WVU Libraries’ “Food Justice in Appalachia” exhibit will open at the Downtown Campus Library with a reception Saturday, Oct. 16, from 4-6 p.m. with a virtual offering of presentations at 5 p.m.
“Food Justice in Appalachia” is a multidisciplinary print and online exhibition featuring multiple themes in the food justice movement and offering suggestions for action to shape a more just, equitable, and sustainable food system.
“This collaboratively curated exhibition brings together artists, storytellers, farmers, activists and scholars to highlight intersecting values that shape our foodways through the lens of regional food activists working to address hunger and build alternative food futures,” Libraries Exhibit Coordinator Sally Brown said.
Charleston residents Ruby Abdulla, an immigrant from southern India, and Nariman Farah, an immigrant from Sudan, prepare traditional southern and northern Indian dishes.
The publicly accessible archive encompasses past, current, and future of West Virginia folklife, traditional arts and cultural heritage. Its new home on the Internet is thanks to a partnership between the West Virginia UniversityLibraries’West Virginia and Regional History Center and the Humanities Council.
“It’s a really wonderful resource that includes new and changing folk traditions. We are thrilled to be the permanent repository for the content,” WVRHC Assistant Director Lori Hostuttler said
Learn about the women who worked hard to bring positive change to Appalachia in a presentation titled “West Virginia History Makers: Black Women’s Activism in the Archives” on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Kanawha City Community Center in Charleston.
Dr. Tamara Bailey, an assistant professor of history and coordinator of Wesleyan Abroad at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Dr. Sheena Harris, an associate professor of history and coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at West Virginia University, will discuss the lives of Black women activists and educators from West Virginia and their use of women’s archives.
Senator Rockefeller was appointed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) in January 2001. His tenure coincided with some of the most critical years for the SSCI and the intelligence community. Only eight months after joining the SSCI, terrorists carried out attacks on U.S. soil on September 11. The 9/11 attacks thrust the Intelligence Community, and consequently the SSCI, into the limelight in unprecedented ways and changed the nature of the conduct of intelligence oversight.
View of lower Manhattan’s buildings behind a bridge spanning a calm river. The Twin Towers stand tall above other buildings, reaching up to a clear blue sky. Photo by David Monderer, provided by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
WVU Libraries will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy with “September 11, 2001: The Day that Changed the World,” an exhibit at Evansdale Library that presents the history of 9/11 and its ongoing implications through the personal stories of those who witnessed and survived the attacks.
Told across 14 posters, the exhibition includes archival photographs and images of artifacts from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s permanent collection. It explores the consequences of terrorism on individual lives and communities at the local, national, and international levels, and encourages critical thinking about the legacies of 9/11.
“During this 20th anniversary year, it is our privilege to share these lessons with a new generation, teach them about the ongoing repercussions of the 9/11 attacks and inspire them with the idea that, even in the darkest of times, we can come together, support one another and find the strength to renew and rebuild,” said 9/11 Memorial & Museum President and CEO Alice M. Greenwald.
West Virginia University Libraries’ “Appalachian Futures” exhibit has made its second stop on its tour of Appalachia. The exhibition will be on display at Appalachian State University’s Belk Library through December.
“Appalachian Futures” is the Art in the Libraries’ second annual collaborative, multidisciplinary project advancing important conversations in the region. The exhibit addresses the dominant contemporary narratives about Appalachia in a new way — how the people of Appalachia have worked and will work to rewrite their own narrative and transcend limiting definitions of what it means to be Appalachian.
“’Appalachian Futures’ takes us beyond the stereotypes to paint a rich and multi-layered picture of what it means to be Appalachian,” Libraries Exhibits Coordinator Sally Brown said.
“These covers reflect not only past US history, but also current practices regarding twenty-first century immigration policies and discourse in both political and popular culture,” Caronia said.
Farina researched the early conceptualizations of botanic life in the pre-modern medicine world, as well as its effect on philosophy, art, and literature. She will discuss the categorization and naming of plants in ancient and medieval cultures, with a special focus on herbals.
The exhibit should present an evolution of one’s work by visualizing research, influences, and findings. The goals of these awards are to provide a multidisciplinary platform for deeper learning, while fostering intellectual discourse, in order to demonstrate the breadth of WVU’s creative and innovative activities.
Join us for Out of the Margins: a virtual roundtable of library workers and their published books on June 25 at noon via Zoom. Panelists will include Martin Dunlap, Eva Mays, James Shaver, and Beth Toren.
Miners gather for a meal during a strike, circa 1920. Photo from the West Virginia and Regional History Center.
West Virginia University Libraries and the West Virginia and Regional History Center will celebrate West Virginia Day with “The Road to Blair Mountain: Commemorating the West Virginia Mine Wars.” There will be a program and an exhibit focusing on the West Virginia mine wars, a series of strikes and battles between 1912 and 1921 that pitted pro-union miners against the coal companies. Most notable among these events was the Battle of Blair Mountain, which marks its 100th anniversary this year.
Plan to join us June 18 from 10-11:30 a.m. for the virtual program, which will feature presentations by William Hal Gorby, assistant teaching professor of history in WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and consultant for the PBS American Experience documentary “The Mine Wars,” and Charles B. Keeney, assistant professor of history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, founding member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, and author of “The Road to Blair Mountain.”
