Shelf Life

According to Peter Stallybrass, an obscure typeface called civilité offers us a way of thinking about both the history of printing and the development of the bureaucratic nation-state in Western Europe. Peter, who is Annenberg Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with Jill Gage, the Newberry’s curator of printing history, about why civilité was designed to simulate handwriting, why it was the chosen typeface to print “junk mail” from King James I, and why it eventually faded into obscurity. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

Historian Woody Holton has a novel way of looking at the American Revolution: it was the British—not the Americans—who were the underdogs on the battlefield. In this episode, Woody argues his case. And, while he’s at it, he discusses how race, class, and gender factored into the war and its aftermath. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

Print helped fuel the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which in turn fueled major developments in the printing industry. As people were exhorted to read the Bible, new tools emerged to help them navigate its pages: page numbers, indexes, annotations--basically, all the features of the "apparatus of the book" that we take for granted today. We speak with Newberry President David Spadafora and curator of printing history Jill Gage about the reciprocal relationship between religion and print in the early modern era. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

If Instagram encourages us all to be the curators of our accounts, does that make actual library and museum curators ideal Instagrammers? In this episode, we speak with Lauren Hewes, the American Antiquarian Society's curator of graphic arts and Instagrammer extraordinaire, about the parallels between designing an exhibition and posting to Instagram, what it means for individuals to "curate" their social media presence, and how she's cultivated the persona of (in her words) a 205-year-old grandma as the voice of the AAS Instagram. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

Curator of Maps, Jim Akerman, discusses the rhetoric of driving, how road maps have portrayed car travel differently over time, and whether or not Google Maps is making us lose our way in the world. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

We shadowed Max Grinnell, aka the Urbanologist, as he researched Chicago's Dill Pickle Club in our Special Collections Reading Room. Leafing through photos, handbills, and brochures, Max discusses the "unsanctioned space" that the bohemian group carved out for itself, and how the fate of the Dill Pickle and other urban vestiges speaks to a complicated cycle of rebirth and renewal in Chicago. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

According to Monica Trinidad, co-founder of For the People Artists Collective, "Art is not an afterthought, it is essential and integral to organizing." Artists don't just translate activism into a visual language; they can actually create an environment in which activism is possible. Monica recently visited the Newberry to view our Never the Same Collection of political art. While she was here, she talked with us about how art can make difficult ideas more accessible, what happens to art when it becomes part of an archive, and why it's important to preserve different artistic perspectives in an institution like the Newberry. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks's birth, Liesl Olson, Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry, recreated the poet's signature frozen fruit salad. The concoction offers a mayo-streaked window onto the culinary predilections of mid-20th-century America: whipping cream, cream cheese, and the afore-mentioned mayonnaise combine with maraschino cherries, canned pineapple, and walnuts to create a dessert that's as textured as Brooks's poetry. But the recipe, which Brooks shared with Chicago writer Jack Conroy after a dinner party in 1961, also reveals the social connections among the city's literary community. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

In this episode, we ponder one of the most important listicles of all time. Chris Fletcher, the Newberry's major projects fellow, discusses what Martin Luther originally hoped to accomplish with the 95 Theses, how he marketed religion to a larger audience, and why he had some regrets after empowering people to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. For information on how the Newberry is commemorating the 500th anniversary of the 95 Theses, visit www.newberry.org/religious-change. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

As part of her study of feminine crime in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Newberry Graduate Scholar in Residence Rachel Boyle scoured more than 200 boxes of 100-year-old court records, collecting information on every homicide involving a female suspect she could find. Faced with a bounty of data about arrests and convictions, she plotted these crimes onto historical maps of the city to make sense of her findings. In this episode of "Shelf Life," we talk with Rachel about her research and the larger conclusions she was able to draw about society's response to criminal women in the past, as well as today. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

In this episode of "Shelf Life," we discuss a dastardly chapter from the annals of fake news: the Popish Plot, a conspiracy theory promoted by a man named Titus Oates. According to Oates's writings in the late 1670s, a cabal of Catholics were conspiring to kill King Charles II and replace him with a Catholic ruler. Even though Oates was a notorious liar and had little to no evidence to support his claim, the story lodged itself in the public's imagination and led to the execution of dozens of people. How did this happen? And what parallels can we draw between 17th-century print culture (the vehicle for spreading Oates's lies) and the media environment we live in today? (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

In this episode of “Shelf Life,” we talk with Newberry archivists Martha Briggs and Catherine Grandgeorge about how and why they’re crowdsourcing an archive of modern protest. Following the Women’s March held in Chicago and other cities on January 21, the Newberry began collecting protest signs and personal accounts from the people who took to the streets. While the Newberry’s collection contains plenty of materials documenting activism in history, this is the first time the library has collected such materials in the moment. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)

The Newberry's exhibit "Hamilton: The History Behind the Musical" is open through March 9. In this episode of "Shelf Life," we talk with the exhibit's curator, Will Hansen, about how he placed the exhibit in dialogue with the musical, the scourge that is "founder's chic," and his favorite piece of Hamiltonian wisdom: "half-confidence is always bad." (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)