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Archives and Special Collections

Archives, Historical Records, Special Collections

Professor of History Gerry Herman Retires After 50 Years at Northeastern

Just try to name a University committee that Gerry Herman hasn’t been involved with over the past half-century. Handbooks and contracts? He reviewed them. Strategic Plans? He helped plan them. Technology and distance learning initiatives? He championed them.

Herman first called Northeastern home as a graduate student in 1965. Since then, he has been on the cutting edge of  incorporating media into the  study and teaching of history. He taught courses on topics ranging from Western and World History to the History of Flight and Space Travel. Herman has given new meaning to the term “University Service,” serving as University Copyright Officer (1988-2012), Special Assistant to the Provost (1979-1987), and Special Assistant to University Counsel (1987-2012) in addition to chairing a host of committees and task forces. Herman has also been integral to the success of Holocaust Remembrance Week, serving on the Holocaust Awareness Committee from 1983-2013. Professor Herman retired from the University on July 1, 2015, but his impact will surely be felt for many years to come.

Herman’s professional papers and records (the Gerald H. Herman Papers) are preserved in the Archives and Special Collections Department in Snell Library.

 

Herman teaching an honors seminar in 1984.
Professor Herman in 1975.
Herman and President Richard Freeland at the inaugural NUTV broadcast, April 1997.


The Theater Offensive: 25 Years of Gay Theater, Bold Pride, Conscious Intersectionality, and #BlackLivesMatter

Northeastern’s Special Collections and Archives preserves The Theater Offensive Records, a prominent gay theater troupe that has long been a defining presence with the Boston gay community. Founded by Abe Rybeck in 1989, the Theater Offensive boasts that they are “Twenty-Five Years BOLD” this year. From  the OUT on the Edge festival, to championing AIDS Awareness in the Fenway in the early 1990’s, to the queer cabaret band, Adult Children of Heterosexuals, the Theater Offensive celebrates their fearlessness and has never shied from political activism and social justice, making this collection wholly unique and incredibly modern – even with its quarter century time stamp.

                   Political stickers from the late 1980’s, from the United Fruit Company Series.

This collection offers a backstage look at what it takes to run a gay theater troupe in Boston. This includes not only the fights for funding, but the overwhelming social justice obligation of being a member of such a massive and vocal community. For over twenty years, the Theater Offensive has taken that responsibility in stride, which is showcased in this collection’s festival posters, photographs, strategic planning for outreach, and demand for community presence.

          
Posters for plays depicting black gay life, from the Other Festivals and Production Series

People of color, especially people of color within the LGBTQA community, deserve and need to have their stories told. The Theater Offensive collection showcases how they have been boldly telling these stories for years and makes one realize how we are only just now starting to listen.

As this collection reflects, the Theater Offensive will continue with the message they have chanted, sung, and marched for since 1989: #BlackLivesMatter, #BlackGayLivesMatter, #BlackTransLivesMatter as they did proudly at Boston’s Annual Gay Pride Parade in June, 2015.

Lawsuit Against the MBTA for Unlawful Censorship of Condom Campaign Ads

Did you know that in 1994, the AIDS Action Committee sued the MBTA for unlawful censorship of a subway campaign featuring the use of condoms?  Seems hard to believe, but you can read all about it in our Archives and Special Collections, which has received a donation of new material from former AIDS Action Committee Director Thomas McNaught (1991-1996).

This donation adds to the existing AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts Records in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

While processing the new materials I noticed the photo of Captain B. Careful on the Boston Common. It stood out  for a few reasons. His sheer ingenuity for costume design. The huge smile on his face even though it was noticeably cold outside.

Captain B. Careful, Condom Campaign. AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Inc. (M61, Box 42, Folder 14.)

Less tangibly his image stood out to me because he symbolizes a continuity in Boston’s legacy of advocating for the power of knowledge and striving toward equal rights and opportunity for all. 

In 1992,  AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts (AAC)  introduced New England’s first public service television AIDS prevention campaign directed at gay men.

They also launched the United States’ first statewide transit campaign for AIDS awareness by placing condom posters on 437 buses throughout Massachusetts ultimately leading to a legal battle with the MBTA.

