Entries by nscalessa
Fashioning Philadelphia – The Style of the City, 1720-1940
The Library Company of Philadelphia presents over 200 years of fashion history in its newest exhibition, which opened July 20. Fashioning Philadelphia – The Style of the City, 1720-1940 tells the largely unheralded story of Philadelphia’s contributions to the early fashion industry. Curated by Wendy Woloson (Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers University), Fashioning Philadelphia features […]
2015 Juneteenth Freedom Symposium with Dr. Danielle Allen
The Program in African American History (PAAH) welcomed political theorist Dr. Danielle Allen for our annual Juneteenth Freedom Symposium on June 18. PAAH hosts an annual symposium to recognize Juneteenth, one of the oldest known celebrations commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. This year’s theme focused on the enduring importance of democratic […]
Mellon Scholars Summer Programs
In June, the Program in African American History (PAAH) held its second annual Mellon Scholars Internship and Workshop under the direction of Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, PAAH Director, and Krystal Appiah, Curator of African American History. These summer programs foster and support students from underrepresented backgrounds and others with interests in pursuing graduate study in […]
New Collections Uploaded to Our Digital Collections Catalog
Several collections were recently uploaded to ImPAC, the Library Company’s digital collections catalog. Peter Collinson’s annotated first edition of William Maitland’s 1739 History of London, Frederick Gutekunt’s Scenery on the Pennsylvania Railroadphotograph album, and a mixed media scrapbook album showcased in Remnants of Everyday Life, our 2013 exhibition about historical ephemera, are just some of […]
My First SDS Conference
A few weeks ago, hundreds of disability studies scholars, advocates, and activists gathered for the 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, June 10-13, 2015. I was fortunate to be one of the attendees on behalf of the Library Company, a recent institutional member in the Society as a result of the […]
The Female Physician: A Deviation from 19th-Century Gender Roles?
This is the tenth anniversary of the Library Company first working with an intern from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities. In their summers at the Library Company, each one has helped increase the digital resources we offer significantly. They have brought their own training in history, literature, anthropology, sociology, or art […]
Riddle of Independence: Independent but not Free
Danielle Allen will give the Program in African American History’s 2015 Juneteenth Freedom Symposium talk at the Library Company. While in residence, our Mellon Scholars interns read Dr. Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality and prepared a display of items (reproduced below) from the Library Company’s African […]
A Dead Prostitute, a Male Impersonator, and a Medium: Three Sensational Pamphlets
Our Curator of Printed Books Rachel D’Agostino found these three sensational pamphlets at a recent book fair. Purchased with the Davida T. Deutsch Women’s History Fund, they are the sort of lowbrow items our 19th-century predecessors did not acquire for the Library Company. We now purchase them to be able to document the whole spectrum […]