Category Archives: Hay

Commencement Forum | Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict

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Join the Brown University Library for “Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict,” a Commencement Forum on Saturday, May 27 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. in the Willis Reading Room at the John Hay Library.

Free and open to the public. In-person only.

The curatorial team and experts will explore Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict, the current Library exhibition created in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973) through materials held in the Hay Library special collections. Acknowledging the critical shift in American law and the diverse emotions powerfully associated with the sudden change, the panel discussion, like the display, intends to provoke thought and inquiry rather than present definitive truths.

More information about the exhibit

Commencement Forum | Care & Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health

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Join the Brown University Library and the Warren Alpert Medical School for “Care & Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health,” a Commencement Forum on Saturday, May 27 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. in the Willis Reading Room at the John Hay Library.

Free and open to the public.

Hybrid event: in-person and live streamed at http://bit.ly/library-forum-23-care-and-custody.

Commencement Forum

In this panel discussion sponsored by the Brown University Library and the Warren Alpert Medical School’s celebration of 50 Years of Medicine, Brown faculty will discuss the history of psychiatry in Rhode Island and the work they have done in this field, including the history and politics of mental health systems, representations of mental health in society, and mental health issues related to the carceral state. Discussion will explore how and whether society has moved away from custodial forms of treatment for people with mental health conditions. Attendees will be invited to view the corresponding exhibit at the Rockefeller Library.

Speakers:

  • Christine Montross, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
  • Jennifer Lambe, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History
  • Josiah “Jody” Rich, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
  • Moderator: Leo Lovemore, Librarian for History, Society, and Culture

Care & Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health
A traveling exhibition from the National Library of Medicine, hosted at the Warren Alpert Medical School, May 8 – June 17 2023

This traveling banner exhibition and companion website explores the treatment of people with mental health conditions throughout history, especially in the United States, bringing to light the tension that has existed between care and custody. Physicians, advocates, families, and government agencies have all contributed to the shaping of mental health policies. Care and Custody examines this history to understand how the country has moved away from custodial forms of treatment, toward more inclusive approaches, and worked to protect the rights of people with mental health conditions.

Visit the Brown University Library Guide to the exhibit for more information and exploration.

The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition and companion website, in conjunction with Public Health Historian and Educator, Anne E. Parsons, PhD (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

Exhibit l Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict

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Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict text with images of a judges gavel and uterus in the background.

John Hay Library Exhibit Reflects on Two Centuries of Debate over Abortion

Created in response to the Dobbs decision, Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict draws on Brown’s special collections to present open-ended observations on the commonality, history, and debate surrounding abortion in the United States and Rhode Island.

Whether in a court of law, at a protest, or over the kitchen table, abortion rivals any other subject for its capacity to elicit intense emotions and fervent arguments on both sides of the issue. Contemporary society’s shorthand terms for each side — “pro-life” and “pro-choice” — are themselves loaded with the political and moral beliefs that have fueled two centuries of debate over a procedure that dates back millennia.

Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict

In the John Hay Library’s exhibit, Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict, a curatorial team consisting of Brown faculty, graduate students, and medical practitioners of different genders, backgrounds, religions, and ages, as well as different ideological beliefs on abortion, offer original scholarly commentary on artifacts drawn from the Hay Library’s outstanding trove of special collections. With particularly strong holdings in the history of medicine, feminism, political extremism, and collections specific to Rhode Island, the Hay Library is well suited to produce an exhibit on the topic of abortion. According to Amanda E. Strauss, Associate University Librarian and Director of the John Hay Library:

Our strong history of medicine collections and our collecting focus on the interplay between ideology and social and political power provide unique insight into this universal topic. Exhibitions like this are one of the ways in which the Hay Library’s extraordinary collections can be drawn upon to contextualize and deepen understanding of history and current events as well as to put forth new knowledge that we hope will lead to further scholarship.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn nearly five decades of the constitutional right to obtain an abortion, previously protected by law through the 1973 court decision Roe v. Wade. A vast number of people have been deeply impacted by the decision and its subsequent, ongoing outcomes. Many Brown students and faculty members immersed themselves in thought, conversation, and research about reproductive rights and the widespread role abortion has played in the human experience, including academic exploration of the topic in the Hay Library’s special collections. In response to this interest, the curatorial staff altered its exhibition schedule to make room for an installation in the main gallery that would provide space for scholarly considerations of abortion’s history, controversy, and, in particular, its role in the lives of countless ordinary people, especially women.

