RCL Blog

This blog post was written by TJ Moaton, MLIS student and co-president of Dominican University's student chapter of the Society of American Archivists.

Tl;dr – Memory is tied to how you live your life. Archivists and information professionals in general are memory workers, but everything everyone does is connected to some kind of memory work.

Can you remember that?

Well, who says that’s true? Why should we believe that, let alone remember it?

Today, we’re in a moment where “truths are being revealed” about the past and the present, and how they might shape our future. But some people knew those truths all along. Whether it’s the discovery of the horrors of Indian boarding schools or the desires of some folks to have weddings on plantations, the moment those subjects become topics of public conversation, many people’s memories are at work. But throughout history, some memories have been more privileged than others.

Archivists exist within an interesting tension. They’re tasked constantly to ensure that things are preserved “the way they are”, through ideas of provenance or of “original order.” It’s not just that things need to be remembered, there is a way things should be remembered that we need to preserve, so that reality make sense.

At the same time, due to mistrust in many institutions, people create their own archives to experience better representation and to not have their realities denied. Coupled with the fact that so many people can share their realities at any time, in many formats, all the time, archivists have to make concessions that they cannot preserve it all, even if that may affect the context of the full story.

So, what do we do, as future information professionals? Maybe it’s time to understand all the varieties of archives there are, many of which we exist in without realizing it.

I’m inspired by the work of Michele Moody-Adams, the first woman and first African-American to serve as the Dean of Columbia College, the undergraduate college of Columbia University. As a philosopher, she focuses on the role of monuments and memorials in promoting public/collective memory. She is a big reason why I’m currently in this MLIS program, as memory is always tied to knowledge and information.

So, what are monuments and memorials, or how I usually like to ask, “How would you explain them to a kid?” They can serve many purposes, from sites of contemplation and reflection to sites of gathering, education, and even resistance. They are never neutral, always imbued with some type of intention or agenda as to how we should remember people, places or ideas.

That can be cemeteries, or cookbooks, or family bibles. They can be textiles like quilts or digital ephemera like YouTube compilations of your favorite TV characters’ best moments. There is labor involved in the creation, and an intention for people to participate in some fashion, which leads to community and knowledge formation.

Today, archivists have to deal with the nature of climate change bringing into more clarity how fragile our material possessions are. And while digitization has provided much in the way of accessibility, there are many fears around what may happen if or when those technologies fail.

This is an unbelievable moment in time, in that there is a speed and a change to the nature of the work of information organization, management, and dissemination that’s unprecedented. But we can always take the time to remember that as ways of resistance, of healing, and of making sense of individual and communal realities, many of us are memory workers, and we have much to learn from each other about how we do it, and why.

References

1. Moody-Adams, Michelle. Making Space for Justice. Blog.apablog.com. Accessed December 5, 2024. https://blog.apaonline.org/2022/11/18/recently-published-book-spotlight-making-space-for-justice. 

2. Ohio State Center for Ethics and Humanity. (2022, December 8). Dr Michelle Moody-Adams: Distinguished Lecture in Ethics [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fMJZdmqaRI. 

Last November, Dominican University welcomed Mexican-American poet José Olivarez for the Caesar & Patricia Tabet Poetry Reading. The reading was co-presented by the St. Catherine of Siena Center, the English Department of Dominican University's Rosary College of Arts and Sciences, and the Rebecca Crown Library.

Dominican University English professor Maggie Andersen paid memory to Pat Tabot, the namesake of the reading. Professor Andersen expressed how the annual poetry reading provided a transformative experience for students. “When we lose a faculty member, we lose a library,” Andersen said.

In introducing the evening's guest, Dominican University English major Karen Reyes said she had taken English 266: Introduction the Literature and Language Studies with low expectations. Her lack of enthusiasm for poetry was transformed largely by reading poems by Olivarez, many of which depict the push-pull of being from Mexico and living in Chicago, i.e. “What it means to be Mexican in America.”

Ode to Tortillas

One of Olivarez' most memorable poems is Ode to Tortillas, which he read first. Olivarez was inspired to write the poem one morning while deciding what he would write for the day. Recognizing that "writing about tortillas is a little bit cliche," he wondered if he could flip it and make it new somehow. In the poem, Olivarez questions many restrictions faced by Mexican-American authors. “Can you be a Mexican writer if you never migrated?” he asks.

In I Loved the World So Much I Married It, read from his book of poems Citizen Illegal, Olivarez addressed the mixed emotions and memories brought up by both his grandmother's and uncle's deaths. He uses images of the senses even when talking about death. He mentions his “most treasured possessions: a six piece/ with lemon pepper & mild sauce on,” which he will have to give up when he divorces (dies) the world he has loved so much. 

Olivarez read many poems featuring family ties, such as his last one of the night, Related : the Sky is Dope. Written by his brother in a series of texts, the poem describes the interaction between clouds and sky at day's begging and end. Written in three parts, Mexican Heaven depicts the afterlife as a bittersweet place where all do not feel welcome. “if heaven/ is real, then its gates are closed to us.” Reporting from the beyond, Olivarez' uncle declares “the party was boring…they were ditching heaven," and so they sought a spot between heaven and hell where their family could feel at home and recognize “we have always been beautiful.”