Brad Hart, a 14-year employee of WVU facilities and preventative maintenance, started collecting KISS memorabilia in 1995 after seeing the tribute band, Strutter, at The Nyabinghi Dance Hall (currently 123 Pleasant Street). This turned out to be great timing, as the four original members kicked off a reunion tour in 1996, leading to the release of a whole new wave of KISS merchandise. To date, Hart has over 600 items in his collection, ranging from vintage to new. He rarely purchases items online, enjoying the “thrill of the hunt” at antique malls, thrift shops, flea markets, etc. Hart is a musician himself, having just wrapped up a 34-year career of playing bass guitar in several popular bands in the Morgantown area.
Wes Utt, who has worked in the WVU preventative maintenance shop for 14 years, began collecting and dealing in antiques more than 30 years ago. His main passion is selling and trading at toy and antique shows and flea markets where he’s met some of his closest friends. His earliest pieces date back to the early 1900s. This exhibit was organized by WVU Art in the Libraries.
“The West Virginia Feminist Activist Collection brings together the records of people and institutions that worked to advance women’s rights. The materials hold the stories of challenges and change for women in West Virginia. The archive will be useful for scholars, teachers, and anyone interested in women’s history,” WVRHC Assistant Director Lori Hostuttler said.
The grants – $19,998 from the Humanities Council and $12,601 from the WVU Humanities Center – will enable their team to conduct outreach, collect papers and oral histories, and hold educational programs across the state to educate West Virginians about archival practices and women’s history.
West Virginia UniversityLibraries’ Teaching and Learning Committee has selected Adam Benjamin and Aerianna McClanahan as 2021 Robert F. Munn Undergraduate Library Scholars.
“All of us at WVU Libraries are thrilled to name Adam Benjamin and Aerianna McClanahan as Munn Scholars,” Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz said. “Adam and Aerianna navigated around limitations placed on them by COVID-19 restrictions to research their topics thoroughly and write impressive works of scholarship.”
Stump, a faculty member and head of reference and access services with the George R. Farmer Jr. Law Library at WVU College of Law, researches environmental law, critical legal theory, law and social movements, and Appalachian and rural studies.
In “Remaking Appalachia,” his new book from WVU Press, Stump looks back more than a century to examine the creation of laws governing the rising power of coal and other industries, and chronicles their failure to protect Appalachia. In addition, Stump goes beyond law “reform” to explore true system change, a discussion undergirded by ecofeminism and ecosocialism.
By Sally Brown, WVU Libraries Exhibits Coordinator
Curating the Art in the Libraries’ large, multi-disciplinary exhibitions since 2018’s WATER, has proved an enormous and exciting part of my role as Exhibits Coordinator. Through WATER (2018-19) and Appalachian Futures (2019-20), I developed these large exhibitions with upwards of 50 diverse contributors, two committees, a designer, several sponsoring partners and of course, the signing off of Dean Karen Diaz for these displays going up in the Downtown Campus Library for the academic year.
This year’s exhibition, Undefeated: Canvas(s)ing the Politics Around Voter Suppression Since Women’s Suffrage, in conjunction with the Suffrage Centennial and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was complex in its multidisciplinary, and controversial in its political nature. The complexity was compounded by the pandemic not only logistically for exhibition display, but also as it heightened the unfolding story of contemporary voter suppression with myriad new voting considerations throughout the presidential election. Thankfully, the various contributors and partners allowed for multiple perspectives for this exhibition and its related programming and we were able to engage participation from WVU and broader communities.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a nearly $60,000 grant to West Virginia University Libraries to create the first-ever online portal bringing together congressional archives from repositories throughout the United States.
“Congressional archives document the democratic process and the evolution of Congress as an institution,” said Danielle Emerling, project director and curator of congressional and political collections in the West Virginia & Regional History Center. “However, the value of the archives goes beyond the study of the branch itself. They illustrate multiple narratives related to the country’s social, cultural, and political development.”
Join panelists Jeri Burton, chair of the NOW’s 28th Amendment ERA Committee; Linda Coberly, chair of the ERA Coalition’s legal task force; and Liza Mickens, Vote Equality US co-founder, for a discussion about past and present efforts, challenges, and strategies for passing the Equal Rights Amendment. Danielle Emerling, Congressional & Political Papers archivist and WVRHC assistant curator, will moderate the event.
Art in the Libraries’ Virtual Program Series will present “Don’t Throw it Out!” a conversation about documenting women and the new West Virginia Feminist Activist Collection of the West Virginia and Regional History Center on March 19 at noon.
Panelists Judith Stitzel, Professor Emerita of English and Co-Founder of Women’s Studies, and Carroll Wilkinson, University Librarian Emerita, come together with Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director of the WVRHC, to discuss collecting and documenting women’s lives, share some of their own photos, ephemera or objects, to encourage a broader and more accessible approach to archives and all it can encompass.
The State Journal published this article on March 3.
By Karen Diaz, Dean of WVU Libraries
Women – of all backgrounds – have made important contributions to society. Only recently are we learning more about these individuals and learning to give credit to women where that credit is due. The way we have learned more is through evidence. Often that evidence sits in archives used by historians and others to document how women have shaped society. Due to a long tradition of underrepresenting women and women’s contributions, there are archival silences or gaps in what has been preserved. This undervaluing perhaps also causes those making contributors to undervalue documenting what they have done.
