.D. candidate in English, some of these works were read by Shakespeare, and others “promoted ideas about nature and the unnatural that clearly reflect the world he drew from.”

“Knowledge in Shakespeare’s time was a highly interdisciplinary endeavor,” said Park.  “Nature was a hotly debated concept in scientific, moral, philosophical, religious, and political discourses.”

The exhibition coincides with a UNC graduate student conference titled “Shakespeare and the Natural World” that will take place on campus March 29-31. UNC professor Mary Floyd-Wilson will give a lecture March 29 about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The free public lecture will take place in the Wilson Special Collections Library at 5:30 p.m. An exhibition viewing will begin at 5 p.m.

Related Links:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Topic of March 29 Lecture
• Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library
• “Shakespeare and the Natural World” conference website