Getting Ready to Say I Love You to the Couch, It Rains

In the introduction to Promises of Gold, Olivarez explains his book of poems "is what happens when you try to write a book of love poems for the homies amid a global pandemic that has laid bare all the other pandemics that we've been living through our whole lives.” Themes of childhood longing and heartache are found in Getting Ready to Say I Love You to the Couch, It Rains. But there can be hope in desperation: while introducing the poem, Olivarez told the story of a student so thankful for a free copy of his book that he gifted the poet a bag of chips from his inventory of snacks he'd been selling.

In the Q&A following the reading, Olivarez expressed the pain of leaving his family during his days at Harvard, and the difficulties of having a background many of his classmates could not relate to. However, he expressed the joys of having a state-of-the-art library on campus which allowed him to build his own kind of curriculum. When asked about the benefits of studying poetry, Olivarez encouraged studying anything meditatively and embracing the present, in contrast to the transient nature of Twitter and the information age. 

Olivarez offered many tips for aspiring writers such as setting a disciplined routine and reading as much as possible to stay inspired. He also spoke of the benefits of paying attention to what an author is trying to accomplish with their words and methods, as well as finding motivation and accountability with a peer group of other writers. With his own use of unique paragraph breaks and prescient thematic material, Oliverez has proven himself to be a poet who will inspire poets and readers for generations to come.

References

Library of America. (January 9, 2024). José Olivarez reads “Mexican American Disambiguation” [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxI56Yn05Lc 

Olivarez, J. (2018). Getting Ready to Say I Love You to the Couch, It Rains. Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books.

--. (2018). I Loved the World so Much I Married It. Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books.

--. (2023). Mexican Heaven. Promises of Gold. Henry Holt and Company.

--. (2023). Ode to Tortillas. Promises of Gold. Henry Holt and Company.

Olivarez, P. (2023). In J. Olivarez, Promises of Gold. Henry Hold and Company.

This essay was written by Haven Barnes while studying abroad at Oxford during the spring 2024 semester. Haven is a senior computer science major at Dominican University, minoring in medieval history and mathematics.

Editor's note: Use Rebecca Crown Library to learn more about this topic! Check out our English & Literature databases and our English & Literature research guide.

Antonina Harbus, in The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, writes, “The [Anglo-Saxon] elegies may employ conventional imagery and characteristic Old English vocabulary, but at the same time, they construct emotionally realistic portraits of human sensibility and mental processes which constitute the psychological validity of these texts” (Harbus 154-155). The Wanderer and The Seafarer, two Anglo-Saxon elegies found in The Exeter Book, share an interest in the relationship between the body and mind within the context of another relationship, isolation and fate. The Exeter Book is dated to the late 10th century and is one of four major codices of Anglo-Saxon elegies (Treharne 48). 

While the narrator in The Wanderer only has his memories to interact with, the narrator in The Seafarer is surrounded by the ocean as he or she reflects on it, as well as their own mind. The elegiac genre these two poems fall under has been debated in terms of its most vital constituents and how to define it without projecting modern vocabulary or theory onto it. Harbus also comments, how an elegy “is thematically centred on the mental world of an individual, first-person speaker” (Harbus 127). She also mentions they tend to focus on loss or separation, as well as “deploying memory in conscious spiritual development” (Harbus 129). As such, The Wanderer and The Seafarer use isolation to explore the interaction of the self, both within the narrator’s interior world and with the outside world, and understand what it is. Despite emphasizing the importance of selfrevelation, both poets warn of the futility of such an achievement if one fails to execute their realized purpose.

Beginning with a brief introduction to each poem, The Wanderer is a complex elegiac poem thought to either have been a single monologue or a narrated monologue with narratorial commentary (Treharne 54). The narrator recounts memories with his lord and fellow men, and laments how he has lost them. Though referred to as anhaga, ‘the solitary one,’ he finds comfort in his faith in God, which Harbus expands on and emphasizes the way in which the poem demonstrates life, metaphorically, as a dream (Harbus 171). She references lines 41-44, which describes a dream the narrator has in which he is reunited with his lord, and the contrast he witnesses upon awakening signals the dream’s function as “a metaphor for the insubstantial and illusory nature of this worldly existence in contrast to the eternal life of grace.” (Harbus 164). A final theme that appears not only in this poem, but also in The Seafarer, is fate. 