Exhibit Artifacts

Exhibit viewers will see artifacts like a set of wrought iron forceps made in Rhode Island in the early 1800s when cesarean section was generally too risky to consider; photographs of pro-life and pro-choice protestors at public rallies; documents from organizations like “Guidelines for Picketing” by Citizens Concerned For Human Life and a Planned Parenthood flier entitled, “A Closer Look at the Violent Opposition”; poetry, editorial letters, and newspaper articles; the 1868 influential publication, Criminal Abortion; Its Nature, Its Evidence, and Its Law by Dr. Horatio R. Storer; and the 1970s booklet Women vs. Rhode Island: Repeal Abortion Laws from the Rhode Island Coalition to Repeal Abortion Laws, a Brown University feminist group.

All of the objects on display are part of the historical record from two centuries of the lived experiences of both prominent and ordinary people in the U.S. and Rhode Island, who were associated with abortion in myriad ways, and who held differing beliefs. While the curatorial team’s focus has been to objectively present the issue of abortion legalization, they acknowledge that with a subject that impacts the lives of so many, complete objectivity is a difficult task. By foregrounding the long and often unacknowledged history of abortion that led up to the Dobbs ruling and the diverse, powerful emotions that fueled this history, the team’s intention with Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict is to provoke thought, discussion, and inquiry rather than present definitive truths. 

Content Warning and Support

Please note: This exhibit includes information and images related to birthing and abortion.

For Brown University Students who need support, please contact Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) at 401-863-3476; help is available 24/7 and 365 days/year. 

Exhibit Dates

Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict will run in the John Hay Library’s main exhibition gallery from May 11 to August 24, 2023. 

Accessing the Exhibit

Building hours and more information about Brown University Special Collections can be found on the John Hay Library’s website.

Related Events

Exhibit Opening Reception
Date and Time: Thursday, May 11, 2023 from 4 – 5:30 p.m.
Location: John Hay Library

Commencement Forum: “Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Conflict” Exhibition Panel Discussion
Date & Time: Saturday, May 27, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Location: John Hay Library, Willis Reading Room

Contextualizing Taíno Collections | Opening of Student-Curated Exhibition

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Left: Carved stone amulet in a human-like form, ca. 1200–1500 CE (Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology 2012-31-1). Right: Cover of Directorio comercial, industrial y turístico, ca. 1970 (John Hay Library HF3336 .D57).

Join the John Hay Library and Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology for the opening of the student-curated exhibit, Contextualizing Taíno Collections, on Thursday, May 4 from 6 – 7:30 p.m. in the Willis Reading Room of the John Hay Library.

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served after the speaking program.

The event will feature a keynote presentation by Amanda Guzmán, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Trinity College.

Amanda Guzmán

Amanda Guzmán is an anthropological archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the field of museum anthropology with a focus on the history of collecting and exhibiting Puerto Rico at the intersection of issues of intercultural representation and national identity formation. In the context of Puerto Rico’s current environmental and economic uncertainty, her research traces understudied museum acquisition narratives documenting the island’s historical material relations of belonging and exclusion with the U.S. mainland.

Amanda has a demonstrated background handling and interpreting object and archival material in diverse collection-holding cultural institutions. She applies her collections experience as well as her commitment to working with and for multiple publics to her object-based inquiry teaching practice that privileges a more equitable, co-production of knowledge in the classroom through accessible engagement in cultural work. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Pre-Columbian Society of New York, as an Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship Mentor for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, and a Bronx Council on the Arts grant panelist.

