#mudd library

Throwback Thursday: These are the architect’s drawings of Mudd Library before it was constructed, ca. 1974. (Mudd Library is the home to the University Archives of the Princeton University Library, as well as the Public Policy Papers. The posts you see here on Tumblr all come from Mudd.)

This Sunday Edition we are featuring books focusing on the First National Women’s Rights Convention which was held in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 23-24,1850. While both men and women participated in this convention, it was held primarily to discuss women’s role in society and create concrete solutions to assure equal rights for women. These conventions served as a way to create political and social platforms, including mobilizing support of women’s suffrage. Over the course of 13 years, from 1850-1863, there were eleven Conventions in the Midwest and on the East Coast attended by thousands of people in total. 

Help us celebrate the 169th anniversary of the First National Women’s Rights Convention by checking out our featured books from our collections. The books largely highlight the contributions of Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, both Oberlin graduates who went on to play large roles in advocating for women’s rights. Lucy Stone (1818-1893) graduated from Oberlin in 1847 and was an outspoken suffragist and abolitionist and played a large role in organizing the First Convention. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921), Oberlin graduate of 1850, was also a part of the first generation of suffragists and gave a speech at the First Convention. Blackwell and Stone collaborated on many fronts, co-founding the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. Learn about them and more by checking out our books on display in Mudd Center. These are: Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement by Joelle Million; Lucy Stone: an Unapologetic Life by Sally McMillen; and, Soul Mates: the Oberlin Correspondence of Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, 1846-1850 and Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 both by Carol Lasser and Marlene Merrill. Happy reading!

This Sunday we are featuring books from our Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History series. This series, established in 1985 as the Women in American History series, seeks to publish scholarship that “address the varieties of American women's experiences across race, region, class, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and other categories of identity and difference. The series editors welcome projects that are explicitly comparative in focus and those that provide in-depth explorations of particular groups, institutions, events, and eras.” We are featuring five books from our collections: Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C by Treva B. Lindsey; Reshaping Women's History: Voices of Nontraditional Women Historians edited by Julie A. Gallagher and Barbara Winslow; Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality by Marcia Walker-McWilliams; Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century by Karissa Haugeberg; and, Lost in the USA: American Identity from the Promise Keepers to the Million Mom March by Deborah Gray. These incredible books that showcase nontraditional histories will be on display at Mudd Center! Come by to check one out or take a look at our series online! 

This week’s Sunday Edition focuses on five women in American politics pre and post suffrage. Even before women had the right to vote, women ran for United States President. Nominated by the Equal Rights Party, Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was the first woman to run for President of the U.S. for the 1872 election. Forty-eight years before the adoption of the 19th Amendment! Woodhull was very radical for her time--she was an outspoken suffragist and supporter of spiritualist movements and free love. To learn more about her read Other Powers: the Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith. Belva Lockwood (1830-1917) ran for President pre-suffrage as well. While Woodhull was the first female Presidential nominee, Lockwood was the first woman to appear on official ballots. Lockwood ran for president through the National Equal Rights Party which supported women’s rights. To learn more about her personal and political careers, check out Belva Lockwood: the Woman who would be President by Jill Norgren. Although neither of these women made it very far, their political feats are incredibly significant. 

Many women were also elected to public office, although none held the title of U.S. President. Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), for instance, was the first woman elected to Congress, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1941 to 1942. She was a known pacifist, being the only legislator to vote against the U.S.’ participation in both World Wars. Her biography, Jeannette Rankin, America's Conscience by Norma Smith, is on display. After women were granted the right to vote in 1920, more women began to run for U.S. President. As a candidate for the Republican nomination, in 1964 Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995), became the first woman to seek the presidential nomination of a major political party. Smith was the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress and was one of the earliest critics of McCarthyism. To learn more about her check out No Place for a Woman: a Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith by Janann Sherman. Finally, it is crucial to highlight Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), who, in 1972, became not only the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's nomination but also the first black candidate for a major party's presidential nomination. Learn more about her hardships and triumphs in her autobiography, The Good Fight. Although none of these women ultimately became U.S. President, we hope to soon see our first female President! All books mentioned are on display in Mudd Center and are available to be checked out, happy reading! 

This Sunday we are celebrating Banned Books Week by featuring writings by women that have been banned or challenged. The Banned Books Week Coalition defines challenging a book as an attempt to restrict materials or services based on content, while banning a book is the removal of materials or cancellation of services based on content. These books have been  challenged or banned for expressing controversial political opinions (Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi); addressing gender identity and transness (I am Jazz! by Jessica Herthel); using offensive language and being sexually explicit (The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston); homosexuality (The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall); equating science and religion (A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’engle); immoral and scandalous female behavior (The Awakening by Kate Chopin); attacking of dominant sexual order (The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir); and, addressing legacies of slavery and racism (Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison). There are so many more reasons why books are consistently being banned and challenged, especially those written by female authors. Pick up one of these previously banned or challenged books and celebrate women in literature and our freedom to read.

This week we are choosing to highlight suffrage movements of the West, particularly in California. In 1911, California became the sixth state to grant women's suffrage. This is nine years before the United States ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While California was one of the first states to hold referendums on women’s suffrage, the 1896 rejection of Amendment 6 would lead to many years of struggle for women seeking the right to vote. The books on display this week explore California’s history and legacy as it pertains to women’s suffrage. On display we have: The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage by Alan P. Grimes; Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940 by Lee Simpson; Class Coalition and Class Conflict in the California Woman Suffrage Movement: the San Francisco Wage Earners' Suffrage League 1907-1912 by Susan Englander; How the Vote was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 by Rebecca J. Mead; and, Becoming Citizens: the Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880-1911 by Gayle Gullett. These books are on display at Mudd Center for you to check out! 

As a part of this Sunday edition, we are also highlighting a few California early 20th century suffrage archives from Adam Matthew Digital, an incredible global digital archive best known for its primary source material. The first is a Leaflet of the California Equal Suffrage Association, a handbill from 1911 Catholic Clergyman D.O. Crowley’s support of women’s suffrage, an advertisement titled “Justice to California Women.” Oberlin College has access to all of Adam Matthew’s collections, spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries. Check out these archives and more here!

Mudd Center Finals Survival 

As reading period and finals week approach, Oberlin College Libraries is here to help you through this time. Beginning this Friday, in Academic Commons we will have coloring books, “take what you need” motivational phrases, stuffed animals, and rotating images of library staffs’ pets on the monitor; heck out some images that will be featured below. We hope that these little things can help ease finals and remember, summer is just around the corner!