Author: Lee Anne Titangos
ALL Bancroftiana newsletters are now online!
All Bancroftiana newsletters, from its beginning in 1950 to the current issue, are available as PDFs online. The indexes for Numbers 1-100 are also available for download. All PDFs are keyword searchable.
Please visit: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/events/bancroftiana.html
Reading Room closure on Wednesday, 6/20
The Bancroft Reading Room will be CLOSED Wednesday, 6/20.
Please plan your research accordingly.
Welcome home H.H. Bancroft!
After being sent into storage during the 2005-2008 Seismic Retrofit of The Bancroft Library, the bust of Hubert Howe Bancroft has finally returned to a place of honor overlooking the entrance to the Reading Room.
The early history of the bust can be found here.
The Bancroft Reading Room Intersession Hours
INTERSESSION HOURS
May 14th – June 17th
Open from 1pm – 5pm
Normal hours will resume on June 18th. Please plan your research accordingly.
Online Exhibit: Shrouded in Mysteries
In honor the 75th anniversary of the official opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, The Bancroft Library is pleased to present Shrouded in Mysteries, a guided tour of the bridge as depicted on the covers of mystery, detective, and crime novels.
Within just a few short years of its opening to traffic on May 28, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge began appearing on the covers of San Francisco mysteries. The earliest known depiction of the bridge on a mystery novel occurred in 1940, on the cover of John Mersereau’s Murder Loves Company. Since then, the span has been featured on dozens of books. With its grace and beauty, and as the Bay Area’s iconic landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge immediately connects the reader to the setting of the story. Just as the physical bridge is often shrouded in fog, the image of the bridge is now shrouded with the stories told in these fictional mysteries.
The majority of the book covers included here are from The Bancroft Library’s extensive collection of mystery novels set in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Roundtable: The Political Economy of Gold, Money and Loyalty
The final Bancroft Round Table of the spring semester will take place on Thursday, May 17 at noon in the Faculty Club. Mike Caires, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Virginia, and Gunther Barth Fellowship Recipient will give a talk entitled The Political Economy of Gold, Money and Loyalty: Californians and the Greenbacks in the Civil War Era.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 not only marked the start of an international gold rush, but also set the stage for an antagonistic relationship between Californians and the Federal government. With their ready supply of gold, Californians resisted use of depreciated federal paper money (along with other federal efforts to regulate banking) during the Civil War. Yet as willingness to accept greenbacks came to symbolize support for the Union war effort, the perplexing matter of greenbacks proved internally divisive for Californians. How could Californians profess support for the Union while simultaneously undermining one of the basic means of financing the war? Using materials drawn from the Bancroft and other Bay Area archives, The Political Economy of Gold, Money and Loyalty examines how Californians attempted to balance their own economic desires and their conceptions of individual rights with the growing monetary powers of the Federal government in the nineteenth century.
Although the vast majority of attention is given to the East when the Civil War figures in historical narratives, the struggle in California was of great importance in suggesting what the future of the country might look like after Appomattox. The campus community is invited to join us for this rare opportunity to hear the fruits of research about Civil War struggles in California. Bancroft Round Tables serve to highlight the rich resources the library has to offer for the study of our heritage.
Alumnus and Japanese-American WWII vet Kenji Sayama donates Congressional Gold Medal to Bancroft
“Kenji Sayama, a 1942 UC Berkeley graduate and a veteran of the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Service has donated to The Bancroft Library a Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him and to about 19,000 other Japanese Americans who served in World War II. They were recruited into all-Japanese-American military units known for the motto, ‘Go For Broke.’
Sayama, 91,presented the medal to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Bancroft Director Elaine Tennant last Friday (April 20) in a small ceremony at the library. The chancellor accepted the medal, calling Sayama ‘a hero.’
‘I can’t think of any better place to send (the medal) to than this university,’ Sayama said after the ceremony.” – Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations
Click here for Full Article
Roundtable: Manuel Lozada’s Indigenous Rebellion
The third Bancroft Round Table of the Spring Semester will take place on Thursday, April 19th at noon in the Lewis-Latimer Room of the Faculty Club. Diana Negrin da Silva, Ph. D. Candidate in the Dept. of Geography at UC Berkeley and Bancroft Study Award Recipient will give a talk entitled “Manuel Lozada’s Indigenous Rebellion: A 19th Century Tale of Capital, Race, and the Struggle over Territory in Mexico.”
On January 23, 1873, rebel leader Manuel Lozada was captured by the forces of General Ramón Corona in a battle on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Shortly thereafter he was taken to Tepic and publicly executed. Lozada had led a prolonged agrarian revolt that shook the western territories of the current states of Jalisco and Nayarit. His forces were largely comprised of indigenous and mestizo fighters whose lands had been taken by large plantation owners in the wake of the liberal reforms begun by President Benito Juárez in 1857. This revolt preceded Emiliano Zapata’s famous call for “Land and Liberty” but it also epitomizes power struggles going on in the cities of Guadalajara and Tepic during key moments of their urban development.
The tale of the rivalry between a rural mestizo bandit-turned-rebel leader and a Creole liberal general that culminated in the 1873 battle illuminates the complex political economic and ethnic transformations that were taking place in the 19th century Mexican west. Marbled into the story one discovers the machinations of British and Panamanian capitalists and several generations worth of Nayari (Cora) and Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous rebels. The tangled relationship between the cities of Guadalajara and Tepic further complicates this dramatic story.
The Campus community is welcome to join us at what should be an entertaining account of an important precursor to the Mexican Revolution. Bancroft Round Tables aim to showcase the rich collections of our library, in this case, our enormous resources for students of Mexican history.
CAL DAY 2012: “A Place at the Table” Exhibit Gallery Talks
April 21, 2012
10:00 am-3:00 pm
Bancroft Library Gallery
Hear curator commentary about “A Place at the Table: A Gathering of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Text, Image, and Voice.” Talks begin on the hour, 10 am to 3 pm.
For other Cal Day events, please visit:
http://calday.berkeley.edu/index.php
Exhibit Opening Reception: A Place at the Table
April 4th
The Bancroft Library Gallery
6-8 pm
The Friends of The Bancroft Library together with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas invite you to a salon celebration to mark the opening of the exhibition A Place at the Table. The public is welcome to attend.
For more information, please call 510-642-3781