Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Special Collections Research Center

The University of Chicago Library invites applications for short-term research fellowships. Any visiting researcher residing more than 100 miles from Chicago, and whose project requires on-site consultation of University of Chicago Library collections, primarily archives, manuscripts or printed materials in the Special Collections Research Center, is eligible. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program. Applications in the fields of late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century physics or physical chemistry, or nineteenth-century classical opera, will receive special consideration.

The deadline for applications is March 5, 2012. Notice of awards will be made by April 23, 2012, for use between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013.

Applicants must provide the following information:

  • A cover letter (not to exceed one page) including the project title, a brief summary. estimated dates of on-site research; and a budget for travel, living, and research expenses during the period of on-site research
  • A research proposal not to exceed three double-spaced pages. Applicants should address specifically the relationship between their proposed project and the primary sources to be consulted in the Special Collections Research Center
  • A curriculum vitae of no longer than two pages
  • Two letters of support from academic or other scholars. References may be sent with the application or separately.

Submit application in one electronic file to:
scrcfellowship@uchicago.edu

Electronic letters of reference are preferred; print letters can be sent to:

Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships
Special Collections Research Center
The University of Chicago Library

1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

For additional information contact schreyer@uchicago.edu.

Some Collections Unavailable

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Special Collections Research Center

Please note that some collections housed in the Special Collections Research Center are inaccessible while we are loading them into Mansueto Library. Please click our Unavailable Collections link to see which collections and boxes are not accessible during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please feel free to contact us with any questions about collections and their availability.

Additionally, we are currently unable to retrieve materials on Saturdays from our University of Chicago Press Imprint and Linckesche Leihbibliothek Collections and oversized materials from any collection where the call number is preceded by the letters “ff”. We apologize for any inconvenience.

SCRC Sources Used in Emilia Mickevicius’s Award-Winning BA Paper

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Special Collections Research Center

Men of Santa Anna, The Mexican Portfolio, no. 5, 1933

Emilia (Emmy) Mickevicius, a fourth-year student in the College, has been awarded the Robert and Joan Feitler Prize for Art History by the Department of Art History. The prize is given for the outstanding Bachelor of Arts paper by a senior student.

Ms. Mickevicius’s work is titled “Paul Strand’s Peopled Landscapes: Re-reading Form and Politics in The Mexican Portfolio and Beyond.” She explains that “When I set out to do my research, I thought what remained to be illuminated in Strand’s oeuvre was the relationship between his still and moving images of the 1930s, for example, how they informed one another to forge what I believe became his distinctive political aesthetic. What I found was that The Mexican Portfolio in particular, far from being incongruous within Strand’s career as a modern photographer, both functions as showcase for his efforts to formulate this new aesthetic, and prefigures his cultural studies and films in years to come.”

Near Satillo, The Mexican Portfolio, no. 1, 1932

Emmy notes that she settled on her topic before realizing the Special Collections Research Center, where she also works in the digitization unit, has a rare copy of the first edition of The Mexican Portfolio (250 were printed, under the title Photographs of Mexico, before another 1000 copies were printed again in 1967). As she puts it, “Imagine how excited I was when I realized that my main object of study was held only a few blocks away from my apartment!”

Strand’s exemplary early work has become canonical in the history of modern American photography and modernism as a whole. He is usually associated with the earlier prints he made under the mentorship of Alfred Stieglitz in the mid-1910s, but in the 1930s, shifted from geometrically ordered, singular prints to films and to cultural “portraits” in the form of portfolios and books. The projects Strand completed in Mexico in particular signify the fruition of an investment in social causes sparked earlier in his career. His 1933 photographs of the native Tarascan people marked his return to the human figure, a subject he had largely shied away from for the better part of the 1920s. His film Redes (The Wave) was also the first of his socially motivated films, a venture he would continue upon his return to the United States in the later part of that decade.

2012 Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellows Named

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Special Collections Research Center

Fourteen scholars have been awarded Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships for use between January 1 and December 31, 2012.  The short-term grants provide support for visiting researchers; this year’s group will consult printed and archival collections in a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, the history of medicine, sociology, literature, rhetoric, and history. Among the projects are a biography of Allison Davis, the work of Sol Tax, late eighteenth-century Kentucky politics, the black campus movement from 1965 to 1972, and changing attitudes to married women’s work.

Two of the scholars were named to honor past University of Chicago Library curators:  Daniel Ellis, Assistant Professor, Department of English, St. Bonaventure University, will consult the Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of Court and Manorial Documents for a study of “The Tudor Statesman at Home: Political Orators and the Rhetoric of Domesticity.” He will be the Hans Lenneberg Fellow in honor of the Library’s distinguished Music Librarian. Adam Shapiro, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will study William Paley’s thought and writings from the late eighteenth-century to the present day, will be the Robert Rosenthal Fellow, named after the founding curator of Special Collections.  Click here for a full list of awards.