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Posted by: Josh Levy
This post is coauthored by Morgan Black, librarian at the United States Naval Observatory, and Josh Levy, historian of science and technology at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. When Maria Mitchell spotted a telescopic comet from the roof of her Nantucket home in 1847, a historic feat that helped make her a national celebrity, …
Posted in: Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History
Posted by: Josh Levy
Join Manuscript Division senior archives specialist Laura Kells and author Kurt Jensen as they highlight the work and legacy of film and theater director Rouben Mamoulian and Jensen’s new book, Peerless: Rouben Mamoulian, Hollywood, and Broadway with collection specialist and host Barbara Bair.
Posted in: Events, Literature Culture & the Arts
Posted by: Josh Levy
William Wilgus was one of the most accomplished civil engineers of his time. Today two manuscript collections document his sweeping career, one at the New York Public Library and another at the Library of Congress, which opened for research in 2023. Documenting incidents such as a fatal 1907 train accident in the Bronx and the 1915 flooding of New York’s massive Ashokan Reservoir, the two collections tell a story of progress and loss, and of memory and honor.
Posted in: Science and Technology
Posted by: Josh Levy
Join staff of the Manuscript and Serial & Government Publications divisions for a roundtable discussion with three comic studies scholars who will discuss psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s anti-comics legacy and its afterlives in more recent clashes over representations of race and sexuality in comics and graphic novels.
Posted in: African American History, Events, Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History
Posted by: Josh Levy
In summer 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted nine bright objects in the sky over Washington State flying, he said, “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Reporters shorthanded the description of these objects to “flying saucers.” Sightings proliferated, and Americans fell into breathless speculation. Three years later, an unlikely investigator was on the case: Eleanor Roosevelt.
Posted in: Politics, Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History
Posted by: Josh Levy
Join us on May 7, 2024, to celebrate the Library’s NAACP collection with a presentation by Dr. Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, author of The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice.
Posted in: African American History, Events
Posted by: Josh Levy
In honor of Poetry Month, join professors and coeditors Eric Keenaghan and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein as they discuss their new book The Muriel Rukeyser Era: Selected Prose with Manuscript Division historian Barbara Bair.
Posted in: Events, Literature Culture & the Arts
Posted by: Josh Levy
In December 1889, an elaborate scientific expedition arrived on the coast of Angola to view a total solar eclipse. Its story vividly reveals intersections of science and militarism, scientific fieldwork and leisure travel, and holds important lessons about scientific failure as well.
Posted in: International History, Science and Technology
Posted by: Josh Levy
In 1921, when the National Woman’s Party drafted a constitutional amendment declaring equal rights for men and women, one of the most formidable opponents of the amendment was a friend and ally in the suffrage movement. Florence Kelley, a leading reformer and head of the National Consumers’ League, feared the amendment would put hard-earned workplace protections in jeopardy.
Posted in: Politics, Researcher Stories, Women's & Gender History