Contextualizing Taíno Collections Exhibit

In this exhibit, student curators share their work to put a new donation of ancient Caribbean artifacts into cultural, historical, political, and contemporary contexts. First peoples of many Caribbean islands developed shared beliefs and practices, which today we call Taíno culture. People practicing this culture were historically erased from Caribbean stories. To make sense of Taíno artifacts recently donated to Brown University, the exhibit focuses on them instead. The exhibit shares collections from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and John Hay Library.

The exhibit is installed in the Willis Reading Room at the John Hay Library and will run from May 4, 2023 – May 26, 2024.

Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848 – 1849 with David Kertzer

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Join David Kertzer, Paul R. Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies; Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications; Massimo Riva, Professor of Italian Studies; and Deidre Lynch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, for a born-digital book presentation on Tuesday, April 25 from 4 – 5 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library.

RSVP for in-person attendance requested to [email protected].

Join on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/98111841198

Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848 – 1849

Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution revolves around a trove of the titular American diplomat’s recently rediscovered correspondence—one of the most important collections of original manuscripts linked to the Roman Revolution found outside of Italy (Brown was U.S. consul when Pope Pius IX fled Rome). The interactive publication permits a deeper understanding of the historical significance of the Nicholas Brown papers, housed at the John Hay Library.

David Kertzer

David Kertzer joined Brown in 1992 as Paul Dupee, Jr., University Professor of Social Science. A Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies, he was appointed Provost in 2006, serving in that role until 2011. Kertzer founded and directed the Anthropological Demography program. He was also founding director of the Politics, Culture, and Identity research program of the Watson Institute for International Studies.

A Brown alumnus (A.B., 1969), Kertzer received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University in 1974. He was William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at Bowdoin College from 1989 to 1992. Kertzer twice won the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies for the best book in Italian history. Kertzer co-founded and for a decade co-edited the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. He served as president of the Social Science History Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and co-edited the book series New Perspectives on Anthropological and Social Demography for Cambridge University Press. His book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997 and is published in 17 languages. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His book, The Pope and Mussolini, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2015. His most recent book, The Pope at War (2022), tells the story of Pope Pius XII’s relations with Mussolini and Hitler during the Second World War.

About Brown University Digital Publications

Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.

Reduced Access at John Hay Library, Summer 2023

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North side, accessible entrance at the John Hay Library

This summer, the windows at the John Hay Library will be replaced, and there will also be smaller projects to update spaces above the first floor. As a result of this facilities work, there will be changes to the Hay’s hours and access. Please refer to the John Hay Library website for any changes to our hours and our holiday schedule.

Building-wide

May 31 – September 5

  • The Hay will be open Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
  • Only the first floor will be open to patrons.

July 24 – September 1

  • The front doors will be inaccessible (emergency exit only).
  • Patrons will need to use the north side, accessible entrance.

Gildor Family Special Collections Reading Room

May 29 – June 4

The special collections reading room will be closed.

June 5 – September 5

The special collections reading room will be open on this schedule by reservation only. Please see Visiting the Brown University Special Collections for information about scheduling a reading room appointment.

  • Monday, Tuesday, Friday: 1 – 5 p.m.
  • Wednesday, Thursday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Willis Reading Room

The Willis Reading Room will remain open Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Bopp, Bruhn, Lownes Rooms

The Bopp Room (3rd floor), Lownes Room (2nd floor), and Bruhn Room (2nd floor) will be unavailable from May 29 – September 5.

Classroom Requests

Please place requests for classes through the Brown University Library Instruction Request Form.  Some class sessions may be held in the Special Collections Reading Room, depending on the room schedule, size of the class, and staff availability.

Third Floor

The third floor of the John Hay Library will be closed from May 29 – September 5, including the Anne S. K. Brown Military Gallery.

Black Joy Day at the John Hay Library – Feb. 15

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The John Hay Library will host its first celebration of Black Joy Day on Wednesday, February 15. The Hay invites the Brown community and members of the public to enjoy the full day of activities.

