04 September 2017
Resources for engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contemporary culture and politics.
Greetings from Darwin! I am currently very fortunate in that I am travelling around Australia for PhD research and learning about life and culture directly from the Aboriginal designers in the Northern Territory that I am interviewing. Prior to coming out to Australia I had to conduct most of my research online. In this post I have put together a list of websites that I recommend to anyone who is interested in gaining further understanding of Indigenous Australia. I have also included a list of books from the British Library that I found useful.
There are several hundred different Indigenous language groups with differing cultures and beliefs. In my list below I have tried to provide more general information, rather than represent each group. If you are interested in a specific community, many do have their own websites which will provide information on their beliefs and history.
I welcome any suggestions of other online and offline resources that are helpful for educating unknowing outsiders, I am sure there will be many I do not know about yet. I hope to put together a similar list for Maori culture and politics so would appreciate any recommendations for that. Just tweet me - @JoannePilcher1
Websites
The Guardian Online, Indigenous Australians:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/indigenous-australians
This page provides a range of articles on different issues related to Indigenous politics and culture. There are exhibition reviews, personal essays and commentary on current affairs.
@Indigenous X:
A blog run and written by Indigenous Australians covering anything from current affairs to a history of Indigenous representation in comic books. They also have a twitter account (@IndigenousX) where different Indigenous Australians are invited to host and run the account and tweet about things related to their expertise.
NITV:
National Indigenous TV is a channel on SBS that is made by and for Indigenous Australians. While the channel may not be available internationally, their website and Facebook page share lots of information on current affairs.
Menzies Centre For Australian Studies:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/centres/menzies/index.aspx
Part of King’s College London, The Menzies Centre does not focus specifically on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia but does have a range of interesting talks and events that sometimes relate to this area, such as a recent talk by Marcia Langton on Indigenous art. They also have a twitter (@menziescentre) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AusNetwork/) that regularly have information shared on them.
Australian Government:
http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-indigenous-cultural-heritage
The Australian government website has an overview of the heritage of Australian Indigenous culture.
Facebook Groups
Many of the above websites have Facebook pages that are worth following. The two listed below do not have websites.
Blackfulla Revolution:
This group shares a wide range of posts and articles related to life as an Indigenous Australian.
Aboriginal News – Australia:
https://www.facebook.com/AboriginalNewsAustralia/
This page regularly posts articles related to Indigenous Australian current affairs. They collect articles from a range of sources.
Podcasts
It’s Not a Race:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/itsnotarace/
This podcast covers a variety of topics surrounding racial identity within Australia and discusses issues Indigenous Australians face in several episodes.
Books
There is a wealth of information available within the British Library on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. There are too many topics to go into specific areas on this list so I have selected ones that give a ‘whistle-stop tour’ of Indigenous Australian culture and history. All of the below are available in the British Library collections and I have included their shelfmarks.
Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton, First Australians: An Illustrated History, Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah, 2008, [Asia, Pacific & Africa LD.31.b.2662]
This book was produced as an accompaniment to a nine part series on the history of Indigenous Australia. I have selected this as it gives a general overview but anything by Marcia Langton is worth reading, she is considered to be one of Australia’s most important Indigenous historians and is the Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.
Australian Aboriginal Studies Journal, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Melbourne, 1983 –
[General Reference Collection X.0525/685, General Reference Collection ZD.9.a.1762, Document Supply 1796.654990]
Some printed copies of this journal are in the British Library collections, the rest are available online through the library database.
Stephen Mueche and Adam Shoemaker, Aboriginal Australians: First Nations of an Ancient Continent, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004. [General Reference Collection YK.2011.a.3122]
This short book gives a general introduction to different beliefs and histories across various communities within Australia.
David Unaipon, ed by Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker, Legendary tales of the Australian aborigines, Melbourne University Press, 2001 [General Reference Collection YC.2002.a.21382]
Unaipon is credited with being the first published Aboriginal Australian author and appears on the fifty-dollar note. He toured Australia collecting the local stories of various communities and translating them into English in the 1920s; initially his publishers sold his work to an English man who published it in his name instead. Unaipon’s original manuscript was found and republished in his name in 2001 by Muecke and Shoemaker
Pauline E.McLeod, Francis Firebrace Jones, June E. Barker Gadi Mirrabooka: Australian Aboriginal Tales from the Dreaming, Englewood,Colo. [Great Britain] : Libraries Unlimited, 2001
[General Reference Collection YK.2003.b.2308]
Many compilations of Indigenous Australian stories can be considered as exploitative as they are sharing stories that could be sacred without permission from the communities the stories are from. This compilation has been produced by the story custodians themselves who have permission to share them.
