Browse Items (90 total)

This is a Photograph that student director Marta Kondrati shot of Peter Kenedi getting ready to play Dr. Frankenfurtur in the Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcast of 2024. This was the first time Rocky Horror had been performed since the pandemic. In the back of this photograph, you can see the writing of past shows on the dressing room walls.

A Los Angeles Times article containing the text of the speech Marlon Brando provided Sacheen Littlefeather to be read upon his refusal of the Academy Award. The speech was not read during the ceremony due to time limitations, but Littlefeather read it to the press after the ceremony and its contents was published in several major newspapers. In the statement, Brando writes that while he does not wish to insult the Academy or its members, he would like to "focus attention" on the mistreatment of Indigenous Americans by the United States and their negative representation by Hollywood. While there have been attempts to redress the situation, Brando states that they are "too faltering and too few so I as a member in this profession do not feel that I can as a citizen of the United States accept an award here tonight." He concludes the statement by thanking the audience for their "kindness and courtesy" to Littlefeather, assuming that she would be well-receieved at the Oscars ceremony.

Lydia B Denny was kidnapped and forcebily commited to an asylum by her husband from whom she was attempting to divorce on grounds of physical abuse. Her personal statement, followed by letters she wrote while committed, illustrate the ways in which members of the larger society, including those in the medical and legal systems, became agents of abuse against women in the 19th century. Although other websites have tagged this manuscript with terms like "battered woman" or "Reuban Swan Denny" (her husband), I find these terms take away from the power Lydia found to resist not only the social pressures of an abusive marriage but also the oppresive legal system that attempted to label her insane.

Lucy Maynard Salmon's Domestic Service is a 1901 investigation of women's household labor as part of the broader American economy. The book draws on more than a thousand surveys collected in the late 1880s from employers and workers, and documents wages, skills, national origins, living arrangements, and working conditions. The author outlines three major historical phases of domestic labor. The colonial period is when most household work was performed by enslaved people, indentured servants, or the very poor. After the Revolution, when free labor became more common and households briefly imagined themselves as more egalitarian.  By the mid-19th century, new immigrants, especially Irish, German, and Swedish women, entered domestic service in large numbers, making the work more widespread but lowering its social status. Salmon's data shows that most workers lived in cities, worked long hours with limited freedom, and earned an average of about $3.23 per week, often supplemented with room and board rather than full wages. Employers often treated household labor as personal labor rather than paid work, and employers had little power to negotiate conditions. Salmon proposed reforms, including abandoning the term "servant," ending tipping, dividing household tasks into defined roles, and establishing training schools to recognize household management as a skilled profession.

Interpretation Note
Salmon's study plays an important role in understanding how written records define women's labor. By converting lived experiences into surveys, tables, averages, and typologies, Salmon exposes domestic labor as economic labor governed by the same principles as factory or farm employment, which opposes the widespread belief that household work was merely women's natural duty. Yet, her methodology also demonstrates the trade-offs of institutional documentation. The precision of her statistics gives domestic labor new legitimacy, but the process of abstraction can smooth over the emotional, interpersonal, and racial dynamics that shaped daily life inside employers' homes. In this sense, Salmon's work echoes Saidiya Hartman's point about how the archive can make people visible while still muting their voices, since the workers appear as data rather than as narrating subjects. Her historical timeline shows how race and class determined which workers' stories were preserved and which were sidelined. Enslaved Black women, indentured servants, and immigrant workers played a pivotal role in the development of domestic service, yet their voices appear only through employers' accounts or through Salmon's own categorizations. The book demonstrates how genre (in this case, a sociological survey) can validate women's work by recognizing its economic value in the broader national economy, while also repeating the same hierarchies and omissions that define the archive.

This is the Carletonian, the student newspaper of Carleton College, from January 26th, 2018. On the front page, on the lower right-hand side, and continuing to the bottom of the third page, there is an article discussing funding Carleton had received from the school and recent alumni funding for the theater's renovation. Lizzy Ehren wrote the article, and she highlights several structural issues with the theater, including a lack of accessibility and safety concerns. The article also touches upon the fondness for the space from active Experimental Theater Board, or ETB, members Kate Faber ’18 and Emma Buechner ’18.

This is a section of a LIFE magazine article titled "An intimate revolution in campus life", it focuses on the Oberlin president's decision making process in switching to co-ed dorms with 24 hour visitation. It also emphasizes the potential for platonic friendships and greater understanding between men and women as a result of co-ed housing, as opposed to purely sexual opportunities. It includes a picture of a female Oberlin students spending time wither her two male friends in their dorm room.

This is a section of a LIFE magazine article titled "An intimate revolution in campus life", it focuses on the issues of campus relationships in co-ed dorms, specifically at Oberlin College. It also includes photographs of Oberlin students in relationships spending time together in campus spaces and dorms.

This is a section of a LIFE magazine article titled "Missouri vs. Smith, Girl Student at One and a Coed at Other Lead Different Lives." It focuses on the life of University of Missouri student Jane Stone. It also includes photographs of her curling her hair, spending time with her boyfriend, and working in class.

This is a photograph of President Poskanzer, the president of Carleton College, during the pandemic. He is taking a picture with Careton's sketch comedy troupe, Lenny Dee, which unfortunately no longer exists on campus. The President and the students are all seen wearing masks, as this was their first time acting in the theater since the start of the pandemic.

Artwork by Lynn Hershman Leeson depicting the white silhouette of a woman's head and torso against a black background. Colorful pictures such as a heart, a star, an airplane, and other geometric patterns are shown within the body in a manner that mimics a medical x-ray.