Welcome to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library blog! As the special collections and archives library at the University of Kansas, Spencer is home to remarkable and diverse collections of rare and unique items. Explore the blog to learn about the work we do and the materials we collect.
Dog owners love their dogs. This was as true one hundred years ago as it is today. Below are some portraits from the Joseph J. Pennell Collection that feature human subjects who have chosen to include their dog – or dogs – in their photo portrait. If you pay close attention to things like body positions and facial expressions, you will see how these human subjects feel about their pets.
From the 1890s to the 1920s, Joseph J. Pennell photographed life in Junction City, Kansas, and the nearby Army base, Fort Riley. The strength of the collection, in my opinion, is that Pennell wasn’t content to just stay in his studio, taking portrait photography. He went out into the community to photograph its people, businesses, activities, groups, and families. And Pennell was inclusive of community members from diverse groups, revealing a fuller and richer story of Junction City. Because of his work, we are provided with a comprehensive view of life in a moderately-sized Midwestern army-post town on the Great Plains from the 1890s to the early 1920s.
A double portrait of Ellen Marks, 1899. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 466.3, Box 13. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A portrait of Fred Durand, 1901. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 700, Box 19. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A portrait of Sgt. Blake (Fourth Cavalry Band), 1901. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 785, Box 20. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A portrait of the Newman siblings, 1905. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 1539, Box 35. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A portrait of Lieut. G. L. Morrison’s child, 1908. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 1951, Box 43. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A portrait of Robert Carr, 1919. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell, Print 3039, Box 68. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!
Who’s excited for the return of KU basketball this week?!
The interior of Allen Fieldhouse under construction, 1954. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/1 1954: Campus: Buildings: Allen Fieldhouse (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
What does that view look like today? The answer to that question comes courtesy of KU student Rick McNabb. As part of a project for HIST 348 (History of the Peoples of Kansas), Rick found the above image in University Archives and later juxtaposed it with a picture he took at the men’s basketball game against Eastern Michigan on December 29, 2018. Play the video below to see! You can also move the slider back and forth yourself by visitingRick’s post on the re.photos website.
A video created from two juxtaposed images of Allen Fieldhouse. The first is the image above, from 1954. The second was taken from roughly the same position in 2018.
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz is conducting research on pre-1600 manuscripts at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Each month she will be writing about a manuscript she has worked with and the current KU Library catalog records will be updated in accordance with her findings.
Written in Humanistic cursive by a single hand during the last decade of the fifteenth century, Kenneth Spencer Research Library MS B21 contains a travel itinerary from Italy to France and back. Currently consisting of only five folios, it was probably part of a larger book. It seems that each stop on the journey was recorded between February 1493, with a departure from Naples, Italy, and January 1494, with a return to Sermoneta, Italy, after going all the way to Paris, France. The majority of the text comprises the names of the cities, with occasional mentions of arrival or departure dates and a series of numbers in the margins that probably denote distances between the stops. Unfortunately, no personal name or a reason for the journey is mentioned, but from the language of the text and the style of handwriting we can surmise that the diary belonged to an Italian traveler.
Beginning of the journey in February 1493. Travel Itinerary, Italy and France, 1493-1494. Call # MS B21. Click image to enlarge.
The journey begins on February 21, 1493, in Naples, Italy. 24 days later, on March 16, the traveler arrives at Marseille, France. There are thirteen stops noted for this first leg of the journey between Naples and Marseille. Most of them were relatively easy to identify:
Gayeta = Gaeta Hostia = Ostia Civita Vechya = Civitavecchia Mo[n]te Arge[n]taro = Monte Argentario Livorno = Livorno Porto Vener[e] = Porto Venere Ienoa = Genoa Villa Francha = Villefranche-sur-Mer Nirza = Nice Santa Margarita = Île Sainte-Marguerite Insola de Heres = Îles d’Hyères
I was not so sure about where “Poncio” is, which is mentioned as a stop between Gaeta and Ostia but I decided it must be Pontinia, which is located almost right in the middle of the two places. I also had my doubts about where “Cornito” might be. It is mentioned as a stop between Civitavecchia and Monte Argentario. Although there are other places with this name in both Benevento and Campania regions of Italy, the contemporary name of the place we are looking for in this stretch is probably Tarquinia, whose name has changed from Corneto to Tarquinia in the last century.