By Joanne Pilcher
Joanne Pilcher is currently carrying out a PhD placement project at the British Library, exploring contemporary publishing in Australia. If you would like to know more about placement opportunities at the Library for doctoral students please click here.
02 May 2017
Women in the California Gold Rush
I’m using my 2017 Eccles British Library Writer’s Award to research and write my second novel, Catspaw, which follows two women from Chicago to the Sierra foothills during the California Gold Rush. Women are largely excluded from the mythic-historic narrative of the Gold Rush. Those that do appear are marginal, stereotypical characters: the long-suffering, godly pioneer mother (Sarah Royce), or the savvy prostitute (Belle Cora). I want to tell a story of two women who don’t conform to these stereotypes.
Portrait of Helen Carpenter (Courtesy of the Edward E. Ayer Collection, the Newberry Library, Chicago), from Ho for California!: Women's Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library, edited and annotated by Sandra L. Myres. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1980 Shelfmark: 80/24701
Women were in the minority in the 1849 migration west; but they were there, and they encountered difficulties and opportunities that were unimaginable back east. I wanted to understand the experiences of these women in their own words. Sarah Royce’s renowned memoir, A Frontier Lady (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932; shelfmark 010409.ee.40) left me with more questions than answers. Written at the urging of her philosopher son Josiah Royce, it tells the story he wanted her to tell—one of Christian fortitude as foundational to California. It left me wondering how she really felt as she left Iowa with her somewhat hapless husband and toddler daughter, bound for the unknown. John Irving wrote that "all memoir is fiction"; but I wanted to read female first-hand accounts that weren’t so starkly in service of a higher narrative.
Portrait of Mary Jane Megquier, from a daguerreotype about 1853, from Apron Full of Gold: The Letters of Mary Jane Megquier from San Francisco, 1849-1856. Edited by Robert Glass Cleland. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1949. Shelfmark: W.P.9803/40
The Eccles Centre’s bibliographical guide, Women in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1900 (London: British Library, 1999; shelfmark YC.2000.a.575 ), helped me locate these accounts. From the letters of the outspoken Mary Jane Megquier, with her longing for "a line" from home and her good-natured complaints of "jiggers in [her] feet, a small insect that lays its eggs in your flesh"; to the witty journal of Helen Carpenter ("there is nothing in sight to merit the name Rocky Mountains—no rocks"); to the letters of Louise Clappe, with her sheer enchantment with "this solemnly beautiful wilderness"—these first-hand accounts are invaluable in helping me develop the voices of my female protagonists. I can’t imagine writing my novel without them.
Hannah Kohler
References: Apron Full of Gold: The Letters of Mary Jane Megquier from San Francisco, 1849-1856. Edited by Robert Glass Cleland. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1949. (Shelfmark: W.P.9803/40); California in 1851: The Letters of Dame Shirley, introduction and notes by Carl I. Wheat. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1933. 2 vols. (Shelfmark: YD.2004.a.1634 & YD.2004.a.1493); Ho for California! Women's Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library, edited and annotated by Sandra L. Myres. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 1980. (Shelfmark: 80/24701
07 October 2016
Goodbye, and stay tuned for the Cold War symposium!
The last three months of my PhD placement at the Eccles Centre here at the British Library have flown by. There is much I will miss about being here on a daily basis – and not just the very good, helpfully subsidised, staff canteen! Hopefully this blog post will shed some light on what I have been doing and prompt others to apply for the placement scheme in the future.
In all honesty, probably the greatest benefit of the placement has been working so closely with the Americas collections. Before coming to the British Library, I had what I thought was a good understanding of the collections. Having used them daily for three months, I now realise that I was only aware of a fraction of what exists. In particular, whilst I knew that there would be some useful American foreign policy documents available, it was only when I explored the Social Sciences Reading Room that I began to realise just how vast an archival collection was available. From Presidential papers through to specific primary collections on everything from Civil Rights to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there is a treasure trove of material for researchers and it’s all available without those costly flights to the United States!
[General Reference Collection OPL 973.0076]
[General Reference Collection OPL 973.03]
Aside from archival collections, there wasn’t one secondary text which I searched for that I couldn’t gain access to in under 48 hours. Finally, the digital collections which the Library has access to are unparalleled compared to any of the university libraries’ I have used. In particular, the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) and Readex Congressional Records are invaluable resources and well worth a trip to the Library to access.