Though it appears quite explicitly in line 5, “Fate is very inflexible,” it appears in more subtle ways throughout the poem, which will be revisited later. The Wanderer’s use of the narrator’s mind as a playground, then, allows the poet to explore themes such as the proximity of the past, the role of isolation in connecting with God, and how fate relates to each of these topics. The Seafarer is thought to be a companion poem to The Wanderer, and they are often studied in conjunction. Indeed, there is significant structural and thematic overlap, such as discussions of isolation, the purpose of life and the transitory nature of it, yet The Seafarer probes the mind/body distinction more deeply with its unique exploration of the self as a subject/object relationship, in which the mind is the former and the body the latter. The poem discusses the “way by which we might progress to something more, to ecan eadignesse, ‘eternal bliss,’” and the body and mind’s role in facilitating this journey to divine reunion (Treharne 60). The sylf, or self, in the context of this poem refers not to a “body containing mind,” but as “a soul containing sins,” completely setting the body aside in this illustration of a human (Matto 176). While in The Seafarer the narrator expresses distress in being confined within their mind, The Wanderer’s narrator demonstrates anxiety about being bound by their body.

To understand the “self,” and how it is described and explored in both poems, it is necessary to examine how a human being is dissected in terms of a mind, body, and soul. Within the historical context of The Wanderer and The Seafarer, there are two schools of thought on how these constituents are demarcated according to their functions: early philosophers, such as Augustine, Boethius, and Plato, and contemporary vernacular Anglo-Saxon literature. While both view the mind and soul as separate entities, early philosophy interprets the mind as the intellect, while the Anglo-Saxons, in vernacular literature, refer to it as the mod, or willpower, which must be controlled (Godden 204)(Godden 308). Moreover, vernacular Anglo-Saxon literature places the mind in the seat of the heart, and therefore encapsulates the mod’s ability to both think and feel (Godden 303). In both The Wanderer and The Seafarer, there is palpable conflict between these parts of the sylf, as the mod yet desires transient life, as it is the home of community and companionship, yet this is accompanied by a sinking awareness of its imminent death. The notable anxiety about death is intensified, too, by the absence of a clear perception of time, reflecting the uncertainty of one’s death day, as the reader is not told how long the wanderer or seafarer have been isolated. In terms of the mod, it is unclear what controls it, whether that is the soul or another component, reminiscent of Plato’s tripartite soul. This disjunction is vividly demonstrated in The Seafarer (lines 10-12):

     …where sorrows surged

     hot about the heart. 

     Hunger inside tore the spirit of the sea-weary (Treharne). 

These three lines establish the simultaneous presence of the mod and the spirit, and the effect of the mod’s affective forces on the latter. It is peculiar here, despite the fact the mod is often associated with willpower, that the spirit instead is designated as the facilitator of will. It is also possible, as mentioned above, the “spirit” is the part of the mod which represents divine willpower that triumphs over the other, driving transient desires. Harbus quotes Godden on this predicament, who has “refined this line of argument to suggest that the poem takes its meaning from a disjunction between the mind, the faculty of thought and emotion, and the self, the controlling seat of consciousness.” (Harbus 165) There is also, in The Wanderer, a “habitual binding of sleep and sorrow,” illustrating how the narrator is overwhelmed not only by their memories, but also by the emotions generated by recalling them (Harbus 166). This also communicates tension between the body and mind, if they are viewed symbolically, wherein the body symbolizes the present and the mind the past. As memories are, in essence, recognized by contrasting the now-absent past with the present, it is this juxtaposition that evokes painful emotions. Nostalgia in both poems, then, allows the poet to experiment with portrayals of the transient life, demonstrating that eternal life after death will not cause the painful distinction between memory and his current situation the volatile temporal world offers. Although not stressed in The Seafarer to the degree it is in The Wanderer, there is yet a feeling of a mind confined to a body, and the enormous amount of willpower it requires to force it to comply with divine will (lines 74-78): 

     That he might earn before he must depart, 

     achievements on earth against the wickedness of enemies 

     opposing the devil with brave deeds 

     so that the children of men might praise him afterwards, 

     and his glory will live then among the angels (Treharne). 

These lines highlight an important counterargument to the undercurrent of disregard for the temporal world, as the body is a necessary vehicle to do good works in the world and enter heaven after death. Michael Matto, too, emphasizes this: 

Only by turning over the entire self – both the self-as-subject and the self-as-object, regardless of which part of the body/mind relationship is assigned which role – to the scrutiny of the community through selfrevelation can the speaker take on a new perspective (Matto 178). 

According to this, because both narrators in The Wanderer and The Seafarer are isolated, there is no basis of external comparison for their introspection and turmoil. However, while the poems do suggest the value of community in assuaging this predicament, they ultimately reject it as an anchor for identity stabilization, as all things must pass. There is no death without the body, and nothing for the divine will of the mod to triumph over, just as without the temptation of “evil” in the Garden, there would be no recognizable “good.” The Wanderer and The Seafarer, then, are able to tackle the complexity of the mind and body and remind their readers of the subtlety of the human experience within an early Christian framework.

