Author: Lee Anne Titangos
Roundtable: The Worlds of Oratorian Devotion in 17th and 18th Century Mexico City
The second Bancroft Round Table of the Spring Semester will take place at noon, Thursday, March 15 in the Lewis Latimer Room of the Faculty Club. Ben Reed, Ph. D. Candidate in the Dept. of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Reese Fellowship Recipient will give a talk entitled “The Worlds of Oratorian Devotion in 17th & 18th Century Mexico City.”
Mr. Reed’s research investigates the history and significance of Oratorian devotion to the Italian Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595) in 17th and 18th century Mexico City. For reasons unknown today, the Oratorian library and archives were fragmented and dispersed into public and private collections some time in the late 19th century; Mr. Reed endeavors to re-collect, and re-imagine the dimensions of, that archive. Alongside images of Oratorians’ lives, the project’s sources provide glimpses into many of the city’s social worlds, including the work of tax collectors for Spain’s on-going Holy Crusades, the clergy’s efforts to secure the canonization of Mexican saints, and several contrasting accounts of living in the city’s women’s shelters.
Please join us as Mr. Reed shares some of the insights about Mexico during the colonial period which are afforded by Bancroft’s treasures. Bancroft Round Tables aim to focus attention on the rich resources our library offers for studying the history of the nations of western North America. In this case, we invite the community to hear stories of some mysteries from earlier centuries in the life of one of the truly great cities on our continent.
Closing reception for “Bullets Across the Bay”
February 24th
Morrison Library, UC Berkeley
6-8 pm
Featuring Mark Coggins, Sheldon Siegel, Janet Dawson, Diana Orgain, and Simon Wood.
Join us as local mystery authors read and discuss influential passages from detective and crime fiction set in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Roundtable: Rain of Gold: A Century of Circular Labor Migration from Mexico
The first Bancroft Round Table of the Spring 2012 semester will take place on Thursday, February 16th at noon in the Lewis-Latimer Room of the Faculty Club. Israel Pastrana,
Ph.D. Candidate in History at UC San Diego and a Bancroft Study Award Recipient will speak on “Rain of Gold: A Century of Circular Labor Migration from Mexico.”
This talk explores the persistence of circular labor migration from Mexico to the American Southwest over the course of the twentieth century and beyond. By tracing his own family from roots in Mascota, Jalisco, to the mines and fields of Texas, Arizona, and California, Mr. Pastrana grounds theoretical discussions and policy debates about citizenship, migration, and the future of ethnic Mexicans in the USA in historical context.
The entire campus community is welcome to join us at this talk. At a time when rhetoric about immigration figures so largely in public discourse one looks forward to hearing the results of actual research in the historical context. Bancroft Round Tables aim to highlight the rich collections of the Bancroft Library. That three of the four Round Tables scheduled for this Spring involve Mexico underscores the tremendous resources Bancroft offers scholars studying Mexican history.
The Magnes Open House
A Day of Celebration of The New Magnes Home in Downtown Berkeley
January 22, 2012
12pm – 4pm
2121 Allston Way, Berkeley
The big day is here! We’ll start the day with a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially welcome the entire Berkeley community to the new Magnes. Exhibiting artists and Magnes staff will be on hand at the street festival-inspired event that will feature continuous musical performances by local bands and university choral and instrumental groups. Local restaurants will be serving up delicious eats and treats. Come see what The Magnes has to offer!
Reading Room Intersession Hours
INTERSESSION HOURS
January 2nd -15th
Open from 1pm – 5pm
Normal hours will resume on January 17th. Please plan your research accordingly.
Stirring Up History: The Bancroft’s Chez Panisse Archives give a soupçon of the restaurant’s early days
“The inch-high Help Wanted ad was placed in a Bay Area newspaper sometime in the early 1970s by a ‘small, successful, innovative Restaurant’ in Berkeley seeking an ‘inspired energetic CHEF to plan and cook single-entree 5-course dinners weekly, Fernand Point and Elizabeth David style.’