Schedule of events:

  • 9 – 10 a.m. – Guided Meditation by Jasmine Johnson (Black Zen co-founder), one of the few Black meditation experts (Lownes Room, 2nd floor)
  • 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. – Special Collections Display (Gildor Family Special Collections Reading Room, 1st floor)
  • Soulfood bites (snacks and drinks) (Lobby, 1st floor)
  • 12 – 1 p.m. – “Celebrating the Joy in Your Journey” presentation by Janelle Clarke-Holley, Strategic Coach (Lownes Room, 2nd floor)
  • 1 – 1:15 p.m. – Performance by Becky Bass, Vocalist and Steel Drummer (Willis Reading Room, 1st floor)
  • 1:15 – 3 p.m. – DJ D-Wun spinning (Willis Reading Room, 1st floor)
  • Light refreshments
  • 4 – 5 p.m. – Poetry and Entertainment: Amanda Shea, Rhode Island Black Storytellers, and others (Willis Reading Room, 1st floor)
  • 5 – 6 p.m. – Clean Comedy Showcase: Dale Cover, Hay Are Adams, Tooky Kavanagh, Jamie Aird (Willis Reading Room, 1st floor)
  • 7 – 8:15 p.m. – “The Rhythms of Black Joy” – Panel Discussion (Englander Studio, Granoff Center). Join artists and scholar-practitioners Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, Becci Davis, Kiana Murphy, and Deirdre Braz for a conversation about how they engage the spirit of Black Joy in their creative and scholarly practices. This program has been organized by the Black Music Lab at the Brown Arts Institute. (Note: This event takes place at the Granoff Center for the Arts, 154 Angell Street, not the John Hay Library.)

Digitization and Special Collections: Access, Equity, and Preservation

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Virtual reality view of the Garibaldi Panorama

Providing digital access to distinctive scholarly materials in our collections continues to grow in importance as part of the Library’s mission. For example, as reported previously, recent grants are enabling us to digitize a significant portion of the vast Hall-Hoag Collection of Extremist and Dissenting Propaganda, which provides critical insights for understanding our times. Indeed, this may be the largest digitization project of contemporary Archival materials; when it is finished, we will have scanned around 900,000 pages of materials from 1950 to 1999.

Digitization allows students and scholars working in any location to view rare materials without incurring the financial and other burdens of traveling to consult them on-site. Moreover, where digital access to materials is available, it also helps reduce handling of the original objects and contributes to their preservation. In the last three years, scanning activity at the Hay has generated around a terabyte of data.

Patrons who need scans of particular collection items that are not already digitized may submit requests through the Hay’s Aeon system. (Any researcher can do this — as a Carnegie Library, the Hay is open to the public.) Generally, we try to limit scan requests to a maximum of five folders or 300 to 400 pages so that we can be equitable among patrons. Depending on the material, a consultation with the Library’s Collections Care staff may take place to determine if there are preservation or handling concerns that may limit what is possible. 

The staff members who complete the image capture of the physical object in order to create the digital files possess a wide range of specialized skills including building custom supports for fragile materials and three dimensional objects as well as operating complex software and equipment in the Library’s camera room and on location. Lindsay Elgin, Senior Library Technologist, wrote “A more typical look at the camera room” about photographing an album of watercolor prints from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Gallery. Lindsay also photographed the narwhal tusk from the 2015 The Unicorn Found: Science, Literature, and the Arts exhibit at the John Hay Library (photo above). You can read more about that shoot in Lindsay’s blog post, “The Unicorn of the Sea Comes to Brown.”

To facilitate greater access to our materials, we have removed any fees associated with digitization or scanning.

We ask patrons to allow four to six weeks for scanning requests to be completed, but we often turn them around quicker than that. Material requested by Brown instructors for their courses are given priority. To facilitate greater access to our materials, we have removed any fees associated with digitization or scanning. This allows researchers of all backgrounds to begin their research without having to incur costs and also allows researchers to start doing preliminary research without needing to travel to Providence. Over the past 12 months, the Hay has scanned over 50,000 pages for patrons. The Martha Dickinson Bianchi papers (Ms. 2010.046) collection and the Hortense J. Spillers papers, 1966-1995 are examples of collections from which numerous researchers have requested a significant amount of scanned material over the past couple of years.  