 As this would typically be a highly erudite topic, the skill of the poet shines through in their ability to communicate emotion and build a bridge between the text and their reader. This bridge functions differently for its readership, as modern readers lack the cultural context Anglo-Saxon readers understood. Cognitive science has emphasized the relationship between chemical human emotion and the context it is embedded in. Harbus describes how “research into the emotions from several fields has shown us that though we might recognise apparently separate emotions, such as happiness or anger, the emotional web is tangled and interconnected with other aspects of being, sensing and interacting.” (Harbus 164). 

Therefore, as cultural context is one aspect of emotional experiences, so too is a human’s perception of themselves, their physiology, their memories that shape their comfort level with certain emotions, and other endless contributing factors. It appears, then, that the poets of The Wanderer and The Seafarer were attuned to this on an intuitive level, as it places the sylf at the center of conflicting dualities within it: the temporal and eternal life, the will of the two parts of the mod, isolation and community, and the present self, faced with consulting either the past or the future. Moreover, emotions in Anglo-Saxon literature are not described to be felt, but rather “taken.” Godden highlights how “feeling” is purely sensory in Old English, whereas someone can take “various mental states, such as anger or love, using the verb niman: ‘nim lufe to Gode,’ gif ure mod nim,’…” (Godden 299). Harbus stresses the fact Anglo-Saxon authors were cautious to not designate the person, but rather the mind alone, as the site of emotion (Godden 169). This aligns with how emotions were “taken” and not “felt,” as they are taken into the mind, the mod, to be evaluated, and thus begins the war between the divine and temporal will. 

The poets of The Wanderer and The Seafarer demonstrate a strong interest in an analytical approach to introspection. Both narrators refuse to perceive themselves as a whole human, but rather interpret their individual components, body and mod. The complexity of the human experience embedded in an early Christian framework is visualized in both poems as perpetual conflict between the human and divine within each person, two parts that may be harmonized in Christ yet remain in opposition for mortals. By leveraging the narrators’ experience with isolation, the reader can access an unusually raw perspective of their emotions and inner experience, devoid of the variables Harbus describes can manipulate and alter the emotional landscape. Because the poets have removed any indication of how long the wanderer or seafarer have been isolated, the urgency to execute God’s will is heightened, as neither of the narrator’s know when they will die. Both poems approach the conflict that persists between the two forces of the mod, despite the urgency generated by the fear of death, which communicates a distinct existential aspect of the human experience and challenges the fantasy of discovering one’s purpose. Revelation, therefore, means nothing if it is never realized.

Works Cited

Godden, Malcom. "Anglo-Saxons on the Mind." Old English Literature: Critical Essays. Ed. R.M. Liuzza. Yale University Press, 2002. 

Harbus, Antonina. "Cognitive Approaches to the History of Emotions and the Emotional Dynamic." Harbus, Antonina. Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry. Boydell & Brewer, 2012. 

Harbus, Antonina. "Deceptive Dreams in The Wanderer." Studies in Philology 93 (1996): 164-179. 

Harbus, Antonina. "The Mind as the Seat of Emotions: the Elegiac Strain." Harbus, Antonina. The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry. Brill, 2002. 

Matto, Michael. "True Confessions: The Seafarer and Technologies of the Sylf." Journal of English and German Philology 103.2 (2004): 156-179. 

Treharne, Elaine, ed. Old and Middle English c.890-1450, An Anthology. Third Edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

 Image Citations

Exeter Book 2016: The Seafarer. Accessed November 13, 2024. https://www.theexeterdaily.co.uk/whats-on/events/exeter-book-2016-seafarer.

Friedrich, Caspar David. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Artsy.net. Accessed November 13, 2024. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/caspar-david-friedrich-wanderer-above-the-sea-of-fog.

Courbet, Gustave. The Wave. Gustave-Courbet.com. https://www.gustave-courbet.com/the-wave.jsp. Accessed November 13, 2024.

Friedrich, Caspar David. The Monk By the Sea. “Wikimedia Commons.” Caspar David Friedrich - Der Mönch am Meer - Google Art Project, n.d. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Der_Mönch_am_Meer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Vasnetsov, Viktor. A Knight at the Crossroads. 1919 Vasnetsov Ritter an Der Kreuzung Anagoria.” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1919_Vasnetsov_Ritter_an_der_Kreuzung_anagoria.JPG

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste. Seascape. The Art Institute of Chicago. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/81557/seascape

The following reflection on a museum exhibit was initially written for the course LIS 717: History on Display: Museums, Exhibitions, and Public History. Our assignment was to visit a free museum of our choosing in the Chicago area and write about a singular exhibit. The instructions emphasized analyzing the aesthetic choices of the display, including the lighting, paint colors, case materials, use of glass, interactivity, chronology, relationship of the exhibit to the visitor's body, and more. These guiding concepts brought the unique attributes of this exhibit into a sharper focus.

The “Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra ‘Calidad’” exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art features Delilah Montoya's photography, presenting the multicultural lives on the Mexican borderlands and Southwest United States ("Contemporary Casta"). This project is a commentary on 18th-century Casta paintings. These works typically stood as a series of sixteen paintings that promote the colonial framework of racial hierarchy by asserting that Spanish blood was gradually degraded through mixed-race families with Indian and African ancestry (Leibsohn, Mundy). Montoya created a series of sixteen candid photos and utilized 21st-century genetic DNA tests to track the subjects' ancestry as far as 10,000 years back. Her work demonstrates that race and culture are socially constructed and not an exact science or natural order. 

