Monday, October 31, 2011

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, announces the availability of Mary Lily Research Grants for research travel to our collections.

The Sallie Bingham Center documents the public and private lives of women through a wide variety of published and unpublished sources. Collections of personal papers, family papers, and organizational records complement print sources such as books and periodicals. Particular strengths of the Sallie Bingham Center are feminism in the U.S., women's prescriptive literature from the 19th & 20th centuries, girls' literature, zines, artist's books by women, gender & sexuality, and the history and culture of women in the South. An overview of our collecting areas can be found here: http://bit.ly/BinghamOverview.

Mary Lily Research grants are available to any faculty member, graduate or undergraduate student, or independent scholar with a research project requiring the use of materials held by the Sallie Bingham Center. Grant money may be used for travel, photocopying, and living expenses while pursuing research at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Applicants must live outside of a 100-mile radius from Durham, NC. The maximum award per applicant is $1,000.

The deadline for application is January 31, 2012 by 5:00 PM EST. Recipients will be announced in March 2012. Grants must be used between April 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013.

For more information and to download a copy of the application form, please visit: http://bit.ly/ResearchGrants.

Applicants are encouraged to contact Kelly Wooten, the Bingham Center’s research services librarian, before submitting their application. In our experience, those who spoke with a staff member about their projects produced stronger applications. Contact information is listed below:

Kelly Wooten

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Box 90185

Duke University

Durham, NC 27708-0185

Phone: 919-660-5967

E-mail: kelly.wooten@duke.edu

Website: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/bingham

Monday, October 31, 2011



Paper proposals are invited for a half-day symposium entitled “Women and the Civil War,” to be held April 27, 2012, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The symposium in being organized in connection with an exhibit at the university’s Hornbake Library, Women on the Border: Maryland Perspectives of the Civil War, which draws on materials in the University Libraries’ Special Collections. The exhibition focuses on the lives and experiences of ordinary women living in Maryland during the Civil War, using letters, diaries, photographs, sheet music, rare books, and other special collections materials as sources. A digital version of the physical gallery exhibition is being planned and will launch within the next few months. To learn more about the exhibit please visit: http://www.lib.umd.edu/mdrm/gallery/index.html

The symposium will provide a forum for discussing the multitude of roles women played in the war and the many ways in which the war affected them. The keynote speaker will be Thavolia Glymph, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Duke University. The symposium committee is especially interested in scholarship relating to Maryland women and the Civil War or to women’s experiences in the border states. Proposals relating to these topics will be given preference, but proposals relating to other aspects of the topic of women and the Civil War will also be considered. The committee welcomes proposals from graduate students as well as more experienced scholars. Papers should be no longer than twenty minutes when delivered. Paper proposals (500 words or less) and brief presenter bios should be e-mailed to Elizabeth Novara at enovara@umd.edu.

Submissions deadline is November 15, 2011, and the program committee expects to notify successful applicants by December 15, 2011.