Highlights of the collection include:

  • photographs and press
  • outreach material regarding the condom campaign
  • materials on the AAC’s education and prevention campaigns
  • documentation regarding the AAC’s lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) for unlawful censorship of a subway campaign featuring the use of condoms in 1994

Meet the Inaugural DRS Pilot Projects

 

The Library’s Digital Scholarship Group is excited to announce projects chosen for the 2015 DRS Project Toolkit Pilot program. In this Pilot program, we work with selected digital projects at Northeastern to develop new tools for online scholarship. Projects will store and preserve their digital content in Northeastern’s next generation Digital Repository Service (learn more about the DRS here). Projects can then use platforms like WordPress and Omeka to curate and display this work in an engaging and accessible manner on the web. The Digital Scholarship Group received impressive proposals from a wide range of Northeastern’s colleges and departments, and are looking forward to working with the following three proposals for 2015-2016:

  • Debra Mandel (Libraries) will showcase the exciting work Northeastern students have created in Snell Library’s Digital Media Commons and Studios. A collaborative facility with state-of-the-art audio and video technology and support, the Digital Media Commons has helped students at Northeastern record music, create animated films, and produce a range of high-quality creative projects. The Digital Scholarship Group will help Digital Media Commons staff celebrate and preserve this work.
  • Giordana Mecagni (Archives and Special Collections) will create digital exhibits about the Boston Public Schools Desegregation, a process which began in the fall of 1974. The Digital Scholarship Group will help Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections make digital records of this important event in the history of Boston more widely accessible and visible. In addition to Archives and Special Collections, an interdisciplinary coalition of students, faculty members, and archivists from the Northeastern community will participate in this project.
  • Jenny Sartori (Jewish Studies) and the University’s Holocaust Awareness Committee will create a publicly-accessible archive of Northeastern’s Holocaust Awareness Week programming. For more than thirty years, these events have reflected Northeastern’s commitment to Holocaust awareness and genocide prevention. This will be an important educational resource that highlights the digital records of survivor testimonies, distinguished lectures, and roundtable discussions, as well as the history of the Holocaust Awareness Committee itself.

These projects join three other new DSG initiatives from earlier in Spring 2015:

  • a web presence for content from the Library’s Arader Galleries collection (and the creation of new signage that directs viewers of the physical prints to this online collection)
  • the addition of Stephen Sadow’s collection of interviews with Latin American artists and writers to the DRS
  • the migration of the Catskill Institute materials from their current home at Brown University to the DRS (and a new website at Northeastern)

The Digital Scholarship Group also continues to support the ongoing work of the Women Writers Project; Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive; The Early Caribbean Digital Archive; Viral Texts; Digital Humanities Quarterly; and TAPAS. For more information on projects supported by the Digital Scholarship Group, please visit our Projects page.

If you’d like to contact the Digital Scholarship Group, please email us: dsg@neu.edu. We are also on Twitter: @NU_DSG.

Speeches, Posters, and the Presidency: Michael Dukakis’ 1988 Campaign

In the past few weeks, the nation has had a number of politicians announce their intentions to run for the presidency. Soon the television, radio, and internet will be flooded with political advertisements, and our lawns and billboards will be plastered with the slogans and faces of the candidates. The information overload which accompanies a presidential race is not a new phenomenon. Past elections show the same intensity and fervor from the politicians and political parties. I was recently reminded of this intensity while processing Michael Aronson’s Papers (M206), for Northeastern’s Special Collections and Archives.

Michael Aronson Papers (M206), FF4/D4

The collection offers a behind the scenes look at a presidential campaign through items collected from Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign against George H. W. Bush during 1987-1988. Michael Aronson was a member of Dukakis’ speech writing team, leaving him with numerous items from the campaign including:

• Speeches

• Speech Drafts

• Correspondence

• Campaign Posters

• Itineraries

Even though Dukakis did not win the presidency, these materials represent an impressive campaign, and demonstrate the difficulty and challenges which accompany such an endeavor. The items, particularly the posters, also represent some of the less wholesome parts of a presidential campaign. The satirical and accusatory posters are interesting pieces of cultural and political history, which demonstrate the fine line that politicians tread when running for office.

Michael Aronson Papers (M206), FF4/D4

This collection offers a great opportunity to learn about political elections in the U.S. through primary evidence, and through a behind the scenes perspective, which media coverage does not always provide.