Category Archives: new acquisitions

LGBT History ?

Special Collections recently purchased a “Colorado Homesteaders” photograph album containing this intriguing image dated 1924.

The photo is labeled “practiseing” (practicing) and shows two women kissing.

We don’t know their names or anything about them. We don’t know who labeled the photo. We have so many questions. This is what it is to study LGBTQ+ / gay / lesbian / queer history / herstory / theirstory / ourstory.

The album is not yet cataloged, but researchers are welcome to view it in Special Collections — just ask for the “Colorado Homesteaders” album.

exciting new acquisition

Tutt Library received an exciting new acquisition today, the “Ark of the Covenant,”

The Ark of the Covenant, found at last! A peek at famous props from Indiana  Jones' movies

an important Christian Judeo-Christian relic worthy of research by Top Men. Who? Top Men. Here’s a video of the new acquisition being stored in the Special Collections vault.

We are sorry to inform researchers, however, that pipe smoking is against Special Collections policy. Even top men will be asked not to smoke in the reading room.

donation of Edith Bramhall painting

In December of 2021, Special Collections received a charming and unusual donation from Edward P. Bentley of Greenville, Michigan: a painting by Edith Bramhall, beloved Political Science professor at Colorado College from 1920 to 1946.

The painting, “Chickens,” was likely painted between 1946 and 1960; it has Bramhall’s address during that time, 116 East San Rafael, on the reverse side. It may have been a view from her home, with Pikes Peak in the background. That part of campus looks very different now, so we can’t be sure.

Robert Loevy’s Colorado College Reader (2012) contains two chapters on Bramhall, the first woman to make a career of teaching at CC. (Women served on the CC faculty before 1920, but none for longer than a few years). Bramhall is considered the founder of ” modern” Political Science at the college, and the department’s top prize for majors is named for her.

An undated document in the Archives (CC Information File Faculty – Bio – Bramhall, Edith) contains this anonymous anecdote: “She showed me some of her oil paintings of the region. Among them was a very good painting of Pikes Peak and the surrounding mountains, apparently done early in spring and early in the morning. It had a nice feeling of freshness about it. Pointing to it, Miss Bramhall recalled that she arose one morning and looked out at the mountains and decided that they would not look like that for long and that if she wanted to capture the right spring feeling she had better get to it at once. ‘So I just skipped classes,’ she said, ‘and I took my paints and things and went off to the hills to paint.'”

We thank Edward P. Bentley very much for this gift, including the specially-made frame. The painting is now part of the IDEA / Campus Collection and hangs in room 218, Tutt Library.

No-No Boy by John Okada

In October of 2021, CC Special Collections acquired a first edition of John Okada’s No-No Boy. The 1957 novel, a staple of Asian American literature, tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a man who answers “no” to the two so-called “loyalty” questions in a 1943 questionnaire for Japanese Americans: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” and “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?”

We’re especially excited to have the book here at CC because it connects with our collections on Camp Amache and also because it’s the first edition of a title with a complex and fraught publishing history — see “Dispute Arises Over ‘No-No Boy’” in the New York Times.

UPDATE September 2023: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet visited Special Collections in April of 2023 to view this book and research the history of Japanese American incarceration. In September, this article appeared in the CC alumni magazine, with input from CC faculty Aline Lo and Brandon Shimoda.

Mary Chenoweth’s “Choo Choo”

Look at this fantastic one-of-a-kind scroll-book by Mary Chenoweth that we just got as a gift from Eve Tilley!

Just look at it!

The pencil is there to show scale. The text of the scroll reads:

Toot all a bored 1997 coal more and more coal hemanaigs [?] trunk line heavy poof down-n-out short list slate pleez run on time oil books books ABC lift cracker barrels Xercise off hours without spectacles bug footloose accordion to Sante Fe NM lake of [eye]’s? well worn out past hurts rent a car only five more or maybe seven american eagle oops Rocky Mountains either way just decide cross country advertisers end

Reverse: Mary Chenoweth June 1997 for Trudie Gregory all aboard

Divya Victor’s new book from the Press at Colorado College

Divya Victor, author of CURB, the newest book from the Press at Colorado College, visited campus last week to give a reading. Special Collections hosted Victor, printer Aaron Cohick, and Natanya Pulley’s Diverse Voices / Diverse Forms class for an advance preview of the book and a special small-group talk with the author.