The entry of the exhibit presents a series of five reproduced casta paintings ranging from a Spanish couple and their child portrayed with dignity to more disruptive portraits of mixed-race families. These paintings are placed against a bright orange wall with painted frames. The viewer is met with the symbol of sophistication that turns out to be two-dimensional. Denying these paintings the authority of a traditional frame and keeping them out of glass disrupts the absolutism the paintings imply. To the left of these paintings is black text on a beige section of the wall explaining the conceit of the exhibition and more information on the artist.

Montoya's photos are placed on the room's beige walls, allowing the viewer to walk through in a circle to view all the pieces. They are framed in modern, simplistic wood box frames with a wood panel underneath. This section holds a black-and-white map with a test tube of sand on either side. Each tube is labeled with a familial designation, as the sand symbolizes the individual’s ancestry. The map establishes the regions the family is from and the casta to which the family would be assigned. 

In the above photo (click here for the photo, map, and accompanying audio), the left sand represents the mother's brother while the right represents the father. In the middle of the exhibit, a glass box stood with a book on casta paintings and the labeled colors of sand. In this example, the mother’s brother is represented in orange sand indicating Native American ancestry, and the father is represented in white sand, indicating northern European ancestry. The other options for sand were Mediterranean, southwest Asian, southwest Asian, northeast Asian, south African, and Sub-Saharan. 

        The photos are not in order of caste, which disrupts the idea of progressive ‘dilution’ of Spanish blood. As the participants were from the same regions of Texas and New Mexico, this created a sense of neighborhood and integrated community in a way the original Casta paintings rejected. While this exhibit utilizes test tubes, maps, and Casta classifications to demonstrate scientific analysis of its subjects, the placing of the photos works to reinforce that the artist intends to present each family with equal respect and humanity. 

This project's source material is based on treating non-Spanish people as lesser objects rather than embodied subjects. While approaching the same form through different intentions, Montoya and the exhibit curators had to create an intentional presentation that combated the original point of view. The artists creating Casta paintings had immense power and control, both politically and in the act of creation since they were painters rather than photographers. Montoya’s choice to photograph candid scenes and the supplemental text box that explains that these scenes were part of one-hour sessions are both powerful objections to the impersonal colonial perspective. 

As visitors walk around the room, they can scan QR codes on the photos that link to “family monologues” where the subjects discuss their family history and the photo’s context, as well as another image of the map that illustrates migration. The audio component of this project adds significant context to the images and sand representations. Participants told personal anecdotes, family stories, tragedies, and their journeys to understanding where their families came from. The photos feel intimate and current, while the maps and test tubes feel more distant and historical. Hearing directly from these sources is a necessary bridge that shows the personal narratives the families have regarding their geographic origins. (Click here for the photo, map, and audio of the above image).

       Test tubes denote a sterile, scientific process while sand and wood connect the project to the earth. The colors used for each region somewhat correlate with the skin tones of the ethnic groups represented. The genealogical assessment combined with unposed scenes of domestic lives brings subjectivity to the genre of casta imagery. Montoya and her interviewees show how each unique family has a long history impacted by political forces that changed over time.

Another orange wall section in the center of the room, where the casta paintings were displayed, shows scientific art of reptiles and flowers next to text explaining that the Spanish systematized ethnographic hierarchy in the context of similar ideas about race rampant in the Enlightenment Era. Another text box explains DNA tracing and the intention behind pursuing it for the project. These text portions are kept brief and include both English and Spanish translations, as was consistent throughout the museum. This informational center of the space didn’t distract from the circular experience of walking from photo to photo but still made context a priority. 

The wall with the exit door is blank other than a short profile on the artist, which features a photo of her next to black text on a grey rectangle, and a large quote from her placed above in bold black text. The quote states that the exhibit is an “investigation of culture and biological forms of ‘hybridity’” intended to show viewers the “resonance of colonialism as a substructure of our contemporary society that was constructed by an imposition of sovereignty.” This quote is also placed in Spanish above a section of the portraits in the same font and size. Looking up to see these quotes high on the walls created a sense that the artist was overlooking the exhibit.

           This room is one of the first doors a visitor could walk through when entering the museum. It is next to the large gift store, which led me to visit it right before leaving. Its light and neutral walls differ from the rest of the museum, which uses the orange featured on one wall of this exhibit heavily throughout other rooms, as well as blue, pink, and yellow. The wall color and bright white lighting complement the unadorned photography in creating a sense of authenticity. The space is smaller than other rooms and not connected to any other exhibit. This allowed the work to excel in its self-contained 16-part scale. 