Map of Naples-Marseille itinerary in MS B21. Created using Tableau.
After I identified the stops for the first leg of this journey between Naples and Marseille, I decided to place them on a map and see how it looks: indeed, all the places lined up in a neat route along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea and southern coast of France. What is striking is that all the places I was able to identify are on either the coast or an island close to the shore, such as Monte Argentario and Île Sainte-Marguerite. This gives us reason to think that this part of the journey was undertaken by ship along the coast of the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Seas instead of by land. Now that we know the route, how long it took and the possible mode of travel, I was curious to compare this data. At that point, I turned to ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. Called by some “a Google Maps for Ancient Rome,” ORBIS allows one to analyze movements of people and goods along the principal routes of the ancient Roman world by taking into account different modes and means of transport and even the season in which the travel took place.
Since Roman travel networks and routes continued to be used during the Middle Ages, the approximations created in ORBIS would provide us a reliable comparison point. According to ORBIS, if one travels only by daylight the journey between Naples and Marseille on coastal sea takes 18.7 days during winter. Although by this route there seem to be fewer stops compared to what is recorded in MS B21, the major ports, such as Ostia and Genoa, remain unchanged. The traveler of MS B21 noted that they arrived at Marseille after 24 days. Given that there are more stops mentioned in the manuscript and that we do not know if they spent any considerable time in any of these places, 24 days seem reasonable.
Last place mentioned as part of the journey: Sermoneta. Travel Itinerary, Italy and France, 1493-1494. Call # MS B21. Click image to enlarge.
According to MS B21, it seems that the anonymous traveler spent between April and August 1493 in Paris before going to Tours via Orléans and staying there until January the year after. The traveler began their return from Tours, France to Italy on January 23, 1494. On the way back, they traveled exclusively by land, passing through cities such as Turin, Milan, Parma, Bologna, Florence, and Rome. Instead of going back to Naples, where they started, however, they stopped at Sermoneta, approximately 100 miles north of Naples. Unfortunately, the date of arrival is not recorded in the manuscript. If the anonymous traveler of MS B21 was a member of a diplomatic legation, as suggested by Bernard Rosenthal, from whom the Kenneth Spencer Research Library purchased the manuscript, this was a tumultuous time and there would have been good reason for such a journey, for in this very year the Kingdom of Naples was under threat of invasion by Charles VIII, king of France.
If the anonymous traveler was on a mission to the French court, that would also explain their spending time not only in Paris but also in Tours. Palais des Tuileries was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs but Charles VIII and his court also spent considerable time in Tours and had a royal residence there, Château de Plessis-lèz-Tours. Furthermore, we know that the French king may have been traveling from Paris to Tours that very August as Queen Anne is recorded to have had a premature birth and that the baby was buried at Notre-Dame de Cléry, a place mentioned also in MS B21 as the next stop after Orléans on the way to Tours.
King Ferdinand I of Naples died only two days after the departure date mentioned in the manuscript, on January 25, 1494, after 35 years of reign. Although succeeded by his son Alfonso II, the death of Ferdinand I allowed Charles VIII to lay claim to the throne and invade the Kingdom of Naples later in 1494. This marked the beginning of the Italian Wars, also known as Habsburg-Valois Wars, which took place between 1494 and 1559, during which the Kingdom of Naples was the focus of dispute among different dynasties and constantly changed hands.
The Kenneth Spencer Research Library purchased the manuscript from Bernard M. Rosenthal Inc. in July 1960, and it is available for consultation at the Library’s Marilyn Stokstad Reading Room when the library is open.
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz Ann Hyde Postdoctoral Researcher
Follow the account “Manuscripts &c.” on Twitter and Instagram for postings about manuscripts from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!
