Libraries Lecture Series: The Warrior Image with Andrew Huebner

Please join us tomorrow, Tuesday April 15 at 4 pm Gorgas 205 for:

The Warrior Image, Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era (UNC Press 2007) with Dr. Andrew Huebner, UA Assistant Professor of History [Download the flier here]

A reception and signing will follow his lecture and presentation. This event is sponsored by UA Libraries with the generous support of Dr. Lakey and Susan Tolbert. Please join us!

About the book: Images of war saturated American culture between the 1940s and the 1970s, as U.S. troops marched off to battle in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Exploring representations of servicemen in the popular press, government propaganda, museum exhibits, literature, film, and television, Andrew Huebner traces the evolution of a storied American icon--the combat soldier.

Huebner challenges the pervasive assumption that Vietnam brought drastic changes in portrayals of the American warrior, with the jaded serviceman of the 1960s and 1970s shown in stark contrast to the patriotic citizen-soldier of World War II. In fact, Huebner shows, cracks began to appear in sentimental images of the military late in World War II and were particularly apparent during the Korean conflict. Journalists, filmmakers, novelists, and poets increasingly portrayed the steep costs of combat, depicting soldiers who were harmed rather than hardened by war, isolated from rather than supported by their military leadership and American society. Across all three wars, Huebner argues, the warrior image conveyed a growing cynicism about armed conflict, the federal government, and Cold War militarization.

The Hoole Library's Wade Hall Photograph Collection holds an important subset of photographs of American soldiers and military personnel. Most of these photographs are snapshots and studio portraits created for personal use and date from the Civil War era through the first Gulf War.

Collaborative Architecture Exhibit: Dwelling in the House of the Lord

A new offsite exhibit, Dwelling in the House of the Lord: Spirituality and Space in Tuscaloosa County was developed by Sarah Murchison Campbell, a graduate student in the Department of History. The exhibit project is a joint project of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library. Working with professors Kari Frederickson and Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Sarah Murchison Campbell's exhibit explores some of the most prevalent architectural styles in the Tuscaloosa area. This exhibit will be on display during the Race & Place conference to be held on April 11-12 in the AIME Building on The University of Alabama campus. The exhibit will be displayed in Gorgas Library following the conference. The Hoole Library holds a great deal of material relating to local and regional church history including published congregational histories, archival collections from local churches and church groups, and photographs and other materials from local churches and other religious organizations.

Sarah's introductory exhibit label explains her research goal for this exhibit:

"Architectural structures stand as valuable historical sources. The architectural language of those structures illuminates the nature, values, and personalities of a region as profoundly as any statistic or human voice. Whether expressed in courthouses, schools, houses of worship, city halls, libraries, or houses, the architectural language of buildings both shapes and reflects the organization, character and caliber of the communities in which they come to life. In a region historically distinguished by the persistence of a deep strain of Christian evangelical Protestantism, church buildings in particular have made a significant contribution to the South’s architectural identity.

The exhibit documents and interprets four major architectural styles embodied in Tuscaloosa County churches. The goal of the exhibit is to illuminate the important role church architecture plays in our community’s built environment. Though the architectural subjects chosen for this analysis represent a diverse body of denominational and congregational cultures and create a colorful portfolio of architectural styles, the project seeks to determine through visual and historical analysis whether there is a common language regarding “what is church?” By examining the ways in which each religious structure depicted uses, manipulates, or avoids altogether the traditional architectural concepts of place, form, light, space, movement, materials, scale, and beauty, this analysis seeks to reach a more nuanced understanding of how and why church buildings speak in the language that they do. What makes a church a church in the eyes of the building’s architect, its congregation, and sightseers and church shoppers passing by? How do church buildings define the space around it? Is structural functionality more important than aesthetic delight? Is the architectural composition and design of a church a reflection of the body of believers worshipping inside its walls? How do churches affect what our community looks like and how it operates?"

Tuscaloosa Entertains: A New Exhibit

A new exhibit is on display in the administrative suite area on the 2nd floor of Gorgas Library. This collaborative exhibit project, Tuscaloosa Entertains: Where the Fun was had in the Druid City between the World Wars features narrative and images that explore aspects of leisure time in Tuscaloosa from the 1920s through the early 1950s.

Using digital surrogates of archival materials from the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library and other sources for their research, three graduate students in History, Mills Barker, Jensen Branscombe and Stephanie Chalifoux provide insight into entertainment venues including dance halls, theaters, soda fountains, and jook joints in the Druid City, Tuscaloosa. The project was advised by Kari Frederickson, Associate Professor of History and director of the Frances Summersell Center for the Study of the South, as well as Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Associate Professor and Public and Outreach Services Coordinator for the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

The exhibit project also explored ways in creating visual interest with limited collections-based resources. The exhibit relies in part on the use of Sanborn Fire Maps to illustrate the physical space in downtown Tuscaloosa where photographs are non-existent. The exhibit also features advertisements, anecdotes, quotes, and descriptive narrative to inform the audience.

One fun anecdote reads, "Tuscaloosa attracted some famous performers and traveling vaudeville acts like the Marx Brothers. Harpo Marx recalled that the brothers were so bored in Tuscaloosa that they stopped singing in the middle of a song to watch a large bug walk across the stage. He remembered, 'the four of us got down on hands and knees and began to follow the bug, making bets whether it was a beetle, a cockroach, or a bedbug'.”

That visit must have stayed in their minds when writing their film, Animal Crackers, as this clip will attest -- watch it, it's worth it (or if you're impatient, skip to the 2 minute mark)!

Please be sure to visit the exhibit in Gorgas Library 2nd floor!

Stories that Heal, Stitches that Bind: Tuskegee Bioethics Community Quilt Project Lecture and the UA/Tuskegee Collaborative Archives Grant Project

Join us on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 4 pm in Gorgas Library room 205 for:

Stories that Heal, Stitches that Bind: The Syphilis Study and the Tuskegee Bioethics Community Quilt Project
with Professor Muhjah Shakir,

Tuskegee University Bioethics Senior Scholar, National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University

[Flier for event available here]

Part of the UA-wide African American Heritage Month Celebration and co-sponsored by the Frances S. Summersell Center for The Study of the South, UA Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences and UA Libraries.

In 2006, the University of Alabama and Tuskegee University were awarded a grant, Bringing Alabama's African-American History to Light: A Model Partnership, from the NHPRC (National Historical Publications and Records Commission). The primary goals of this collaborative effort are to process, preserve, and make available to researchers selected collections from both The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library and the Tuskegee University Archives. Both universities hired project archivists, Dana Chandler at Tuskegee and Merrily Harris at UA, who are responsible for the processing of collections that are important for further exploring and understanding the African-American experience in Alabama.