Works Cited:

“Contemporary Casta Portraiture:  Nuestra ‘Calidad.’” National Museum of Mexican Art, Pilsen, Chicago. Accessed 2024. https://nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/events/contemporary-casta-portraiture.

Leibsohn, Dana, and Barbara E. Mundy. “Casta Painting.” VistasGallery, 2015. https://vistasgallery.ace.fordham.edu/items/show/1659.

Montoya, Delilah. “Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad.” Contemporary Casta portraiture: Nuestra calidad. Accessed 2024. http://www.delilahmontoya.com/ContempCasta/. 

If you love libraries and all things archival, then visiting Newberry Library in downtown Chicago should be at the top of your bucket list.

This semester, a group from Dominican University, including two faculty members and fifteen students ranging from undergraduate to Ph.D., took a field trip to Newberry Library. The outing was hosted by two of Dominican’s student organizations: the Information Science Student Association (ISSA) and Society for Archivist of America Dominican University Chapter (SAADUC).

This intimate sheaf of librarians enjoyed a private viewing of rare books, photographs, and postcards held at Newberry. Dominican alum Anula Lopez, the Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies, provided access and information for these special collection items. 

Into the Vault

In one of the Newberry's reading rooms, carefully selected items were set on tables for perusing. The selected old books were displayed lovingly on soft blue book supports, with gently weighted “book snakes” holding them open. Gloves were provided for students wanting to leaf through the ancient tomes, some of which dated back to the 17th century.

Not surprisingly, some of the items had fascinating tales to tell. One such item was Mi Ultimo Pensamiento, a poem written by Filipino propagandist and writer José Rizal. During his family's last visit before his execution by firing squad, Rizal dropped hints that some of his writings were hidden in an alcohol stove and in his shoes. The Spanish colonial government executed Rizal for his work, which was considered critical to the Philippine Independance movement.

A brighter anecdote came from the background of an anonymously written one-act play thought to be written by an Indigenous author, which was donated to Newberry Library in 2018. Together with Victorino Torres Nava, a native Nahuatl speaker and linguist, Anula translated the short comedic and satirical play, which is sometimes called The Old Lady and Her Grandson. The plot features a grandmother who strictly forbids her grandson to eat honey, which Lopez said her study of the Nahuatl language helped discover was likely an alcoholic drink. Further study revealed the matriarch in the play to be pregnant!

Diversity Issues in Librarianship

Librarians go through great lengths to meet the diverse needs of their learning community. “Decolonization” may be a bit of a buzzword in academia, but it is nonetheless an extremely important concept. Institutions such as the Newberry Library that preserve cultural heritages play a crucial role in allowing historically marginalized groups to have their stories told accurately and respectfully. 

When a student asked where she currently sees decolonization efforts in the field of librarianship, Anula answered, “It depends what you mean by ‘decolonize.’ “ For example, it is not enough for institutions preserving Indigenous culture to have an Indigenous member on staff, because those staff members will need support as well. Anula explained she has adopted the term ”internationalist," which recognizes the universal utility in preserving cultural property.

It is not always clear how to respect cultural patrimony, Anula explained. The Newberry Library gives first right of refusal of donated artifacts belonging Native American people, but items intended for return to rightful owners may instead end up in a museum or government institution. While some headway was made during COVID in updating cultural protocols, there is still more work to be done.

Indigenous Chicago

After the meeting room, the group saw The Newberry's current main exhibit in the Trienens Gallery, Indigenous Chicago. For several years, Anula worked on the project gathering maps, photographs, treaty documents, and other historical records. The exhibit pronounces the powerful message, “Chicago has always been a native place.”

“Home to the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Myaamia, Wea, Sauk, Meskwaki, and Ho-Chunk peoples,” reads the exhibit's website, "the place we now call Chicago has long been a historic crossroads for many Indigenous people and remains home to an extensive urban Native community." The exhibit combines works from current Native artists with items from the Newberry's extensive Indigenous collection.

Indigenous Chicago includes eye-catching and informative labels covering the history of treaties, the importance of terminology, and activism and resistance. Another placard tells the history of important Native organizations such as The Indian Council Fire. Meticulously curated, the displays work together to ask the audience: "How does our understanding of Chicago change when seen through Native perspectives?

Thinking of making your way to the The Newberry soon? While open to the public, The Newberry is not part of the Chicago Public Library system. Members of the public can apply for a Newberry reader's card, which they can use to browse the Newberry's non-circulating collections. Readers can use the online catalog, finding aids, and research guides to browse the library's many offerings. Just like at our Crown Library, readers can use the “Ask a Librarian” feature to for direct research help. 

The Rebecca Crown Library is taking an active role in celebrating el Día de los Muertos on campus. Check out our upcoming events and resources:

• In collaboration with the Organization of Latin American Students, the library is hosting a celebration of the traditional holiday of "Día de los Muertos", Day of the Dead. The Calaveritas & Velitas event will have 3-d printed skull painting, champurrado, face painting and a photo booth.

