New Exhibit: Wendy Wasserstein

The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein is a new exhibit on view at Mount Holyoke College until April 15, 2012. The American playwright Wendy Wasserstein graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1971.

The exhibit overview includes a video interview with Julie Salamon, author of Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein (Penguin Press, 2011). Salamon highlights the importance of Wasserstein's notebooks, and expresses a deep appreciation for the work of the Mount Holyoke College Archives.

A number of women from the Mount Holyoke College class of 1971 share their memories of Wasserstein in these YouTube videos.

Related Sources
CUNY TV offers Linda Winer's Women in Theatre interview with Wasserstein (28 min) from 2003, and Sheryl McCarthy's interview with Salamon (25 min).

Women Inventors

Drawing for a Game Board, 01/05/1904 (ARC Identifier: 595519); Series: Patented Case Files, 1836-1956; Records of the Patent and Trademark Office; Record Group 241; National Archives.

Drawing for a Game Board, 01/05/1904, the patent drawing for a game invented by Lizzie J. Magie, is "Today's Document" from the National Archives. A variation of this game would later become the board game "Monopoly."

Related Sources
Early Female Inventor (C-SPAN Video Library) features Margaret Knight and her invention of a paper bag maker, part of the Great American Hall of Wonders exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

B. Zorina Khan's The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2005) includes chapters on "Women Inventors in America" and "Patentees and Married Women's Property Rights."

New Exhibition: I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy, an American Legend is being held at the Library of Congress from August 4, 2011 to January 28, 2012. This site provides an overview of the themes of the exhibition (e.g., "The Cast, Crew, and Set," "Theme Songs") and a gallery of exhibition items. We Still Love Lucy (Information Bulletin, September/October 2011) provides additional information about the exhibition.

New Book: Understanding Medieval Primary Sources

Rosenthal, Joel Thomas, ed. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. WorldCat record 

See in particular Katherine L. French's chapter, "Medieval Women's History: Sources and Issues." French covers both descriptive documents (notarial registers, manor records, charters, witness depositions, and coroners' rolls, Episcopal visitation records, financial records of institutions, and household accounts) and prescriptive sources (the Bible,  civic codes, guild regulations, monastic rules, sermons, and advice literature).  Additional chapters provide different  perspectives on relevant sources: wills as primary sources; letters and letter collections; sources for manorial and rural history; medieval urban history; public health in the medieval city; images and objects as sources; and medieval archaeology.

In the News: Children of Cuba Remember Operation Pedro Pan

Operation Pedro Pan was a U.S. government program that brought more than 14,000 Cuban children to the United States from 1960 to 1962.

Children of Cuba Remember Their Flight to America (NPR, Nov. 19, 2011)
In this audio segment, Carmen Valdivia, Jose Azel, and Carlos Eire relate how the experience shaped their lives. The web page for the story includes a photo of Valdivia and other girls at a camp for displaced children in Florida City, and a recent photo of Valdivia holding the visa waiver that she received in 1962.

The Legacy of Pedro Pan (C-SPAN) was a panel discussion at the National Museum of American History (August 14, 2011). Panelists included Jackie Bhabha (Human Rights Program at Harvard) and Pedro Pan participants Emilio Cueto, Eloiza Echazabel, and Maria de los Angeles Torres. Torres is also the author of The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the U. S., and the Promise of a Better Future (Beacon Press, 2003).


Related Sources
The Miami Herald maintains a site that features articles and videos about Operation Pedro Pan.
The Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami provides access to primary and secondary sources that relate to Cuba and the Cuban diaspora from colonial times to he present. One of the digital collections on the site includes a video interview with Albertina O'Farrill, who used her diplomatic connections as a Cuban ambassador's wife to get children out of Cuba during Operation Pedro Pan.

Conde, Yvonne M. Operation Pedro Pan: The Untold Exodus of 14,048 Cuban Children. New York: Routledge, 1999. WorldCat Record with Preview

Stoner, K. Lynn, and Luís Hipólito Serrano Pérez. Cuban and Cuban-American Women: An Annotated Bibliography. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2000. WorldCat Record with Preview

Triay, Victor Andres. Fleeing Castro Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. WorldCat Record with Preview

American History Online

American History Online is a site for searching across 362 digital collections of primary sources at libraries and archives in the United States, as well as selected related sources (e.g., the America: History & Life database). Direct links to some of the "women's history" digital collections that are searched at the site are provided here:

American Jewess (Jewish Women's Archive)
Catt Collection of Suffrage Photographs (Bryn Mawr College)
Charlotta Bass (USC Digital Library)
A Celebration of Women Writers (University of Pennsylvania)
Documenting the American South (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Folkstreams
Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection (Library of Congress)
Freedom House Project (Northeastern University Library)
George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers (Purdue University Libraries)
Home Economics Archive (Cornell University Libraries)
Peace Collection Ephemera (Swarthmore College Peace Collection)
Peace Collection Photographs (Swarthmore College Peace Collection)
Sharlot M. Hall: Arizona's Curator (Sharlot Hall Museum)
Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the U.S. and U.K., 1815-1914 (Harvard Univ. Library)
Women Working, 1800-1930 (Harvard University Library)
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Staff and Officers (Swarthmore College Peace Collection)

Deena Stryker Photographs of Cuba

Deena Stryker Photographs of Cuba, 1963-1964 and undated
This digital collection from Duke University Libraries includes more than 1800 photographs. The journalist, then known as Deena Boyer, interviewed and photographed Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, and other major figures in the Cuban Revolution (e.g., Celia Sánchez Manduley) during her second visit to Cuba. Although "Women" is not a subject heading in the records for these photographs, searches for the following terms will retrieve relevant records: Ana Betancourt students, Carnaval, cousins, mother, teachers, woman, and women. Researchers can also find photographs of specific women: Edith Gombos, Celia Sánchez Manduley, and Palma Soriano.

Karen Glynn, Visual Materials Archivist at Duke University, provides an overview of the collection in the latest edition of VIEWS: The Newsletter of the Visual Materials Section of the Society of American Archivists.