Looking for some inspiration for Movember/No-Shave November? Look no further than this week’s photo, which features members of KU’s faculty sporting an impressive variety of beards and mustaches in 1885. Click on the image to zoom in and get a closer look!
Composite of the University of Kansas faculty, 1885. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/0 Faculty 1885 Prints (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
This week’s blog post has been guest written by L.Marie Avila, an Undergraduate Engagement Librarian at KU Libraries, and Carrie Cornelius, the Acting Supervisory Librarian at Tommaney Library at Haskell Indian Nations University.
In 1991, Congress proclaimed the month of November as a time to acknowledge Native American Heritage (PL 101 343). In honor of Native American Heritage, we would like to draw attention and reverence to the Indigenous Nations Studies Program collection (Call Number: RG 17/71) found in the University Archives at Spencer Research Library.
Kenneth Spencer Research Library holds the documents of the Indigenous Nations Studies Program, which signify the decades of effort by University of Kansas scholars to improve the opportunities for Indigenous students. This collection consists of a variety of communications: memos among academics and sovereign tribal nations; program development proposals; articles; and university news releases.
There, with the assistance and expertise of the staff, is a pathway to the access and discovery in research. Our research led to significant artifacts in the early discourse and vision in establishing the program dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, and records of the events and the scholarly accomplishments of native students and scholars in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Included in the artifacts is the historical partnership between the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.
This is in dedication to Native peoples’ resiliency, and to impress to the next generations of learners, to acknowledge the historical and contemporary contributions of Native people, throughout all seasons.
To begin, we examine the current 2020 Indigenous Studies Program Brochure for Indigenous Methodology noting the flexibility, student choice, and opportunity to direct research to community improvement. All of which was the direct result of the communication and program review noted in the historical documents, each showing the passion and dedication of scholars pursuing excellence for KU’s Indigenous students.
The KU Indigenous Studies Program brochure, 2020. Image courtesy of the Indigenous Studies Program. Click images to enlarge.
The 2020 Indigenous Studies Program illustrates the inclusion of Indigenous Methodologies, while partnering not only with Haskell Indian Nations University, but Indigenous communities of the world. Students focus their Indigenous studies and research not only in Indigenous content, but with purpose to problem-solve the unique needs of Indigenous communities. Skill-based programs and build-your-own courses allow for individualized design and show flexibility and individualized student choice.
A step back gives the opportunity to gain insight to the process. This early artifact (below) looks at the promise and challenge in developing a program dedicated to Indian studies.
A memorandum from Professor Murray L. Wax (Sociology) and Professor Rosalie Wax (Anthropology) regarding “American Indian programs: prospects and difficulties,” October 19, 1972. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
Illustrated in a meaningfully-written letter by a KU professor, the letter below captures the Indigeneity of Indian students and their ultimate regard to “make something meaningful” out of a college education and an Indian Center in the space. The document provides insight into the 1973 “Indian work” strategies that were systematically and proportionally selecting tribal students by their traditionality. Additional strategies included housing together, scheduling core courses together, and mentoring by tribal teachers.
Letter from Professor Stuart Levine (American Studies) to professors Murray L. Wax and Rosalie Wax, March 12, 1973. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
Moving into the end of the twentieth century is an in-depth proposal from KU’s Indigenous Nations Studies Task Force.
Cover of “A Proposal to Establish a New Master’s Degree Program in Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas,” March 6, 1997. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
Indigenous Nations Studies Program brochure, 1999-2000. This artifact outlines the Indigenous Nations Studies pedagogy, course schedule, requirements, and Native and non-native faculty. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
KU news release, “Historian Recalls Terror of Osage Murders: U.S. History Books Need Native American Perspectives,” November 17, 1999. In this document, Donald L. Fixico, a KU professor of history and director of KU’s Indigenous Nations Studies Program, shares his perspective on the content of history books and Native American history. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
The cover of the Indigenous Nations Studies Journal, an academic journal produced out of the KU Indigenous Nations Studies Program, Spring 2000. Call Number: RG 17/71. Click image to enlarge.
To conduct in-depth research in this subject area, and others, make an appointment to visit Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