   

• The Rebecca Crown Library is also one of the locations of University Ministry's ofrendas which will be highlighted in the Día de los Muertos Celebration Event. University Ministry welcome you to drop-off photos of your deceased loved ones and friends at the University Ministry Center. They will place all photos on our ofrendas. If you would like for your photos to be returned once our celebration have concluded, please make sure to write your name and email address somewhere behind the photo.

• If you want to learn more about Día de los Muertos, The Rebecca Crown Library has also curated resource guides both in Spanish and in English. These guides contain information and history about Día de los Muertos, information about ofrendas (alters), and also has fun videos and recopies for making your own sugar skulls!

   

•  We also want to highlight our ever growing Spanish Language Collection. You can also request that we add new materials if there is a book you are dying to read.

Isn’t writing great? The written word is an excellent way to organize thoughts, express creativity, and discover passions. Whenever I have been disciplined enough to pick up a pen – or keyboard – and produce a written self-expression, it has nearly always paid wonderful dividends.

The blog staff at Rebecca Crown Library is looking for submissions for our blog, and that means you. Are you taking a class you’re excited about and want to gush? Did you visit a really cool library recently and want to nerd out about it? If you are a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program or an undergraduate student working at the library, we want to know what’s cooking in that noodle of yours.

Below are just a few terrific reasons why you should contribute to the RCL blog.

Express Your Passion

Isn’t it the worst when you turn in an excellent paper that only your professor reads? A thoughtful discussion post, short paper, or class project description could make an excellent blog post. Your passion for learning is contagious so let your little light shine.

Learning can happen in sporadic ways. Perhaps a tangential topic comes up in class that you’d like a platform to explore further (recently for me, it has been prison librarianship). The RCL blog can be an excellent platform to channel that interest and share it with others. 

For example, a decade ago, out of pure passion I began blogging about Newbery Award winning children’s books. Fast forward to the present when I am in the Youth Literature graduate program here at Dominican. 

Reset, Reflect, Rekindle

Feeling a mid-semester motivational slump? Creativity is a powerful balm for your brain. Writing about a library-related topic you care about may be exactly the endorphins your brain craves. For integrating creativity with learning, I also highly recommend attending a workshop in our Innovation Lab and/or familiarizing yourself with our Recording Studio. But I digress!

Reflecting on our experiences are essential for growth. Are you graduating at the end of the semester and want to reflect on your academic journey thus far? Are you thinking about declaring or changing your major? There have been some excellent reflection posts on professional development experiences such as internships and conferences on the RCL blog. This could be a fantastic platform to share your insights. 

Blogging can be a safe, structured way to pursue interests. Last semester, writing for the RCL blog was the catalyst I needed to research libraries in Iceland. Researching for the post allowed me to gather information I needed to rekindle my love for traveling. And I’m glad I did! The inter-continental adventure changed my life.

Connect with your Community

There are many activities on campus to enrich your mind and connect you with community. This week I attended two events: The Journey of a Reconnection Taino, led by Dr. Lizette Rivera in celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day, and Blackened Bodies at the Hands of White America, a lecture by Dr. Safiyyah Kai El-Amin. Attending a campus event and writing a post not only allows us to reflect on what we’ve learned, but connects us with the stories and wisdom of others in our learning community. 

Writing is an important expression and self-affirmation of values, but it also shows one cares about the intellectual and creative needs of their learning community. That internship you had last summer? That class you took that exceeded your expectations? That library conference you attended? Let your community know about these experiences and become part of an informal mentoring process that enriches yourself and others.

Create Resume material

A blog piece byline shows employers your capability to write comprehensively on a topic. Especially if you are interviewing for a library position, hiring managers may be impressed you took the time and effort to write about a topic relevant to the library field. 

Perhaps you’d like to practice a professional development skill, such as interviewing. Writing a blog piece after interviewing a professor, librarian or educator is a great way to learn from their experiences and develop this useful skill. Who knows, a strategic interview could lead to future collaboration or provide you with useful connections.

As you can see, there are many reasons to write for the RCL blog. Your learning community is waiting for your insights – so let it rip. Don’t let those brilliant insights fade forever in tonight’s dreams. 

For information on submission: Want to Write for the RCL Blog?

“Supercrips” is a term and stereotype that refers to someone who overcomes their disability in a way that is seen as inspiring under the public eye. This person is viewed as a heroic figure and an inspiration for overcoming their “impairment” against all odds. The action of overcoming their “impairment” is often viewed as the person outright rejecting their disability or the complete erasure of the disability through the ownership of superpowers.. 