The vastness of the collections led to the first project I undertook during the placement. Realising that, like me, most researchers only knew of a few of the Americas collections available, I compiled two guides to make the collections more accessible for future researchers. The first guide is on the political archival collections the Library holds, such as Presidential papers, whilst the second is a guide dedicated to the Congressional documents available. As well as telling readers how to access the collections, the guides provide examples of what materials can be found in each collection to illustrate the utility of said collection. Hopefully these guides will help fellow researchers take as much from the collections as I have.
A second project I have undertaken involved the organisation of an academic symposium. One of the Eccles Centre’s key roles is to promote the Americas collections to the academic community; often this is done through the hosting of specific events, which are sometimes linked to the Library’s public exhibitions. The British Library’s next major exhibition, which opens on 4 November, is titled ‘Maps of the Twentieth Century: Drawing the Line.’ As the American-Soviet Cold War dominated the geography of the twentieth century, this offers an excellent opportunity to host an event focusing on the geography of the Cold War. The ‘Cold War Geographies’ symposium in January 2017 will bring together international academics to explore and assess how the Cold War changed boundaries, restructured terrain and redefined concepts of space and place.
The placement at the British Library also exposed me to the practicalities of working in a large cultural institution. In particular, this occurred with a planned digital exhibition I was hoping to curate. The Library is going through some significant changes to improve its website and digital exhibitions. This meant that the three short months I was at the Library was not enough time to implement the project. The matter was also complicated by my desire to focus on twentieth century materials which brought in a whole raft of issues relating to copyright! Whilst the project did not materialise in the way I envisioned, I was able to gain access to excellent research material and develop a more practical understanding of the processes involved in curating an online exhibition within a large cultural institution
That said, I feel that the three month placement at the British Library has been an unqualified success. I have developed a far greater understanding of the collections, both for my own research and produced materials to assist others with their future research. Unexpected benefits also emerged in the form of using these blog pages to further disseminate my work, as well as taking part in Eccles Centre events which have greatly enhanced my academic networks. These new connections look likely to lead to positive future collaborations. Fortunately, the end of this placement is not the end of my affiliation with the Library. The symposium in January means that I will remain in contact for the foreseeable future, providing longer-term benefits of undertaking the placement.
From both a research and experience perspective, the PhD placement has been a highly rewarding and beneficial one. I hope that the outputs produced during this placement will be as beneficial to my fellow researchers.
Mark Eastwood
25 March 2014
Early American science
William Douglass, Boston, 1730. BL shelfmark: 1174.d.46 (3)
By the early 18th century the American colonies were well established along the eastern seaboard; indeed, their political, economic and cultural development had been remarkable. Yet without the libraries, universities and endowed institutions of Europe their capacity to participate in the new scientific thinking was distinctly disadvantaged. Nevertheless, the ideas of the Enlightenment enthused many throughout the colonies, and their observations and descriptions of natural phenomena – including earthquakes, meteors, comets and the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus – supported the greater scientific community.
The cause, prevention (for example, by inoculation) and cure of a wide variety of diseases also received much attention in colonial and early American scientific tracts, particularly the Boston smallpox epidemic in 1721 and the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic in 1793. Other topics of special interest included the climate and the natural environment, with observations about the unfamiliar weather and the challenging landscape appearing in the earliest colonial writings and being frequently linked to implications for human health and the ability to develop the land.
Boston, 1761. BL shelfmark: 8561.bb.19
A bibliography of our holdings of early American scientific writing on these and other topics may be found here.
[J.P.]
18 February 2014
Early American Women Writers
Frontispiece from Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, London 1773. BL Shelfmark: 992.a.34
A few years ago I began exploring the Library’s holdings of women writers who’d had their first work published as a single volume, under their name alone, by 1850. Recalling the solitary woman featured on my early American literature syllabus in the mid-1980s, my guess was that I would find perhaps thirty women, or forty at most. Several years later, the tally had hit more than 130 and the picture painted by their lives was fascinating.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the women came from families which, although not necessarily wealthy, valued education and were highly literate: many of them could recite the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Pope from early age. It is interesting to note that among these women there are six pairs of sisters, and two pairs of mothers and daughters.
Most of the women began their literary careers by submitting poems or short stories, often anonymously or under a pseudonym, to a local magazine or newspaper. They had little expectation of getting their work published, and even less of making a living from their writing, yet emboldened by seeing their work in print, they continued.