The Hay also digitizes material at high resolution to meet preservation needs or in response to requests for exhibitions. Such requests have generated about 3.5 terabytes of digital files. In both cases, high-quality scans provide substitutes for original materials that are too fragile to be handled directly or displayed. 

High resolution scans also serve the needs of scholars creating digital projects requiring the display and study of collection items. For example, Hay staff are currently assisting with the “Sounding Spirit” project being developed at Emory University. Approximately 200 items from the Hay’s collection are being digitized, and the scans will ultimately be hosted on the project’s website and will also be available through Brown’s own digital repository. Scanning is not simply a mechanical process. The Library’s staff experts process and review all of the digital files for quality and edit them to create master files of all of the images. 

Indeed, staff members at the John Hay Library are involved at every step of the digitization process, lending their expertise to researchers in need of consultation about the materials to transporting material to be digitized from the Library Annex to photographing fragile materials and non-print objects and scanning print materials to reviewing and delivering digital files to our patrons. We are dedicated to supporting scholarship at Brown and beyond and recognize the importance of extending the reach of Brown’s incredible special collections materials and look forward to continuing our work to make these items digitally available to researchers around the world.

Maia Weinstock ’99 Presents CARBON QUEEN: The Life of Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Nanoscience Innovator

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Join the John Hay Library on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 for a book talk by Maia Weinstock ’99, author of Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus (MIT Press, 2022). The talk will take place from 1 – 1:45 p.m. in the Lownes Room* of the John Hay Library, followed by Q&A with a book signing and reception at 2:30 p.m.

Mildred Dressehaus

Maia Weinstock ’99, author of Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus (MIT Press, 2022), will present on the life and work of the extraordinary physicist, electrical engineer, and materials scientist Millie Dresselhaus (1930-2017). As a girl in New York City in the 1940s, Dresselhaus was taught that there were only three career options open to women: secretary, nurse, or teacher. But sneaking into museums, purchasing three-cent copies of National Geographic, and devouring books on the history of science ignited in Dresselhaus a passion for inquiry. Dresselhaus defied expectations and forged a career in solid-state physics, making highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials. In so doing, she helped reshape our world in countless ways — from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a path-breaking role model for underrepresented individuals in science and engineering and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague.

Maia Weinstock ’99

Maia Weinstock ’99

Maia Weinstock is an editor, writer, and producer of science, academic, and children’s media. Deputy editorial director at MIT News, Maia previously served as the editorial director at BrainPOP, and as a staff member at Discover, SPACE.com, Aviation Week & Space Technology, and Scholastic’s Science World. Maia writes often on the history of women in STEM and on diversity in STEM media. She is also internationally known for her custom LEGO projects including Women of NASA, a LEGO Ideas-winning and Amazon best-selling toy, and Women of Computing, a LEGO Ideas finalist. Maia has also been an MIT lecturer on the history of women in STEM and led efforts to increase the participation and representation of women on Wikipedia.

Accessibility

*The Lownes Room is located on the second floor, up two flights of stairs. Please contact [email protected] if you will need elevator access, which requires staff accompaniment.

Please reach out to Lizette as far in advance of the event as possible for this or any other accommodations that will enable you to attend and enjoy the event. Thank you.

John Hay Library Receives Grants to Digitize Materials of Dissenting U.S. Politics

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Two grants totaling $1.75M will facilitate access to astonishing materials in the Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda

Through its Divided America project, the John Hay Library will digitize and make available material representing extremes of political thought from 1946 through the 1990s in the United States. With a $250,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission’s Access to Historical Records: Major Initiatives program and a $1.5 million grant from the Arcadia Fund, the project will take on the digitization of about three-fourths of the holdings in the Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda. Consisting of nearly 200,000 individual items from over 5,000 organizations, the Hall-Hoag Collection is the country’s largest research collection documenting the ideas and activities of dissenting right- and left-wing U.S. groups, offering a trove of material that will help scholars and journalists further understand our current political moment. 