 Being able to pass important milestones and achievements are thought of as extremely unlikely for those with disabilities. And when they are successful in life, it is typically explained away as this person having an unnatural superhuman strength or ability rather than just being an accomplished human being. There is a belief that people with disabilities must possess some magical powers or an inordinate amount of strength to live a similar life to able-bodied people. Much of this stems from the vast majority of society not being able to imagine living a life that differs from them, and the result of this is that very little is done to cater or adhere to the struggles that others may face when trying to find space and acceptance within societal structures that have not been built with them in mind. Disabilities are conditions that the dominant society has not prepared for and does not want to see. Because of this, social spaces and communities do not have the capacity to include people with disabilities. This lack of thought or care is typically a side effect of the larger issues surrounding the stereotype of “supercrip”. One that leads to the habit of a large portion of our society being overlooked and undermined. The term “supercrip”, serves as a distraction by putting the responsibility of being accepted within dominant society on disabled people rather than the actual societal structures that prevent them from being included due to the lack of accessibility rather than ability..  

Furthermore the belief in this stereotype, subconsciously hints at the idea that disabled people inherently do not belong in these spaces because they themselves cannot access it. These thoughts place blame on those with disabilities and make it their responsibility to be included. Disabilities become something that has to be overcome, as though the disability is the barrier rather than the man-made obstacle or infrastructure that have physically designed these acts of exclusion for this community. What is worse is that stereotypes like “supercrip” create a sentiment that when disabled people do overcome the barriers, this is viewed as an unnatural feat that would take superhuman strength.  

The supercrips stereotype is really a masquerade for ableism, as explained by English professor, disability rights advocate, and author Tobin Siebers. Siebers discusses how one's disability is typically exaggerated for the purpose of affirming able-bodiedness – only through extraordinary powers, can the disabled person validate themselves according to abled normativity and standards. Societal structures and their lack of inclusionary practices are not questioned or examined, instead disabled people are viewed as being incapable of existing in the same spaces as able-bodied people, and if they do happen to succeed, their success is infantilized, commodified, and at some points completely erased. This is why it has been extremely important and valuable for the disabled community to reclaim the term by redefining what the word crip means to them. The term “crip” can be all encompassing for those with invisible and visible disabilities as well as mental illnesses, and neurodivergence. This word has even found its way into academia through the study of “crip theory”, which studies how dominant and marginalized bodies, as well as sexual identities are understood in society and how to reimagine that understanding for those facing discrimination. While such words are still being explored by those with disabilities, it is important to remember that this is not a universally accepted term and should NEVER be used by those outside of this community amongst other such terminology.   

When disabled people are not viewed as a “supercrip”, they tend to become a lesson for those who exist outside of the community, rather than an individual. They become a caricature of themselves for able-bodied people to reflect upon so they can say,  “See here look, if “THEY” can do it, why can’t you?” Or “imagine if that was you, be thankful that it isn’t and live life accordingly”. These beliefs put disabled people on a pedestal that leaves very little room for them to be multifaceted autonomous individuals. Instead they are given a martyr narrative for able-bodied people to use for their own benefit. A consequence of not being able to fulfill this role or being too successful “despite” their disability is that many people begin to believe that there never was a disability in the first place 

There is a well documented pattern of people who exist outside of this community believing that people who are disabled can’t exist in society without serving the purpose of being a lesson for able bodied people to reflect upon. There is an overwhelming belief that disabled people are living a life that is less than and that they are incapable of having a fulfilling life because it does not fit into societal standards. It can go so far as having any accomplishments made by disabled people downplayed, viewed as a conspiracy, or completely denied. These harmful thoughts continue to be recycled each generation and the biggest resurgence of it exists in gen Z’s social media platform TikTok, with the trending denial of Helen Keller’s existence. This can also be seen in the overwhelming amount of videos claiming that Stevie Wonder is not really blind with “evidence” of him reacting in ways that people believe a blind person is incapable of. These beliefs then feed into the idea that disabled people are not autonomous, nor do they have the right to be because they are viewed as incapable of being so. While this concept is not new, we must ask ourselves why it is such a struggle to see disabled people as capable in their own rights, as well as why society views changing our methods as a downgrade in our standards. 

While there are a multitude of reasons for why these ideologies and politics exist, our job as a library is to ensure that we are actively playing the role of an ally.  An ally, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.” The role of ally is one of extreme importance to the Rebecca Crown Library. Because of this, for June we will be working to celebrate disability pride month and its theme “we want a life like yours” through our in displays that can be seen in person or online through our digital collection. This theme encompasses the idea that people with disabilities are deserving of experience that they are too often denied. Please visit the Rebecca Crown Library to celebrate their stories. 

Work Cited

Bypassing the supercrip trope in documentary representations of blind visual artists | Disability Studies Quarterly. (n.d.). https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/6485/5092#:~:text=Tobin%20Siebers%20explains%20that%20the,to%20abled%20normativity%20(111). 

Eisenmenger, A. (2022, October 3). Ableism 101. Access Living. https://www.accessliving.org/newsroom/blog/ableism-101/ 

Lollino, S. (2022, September 3). I AM NOT YOUR SUPERCRIP - facing disability. Facing Disability. https://facingdisability.com/blog/i-am-not-your-supercrip 

Remembering Tobin Siebers, English professor, disability studies advocate |  The University Record. (n.d.). https://record.umich.edu/articles/tobin-siebers-english-professor-and-disability-studies-advocate-dies/