Yet this thrill was probably their least important impetus. Instead, most pursued publication as a means to economic security: some were young adults who had lost a parent (Anne Lynch Botta, Phoebe and Alice Cary); others were widows with children to support (Sarah Josepha Hale, Elizabeth Cheves), or wives whose husbands were either bankrupt or ill (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Anna Cora Mowatt); and some were unmarried and had to support themselves (Catherine Sedgwick). In addition, many taught or even ran their own schools, and some became magazine editors.
Having established themselves as authors, several women established successful literary salons in New York (Ann Botta, Estelle Anna Lewis), while others used their positions to support causes such as women’s healthcare (Mary Grove Nichols), prison reform (Elizabeth Oakes Smith), women’s education and property rights (Sarah Josepha Hale), domestic economy and household management (Catherine Beecher), and the abolition of slavery (Lydia Maria Child). All of the women, without exception, pushed at the boundaries traditionally prescribed for women. A bibliography of the Library’s holdings of their work, together with a selection of their biographies, can be found here.
[J.P.]
04 February 2014
Federal Writers' Project publications
Wikimedia Commons, provided by the National Archives and Records Administration
The Federal Writers’ Project was established by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1935 – six years into the Great Depression. At its peak it provided employment for more than 7,500 writers, editors, historians and other white collar workers.
Yet while its primary aim was to provide economic relief, the Project’s highly ambitious first Director, Henry Alsberg, regarded it as a means by which to vividly document America’s rapidly changing cultural landscape.
Today, the Project is perhaps best known for its American Guide Series – a set of travel guides to the 48 states, plus Alaska territory, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. Unlike traditional guides, these included not only driving tours documenting what could be found at every stop, but long photographic essays detailing the economic, cultural and historical resources of each state. All but a few of these are held by the British Library, as are many of the regional, county, city and town guides that were also produced.
Festivals of San Francisco, James Ladd Delkin [in association with] Stanford University, 1939. Printed at the Grabhorn Press. This particularly fine edition was part of a gift of 90 American imprints to the Eccles Centre in 2002 from Princeton University Library to celebrate the 90th birthday of Lady Eccles.
In addition to the guides, the Project produced ethnic studies such as The Italians of New York (shelfmark: L.70/641) and The Armenians of Massachusetts (shelfmark: YA.1991.a.15502); urban and rural folklore collections, including Nebraska Folklore (shelfmark: X.700/21082) and Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (shelfmark: 010007.h.70); and nature studies.
The Project also collected the narratives of more than 2,300 former slaves in seventeen states, although most of these remained unseen until the multi-volume The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography was published in the 1970s (refer to guide below).
The Library’s extensive holdings are listed in The Federal Writers' Project: a guide to material held at the British Library.
[J.P.]
16 January 2014
Slavery in America: slave narratives
We've enlisted our Eccles Centre colleague, Jean, as a new, regular contributor to the blog. Here, in the first of a series of posts on slavery in the U.S., she takes a look at some of the slave narratives to be found in our collections:
As Phil mentioned in his post last week, Twelve Years a Slave, the Narrative of Solomon Northup (1853; BL shelfmark 10881.b.38), is one of many American slave narratives held by the British Library. In the mid-nineteenth century, the narratives of runaway slaves provided the antislavery movement with a highly effective weapon and after the Civil War many more narratives were published, as were reminiscences by those who had spoken with slaves. These narratives provide a rich insight into the lives of the slaves, their work and relationship with their owners, their families and life in the slave quarters.
Not surprisingly, descriptions of the cruelty endured by the slaves – whipping, ear-cropping, the wearing of iron collars and extended isolation – feature prominently in these works. Whilst some of those who escaped this brutal existence did so alone, others were helped by the ‘Underground Railroad’, an extraordinary network involving thousands of individuals, including many former slaves, who were willing to break the law and/or endanger their own lives by feeding, hiding and disguising slaves en route to freedom.
The Narrative of Henry Box Brown ([1849]; shelfmark: 10882.b.35.(3)) outlines the journey of one of those helped by the Railroad. So-called because he escaped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia in a box measuring three feet one inch long, two feet wide and two feet six inches deep, Brown chose to escape from his master not because he was physically abused but because, after his wife and children were sold to another owner, ‘slavery now had no mitigating circumstances, to lessen the bitterness of its cup of woe.’ It has been estimated that more than a third of slave families were broken up by the sale of one or more family member as a result of their masters’ debts, bankruptcy, relocation or death. Many slave narratives echo Brown’s assertion that these separations ‘were more dreadful to all of us than a large number of lashes inflicted on us daily’.
