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Category: Culture & Society

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War and Superheroes: How the Writer’s War Board Used Comics to Spread its Message in WWII

Posted by: Dan Turello

Historian Paul Hirsch was a Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation Fellow for Caricature and Cartoon at The John W. Kluge Center in summer 2015. His research explored the intersection of visual culture, race, policymaking, and diplomacy from World War II through the post-Cold War period. Paul, your work investigates the convergence of comic book publishing …

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Marking Hispanic Heritage Month

Posted by: Mary Lou Reker

National Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close today, October 15. There are many ways to recognize the importance of Hispanic and Latin American peoples to world culture. One of the ways the Kluge Center recognizes that presence is through the Jay I. Kislak Fellowships for the Study of the History and Cultures of the …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Images of the Earth in American Children’s Books

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

German Fellow Sibylle Machat has spent the past seven months at the Kluge Center researching images of planet Earth in American children’s books. How Earth looks from space is well-known today; satellite imagery of the planet is now a part of our collective consciousness. But before public access to photographic representations of Earth, how the …

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International Performances Here and Abroad

Posted by: Mary Lou Reker

Every one of the Fellows at the Kluge Center gives a presentation concerning their research while they are at the Library of Congress. Not every one of the Center’s Fellows also appears, however, on an internationally popular television series. BMI-Kluge Fellow Peter Zilahy is an exception. Zilahy was featured on the award-winning CNN program “Parts …

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Capturing a Moment in Time: Documenting Musicians from the Horn of Africa in Their New American Diaspora

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

The following is a guest post by Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music at Harvard University and 2007 Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at The John W. Kluge Center. When scholars think about the Library of Congress, they may immediately recall its famous collections that provide rich resources for the study of …

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The Kluge Center, Facial Masks for Veterans, and Students from Singapore

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

The following story was written by Megan Harris of the Library’s Veterans History Project and was featured in the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette. It also appeared on the Library of Congress blog under the title “Inquiring Minds: Anna Coleman Ladd and WWI Veterans.” It has been edited. Last month Benjamin King, Maria Ellsworth …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

War, Trauma, Memory and Art

Posted by: Mary Lou Reker

Recently Tara Tappert, this year’s David B. Larson Fellow in Health and Spirituality, gave her final presentation at the Kluge Center. Her lecture was titled “Art from War: Documenting Devastation/Realizing Restoration.” The presentation was, as are all presentations by post-doctoral and senior scholars, open to the public and there was a substantial audience there to …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

William Julius Wilson Arrives at the Kluge Center

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

This month the Kluge Center welcomes distinguished sociologist William Julius Wilson as a scholar-in-residence. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington appointed Wilson to the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance through May 2015. Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of 24 University Professors, the …