National Archives logo

The grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) will support the digitization efforts of material in Hall-Hoag that focuses on conservative groups based in rural, urban, and suburban areas, with an emphasis on highly localized ephemeral material. As part of the grant, the Library will fund personnel, outreach, and dissemination activities associated with scholarly study of the materials, which will be fully accessible by historians, researchers, and the general public. The Library will also partner with an interdisciplinary group of faculty to host a publicly-accessible virtual symposium that will draw connections between the newly digitized content and the divisive political landscape in the United States. This rich set of documents includes militant movements, anti-communism, Evangelical or other right-aligned religious bodies, and issue-focused mobilization around matters of public health, gun rights, immigration, and “right-to-work” claims. 

Archival material from the radical right is particularly rare and vulnerable owing in part to the fact that groups and individuals from these movements often distrust universities and are reluctant to donate material. Although the political right has had a transformative effect on American social and political life since World War II, only four other universities have prominent (albeit considerably smaller) holdings in this area. These materials capture a trajectory within American politics that has largely been ignored within academia even as it has risen to the fore within popular politics and American governance over the past several decades. This lapse has contributed to the current bifurcation within American politics, insofar as it has deprived scholars of a means for studying the roots of post-WWII Conservatism in all of its dimensions in the same way that scholars have long been able to study the political Left. 

With the monies provided through the Arcadia Fund grant, the Divided America project will digitize a further significant portion of the Hall-Hoag Collection. Measuring 1,655 linear feet, the Hall-Hoag collection is the one of the largest of Brown University’s manuscript collections. It was amassed by Gordon Hall, a young veteran of the World War II Pacific Theater, who first encountered the printed propaganda issued by domestic hate-your-neighbor organizations in the late 1940’s. Grace Hoag, an alumna of Smith College, began to collaborate with Hall in the 1960’s, and assisted with the research and expanding the collection beyond its initial emphasis. 

Naoko Shibusawa, Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of American Studies, has worked extensively with the Hall-Hoag Collection and states:

I frequently refer both graduate and undergraduate students to the Hall-Hoag Collection. Students have been drawn to studying conservative and radical right sources as much as liberal and radical left sources. The materials in the Hall-Hoag Collection have allowed them to better understand the ideologies and worldviews that continue to animate political divisions today.

She goes on to say that “the full potential of this vast and compelling collection has barely been tapped. I think others interested in more contemporary U.S. history would be thrilled to have this collection easily accessible for their students, as well as for their own scholarship.” Currently, Professor Shibusawa is working with a student whose thesis draws largely from Hall-Hoag’s materials of incarcerated, radical left Indigenous women from the 1970s.

The collection provides a deep and nuanced look at American politics and political culture from the end of World War II to the eve of the September 11 attacks. Unparalleled in breadth and depth, Hall-Hoag is unique for aggregating material from organizations with faint, if any, traces in the archival record. According to Joseph S. Meisel, Joukowsky Family University Librarian, “Making Brown’s outstanding collection of these important documentary materials more widely available through digitization will be an incredible boon for researchers and students of American politics, and shed new light on the development of important trends that have shaped our national discourse and public life.”

The Divided America project represents one facet of the John Hay Library’s deep commitment to promoting socially engaged scholarship by documenting a wide array of political, social, and religious ideologies so as to shed light on the complex ways in which ideology influences social and political power structures. Amanda E. Strauss, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the John Hay Library notes:

The Library is deeply grateful to NHPRC and the Arcadia Fund for this funding, which will allow us to provide free digital access to critically important historical materials for scholars, students, and the public who are interested in studying the evolution of of political ideologies in the United States. This material allows a rare glimpse into the transmission of ideas among issues-focused conservative and liberal groups and will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these important histories.

As one of the Library’s premier collections, the Hall-Hoag Collection forms the anchor for the strategic collecting initiative Ideology & Power, which seeks to provide coherence and promote public access to more than 200 years of original material that documents the evolution of political, social, and religious ideologies in the United States. The Hall-Hoag Collection is the country’s largest research compilation of materials produced by both right- and left-wing American extremist groups. 

At the conclusion of the three and a half year Divided America project, nearly 240,000 pages of material will be digitized and made available through the Brown Digital Repository.