The Narrative of Henry Box Brown [1849]; shelfmark: 10882.b.35.(3)
Until 1850, fugitive slaves who successfully made it to the northern states were relatively secure. Yet the Fugitive Slave Law changed all this. In his narrative, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years A Freeman (1859; shelfmark: 10880.bb.15), Austin Steward describes how he witnessed the dreadful consequences of this Law: as he travelled by steamship down the Hudson River, a runaway slave who had been recaptured by ‘a human blood hound’ and returned to his ‘avaricious and tyrannical master’ attempted suicide in front of Steward, rather than face returning home to his former life.
Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years A Freeman, 1859; shelfmark: 10880.bb.15
While many fugitive slaves later helped facilitate the escape of others, a large number played a crucial role as abolitionist agents and orators. The most famous of these undoubtedly is Frederick Douglass whose first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (shelfmark: 1452.b.32), was published in 1845.
The powerful contemporary insight into the ‘peculiar institution’ provided by these narratives is supplemented by that of journals and tracts published by abolitionist societies, as well as religious sermons, political speeches, newspaper articles and advertisements, travellers reports and works of fiction and these will be highlighted in my next two blogposts. All blogs are based on 'Slavery and Antislavery in the United States of America', The British Library Journal, Vol.23 (1), Spring, 1997. Sixty slave narratives published before 1866 can be found in American Slavery: Pre-1866 Imprints (print copy also at shelfmark: 2725.e.2858).
[J.P.]
25 September 2012
Waiting for the scroll: On the Road is coming
It’s been a busy month for all of Team Americas, with much of my and Matt’s time in particular taken up with activities relating to our forthcoming exhibition On the Road: Jack Kerouac's manuscript scroll. Yes, we’re excited at the prospect of the arrival next week of Jim ('keeper of the scroll') with the typed manuscript, which will exhibited from 4 October until 27 December in our newly re-launched Folio Society Gallery in the Library's Front Hall.
The scroll will be taking centre stage in a specially designed 16 metre case so we decided that the accompanying BL material should focus on our sound recordings and Steve has put together a great ‘soundtrack’ to the scroll and the Beat Generation. You will be able to hear several contributions from Kerouac, including an excerpt of On the Road, jazz recordings which echo references in the novel, plus Allen Ginsberg reads Howl, and there are contributions by William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Joyce Johnson, Carolyn Cassady et al. Oh, and there’s Neal Cassady reading Proust too!
And the exhibition should look great, thanks to Fiona’s design and the generosity of Carolyn Cassady, the Allen Ginsberg Estate and the Kerouac Estate in letting us reproduce some wonderful images. So, schedule your visit now. The exhibition is free and there’s also an excellent events programme, including a preview screening of Walter Salles’ new movie.
Regular readers of the blog will know that we’ve highlighted our sound recordings relating to the beats before, but if you’re a new reader, here’s the link to a bibliography Steve put together some years ago. We also have really strong printed collections, and here’s a bibliography of those (be warned, it’s BIG). Picking just a few of these books to put in the exhibition was very difficult so we’ve opted for the holy trinity of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, with just a couple of others.
Apart from writing Kerouac labels, I was also involved in our Inspired by Artists’ Books event on 4 September, at which we showcased some of our wonderful artists’ books and fine press holdings (here’s Fran’s blog on the event). I suppose it was inevitable that my brain would end up connecting the 2 themes so I started to think about whether we had any beat-related books which fall in to this category. Of course we do, and I featured Bill Burroughs and David Bradshaw’s Propagation Hazard at the event. But for this blog, I’ve chosen a Kerouac title. It’s by Mark McMurray, a colleague who is Curator of Special Collections and University Archivist at St. Lawrence University, teaches courses on the history of the book and printing, and who set up his own Caliban Press in 1985 - how he finds the time I don’t know! Anyway, Mark has made a couple of jazz-related titles, small, but perfectly formed and lovingly made, and here is an image of his History of Bop by Jack Kerouac.
Americas and Oceania Collections blog recent posts
- Verse and Reverse: Uncovering the work of the Toronto Women’s Press Club
- Black Theatre Makers: Una Marson
- The British Library’s Canadian Copyright Collection: An Introduction
- E-Resources on European Colonization in the Americas to c.1650
- Bibliographic E-resources: or, how to give up footnote-chasing forever...
- US Fine Presses: a new guide to the Library's holdings
- Happy birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- US & Canadian Newspapers and Magazines at the British Library
- Resources for engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contemporary culture and politics.
- Women in the California Gold Rush
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