CURB documents the assault and killing of Indian-Americans and Indian immigrants in public spaces in the United States. It will be for sale this fall.

 

It’s a truly jaw-dropping achievement from the Press.

Overheard in the reading room at this moment: “There’s books in this book!”

People from 100 years ago … they’re just like us!

We recently acquired a photograph album showing a large farming and ranching family in Estes Park, Colorado, ca. 1905-1915. We know the names of three brothers: Stuart, Gordon, and Charles Mace. Also pictured in the album are the wives and children of the Maces.

People from 100 years ago … they’re just like us!

They go for horsey rides!

 

They like cute bunnies!

 

When they take a bath in a bucket, they get their picture taken!

 

They … oh, no. Don’t do THAT…

 

Hat tip to Us Magazine’s Stars: They’re Just Like Us

Mini-Exhibition: Feminist Lesbian Science Fiction

We invite you to enjoy a new mini-exhibition in the display case in the garden level of Tutt Library: Ten Great Reads from the Feminist Lesbian Sci-Fi Boom of the 1970s: Sandra Gail Lambert Picks Her Favorites from an Unsung Genre.

Read Lambert’s article here: https://lithub.com/10-great-reads-from-the-feminist-lesbian-sci-fi-boom-of-the-1970s/

The Colorado College library now has every book mentioned in this article. Some have truly fantastic pulp paperback covers. Here’s an example:

LGBT Oral History Project

The Colorado College LGBT Oral History Project is now up and running in Digital CC!

The project includes audio recordings of interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and allied Colorado College faculty, staff, and alumni, along with Colorado Springs community participants. The interviews were done between January 2011 and May 2012. The founding director of the project was Andrew Wallace, CC class of 2012.

Participants in the project include, in alphabetical order, Rob Adkisson (CC class of 1992), Nate Bower (CC Chemistry faculty 1977-2017), Bruce Coriell (CC Chaplain 1988-2016), Mike Edmonds (CC Dean of Students 1991-present), Heinz Geppert (CC German faculty 1991-2013, Karl Jeffries (CC class of 1991), Bruce Loeffler (CC Geology faculty 1977-1999), Eva McGeehan (co-founder of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG), Ginger Morgan (CC staff 1987-2012), and Frank Mosher (CC class of 1969; CC staff 1987-present).

Subjects including: coming out, Out and About (this Colorado College organization, founded 1985, became the LGBT Alliance), Amendment 2, homophobia, discrimination, HIV and AIDS, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and the 1991 founding of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

We hope eventually to offer transcriptions of the interviews. Please contact Jessy Randall (jrandall@coloradocollege.edu) if you’d like to volunteer to transcribe.

 

ADDENDUM, 2023: see also the LGBTQ+ Oral History Project of 2022-2023. 

Homecoming gifts

Every year at Homecoming, Special Collections holds an open house. This year our open house yielded not one but two amazing photograph donations.

Melinda Eager Poole (CC class of 1978) donated a scrapbook belonging to her grandfather, Leonard Prentice Eager. The scrapbook covers his freshman and sophomore years at CC, 1912-1914. It’s full of photographs of CC students in outdoor areas around Colorado Springs, including this one showing a dozen or so people perched on a railroad bridge, possibly the Pikes Peak Cog Rail.

David Ford (CC class of 1972) was a photographer for the Nugget during his senior year. He donated about a hundred photos from that period, including many portraits and campus scenes. Here are just two fantastic shots from his donation:

Thank you, Melinda and David — you make my job easy and fun!