August 29, 2013 was a fun, if slightly overwhelming, day of work on the exhibit “Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens.” The curatorial team sat in MARBL for hours going through hundreds of Heaney’s photos as we tried to whittle down our selections to a few dozen. Some of the decisions were easy—several of Read More …
In 1990, on the occasion of playwright Rebecca Ranson‘s forty-seventh birthday, the writer and poet delivered a public performance in Atlanta while in character as her alter ego, Brownie Broadway. The dialogue, performed with call-and-response audience participation, recounted the most important experiences in the playwright’s life, including her pregnancy at age seventeen, her first marriage Read More …
Emory’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) recently acquired six issues of The T-Jacket Journal, the official newsletter of the Sing with the Sinatras Club of Atlanta. This group of “bobby soxers,” or fans of swing music, shared a love of Frank Sinatra, to whom they comically vowed their devotion: “I pledge allegiance to Read More …
Playwrights Carlton and Barbara Molette compiled newspaper articles on performances of “Sizwe Bansi is Dead,” a play penned by the noted white South African dramatist Athol Fugard. The title character in this particular play lives in apartheid-era South Africa, where he is prohibited from traveling or holding a job without appropriate marks (which he lacks) Read More …
Valentine’s Day has a reputation for being shallow. It is ridiculed for its materiality (the flowers! the expensive gifts! the obligatory chocolate boxes and sentimental notes!) and vilified as a poorly-concealed corporate moneygrubbing scam. Beyond our suspicion of Hallmark, though, is a more instinctual conviction about the holiday dedicated to love – we feel it Read More …
William G. Porter was the head of consignment shipping company, William G. Porter and Company, out of Apalachicola, Florida, and the collection contains the business records of the company from 1831 through the 1870s as well as letters and documents of the family during that time and through 1936. This collection has incredible research potential, Read More …
My mother, Dr. Paula Whatley Matabane, an Atlanta native, has been on a life-long, genealogical mission to dig up the roots of her family. Archives are her trenches. Despite the fact that I’ve been working in MARBL for awhile now as a graduate assistant and have used various African American collections in my scholarly research Read More …
Civil rights leader Rev. Bernard LaFayette Jr. stopped by Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Library on Dec. 3 to discuss his experiences and new memoir in a conversation led by Carol Anderson, associate professor of African American Studies at Emory. Lafayette, who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the national program director for the Read More …
“Revealing Her Story: Documenting African American Women Intellectuals” is a two-year project funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to arrange and describe the personal papers of nine African American women writers, artists and musicians. Collections included in the project are the Pearl Cleage papers; additions to the Delilah Jackson papers; the Samella Read More …
The Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library is a place of discovery. All are welcome to visit and explore our unique holdings, whether as a researcher or an observer. The breadth and depth of our collections are vast, and it is nearly impossible to investigate every nook and cranny. We invite you this year, through our blog, to Read More …
Emory University Archives has added more volumes to the digital collection of Emory yearbooks available online. Emory University’s yearbook, The Campus, is now available for the years 1964-1999. Yearbooks from the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Atlanta Medical College, Southern Dental College, Atlanta-Southern Dental College, and Atlanta-Southern Medical College are also now viewable for Read More …
The Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library is a place of discovery. All are welcome to visit and explore our unique holdings, whether as a researcher or an observer. The breadth and depth of our collections are vast, and it is nearly impossible to investigate every nook and cranny. We invite you this year, through our blog, to Read More …