That scrap of newsprint, taped casually to the center of a vintage sheet of Chez Panisse notepaper, sits in a folder labeled ‘Staff: miscellaneous’ within the Chez Panisse manuscript archives at the Bancroft Library. Possibly it’s the very one that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1973. It may indeed be the one that, as foodie legend has it, brought only a handful of applicants to the kitchen at 1517 Shattuck Ave. But none were satisfactory to the overworked but committed young Alice Waters ‘67 and her comrades in cuisine, who’d converted the old house to a restaurant just two years earlier. Only then did an unknown Jeremiah Tower stride in, ‘fix the soup’ by adding salt and a bit of cream and white wine, and instantly land the job. It’s been said that Tower’s glittering career, the enduring reputation of Chez Panisse, indeed California cuisine itself—whatever that may prove to be when all is said and done—were all born at that historic moment.
That story, though long since debunked by all participants (apart from Tower himself), persists as a creation myth—a challenge to either confirm or rebut on the strength of primary documents from the Bancroft’s ‘Chez Panisse, records, 1966–2011.’ Donated to the library a decade ago, and continuing to grow with periodic infusions of paper from the still-thriving restaurant, the archive’s patchiness is perhaps its most striking characteristic.” – Jonathan King, CAL Alumni Association
Click here for Full Article
‘Everyday Dogs’ book depicts allure of man’s best friend
“A new book from the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library now hitting the holiday bookstore shelves gives fresh meaning to the term ‘dog days’ by celebrating the powerful connections between people and their canine companions.
The idea for ‘Everyday Dogs: A Perpetual Calendar for Birthdays and Other Notable Dates’ (Heyday Books) arose unexpectedly in 2005 when Mary Scott and Susan Snyder were sifting through the vast Pictorial Collection at The Bancroft for images for an exhibit on California women.
‘By chance we began finding some wonderful photos of dogs with their people,’ said Scott, graphic designer for the campus’s Doe and Moffitt libraries. And they found more, and more.
Among the hundreds of photos discovered by Scott and Snyder, public services director at The Bancroft, those chosen for the 152-page book had to relay ‘a still palpable connection between the people and their dogs,’ said Scott. ‘That’s what a photo needed to make the final cut – be it a crusty old prospector or a famous newspaperman,’ she said.
The cover is a professional photo by noted 19th-century California photographer Carleton E. Watkins, of a dog named Guardian peering alertly from a wicker carriage, but the book contains snapshots, too. Altogether, the book contains 75 evocative black-and-white photos taken between roughly 1870 and the 1940s.” – Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations
Click here for Full Article
“Beyond Words” is Oprah’s Book of the Week
Our own Susan Snyder’s recent publication for Bancroft has made Oprah’s Book of the Week! Congratulations, Susan!
Read the article here!
Early Reading Room Closures: December 8th and 9th
The Reading Room will close at 4pm on December 8th and 9th. Paging of materials stops at 3:30pm. Please plan your research accordingly.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Roundtable: “Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife”
November 17th, Faculty Club
12pm
The final Bancroft Round Table of the Fall 2011 Semester will take place at noon on Thursday, November 17th in the Lewis-Latimer Room of the Faculty Club. Misfortune has struck, and our scheduled speaker, Jeff Lustig, is unfortunately unable to join us due to an unanticipated health problem. On very short notice, noted local historian and author Philip Fradkin has offered to present a talk in his stead. We hope that Jeff will be able to give his presentation on Californias second constitutional convention at a later date. We are grateful that we had an accomplished Bancroft scholar to speak in his stead.
Philip will talk about his recently published book, Everett Ruess His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife. Everett Ruess was twenty years old when he vanished into the red rock canyon lands of southern Utah, spawning the myth of a romantic desert wanderer that survives to this day. It was 1934, and Ruess was in the fifth year of a quest to find beauty in the wilderness and record it in works of art whose value was recognized by such contemporary artists as Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston. From his home in Los Angeles, he walked, hitchhiked, or rode a burro up the California coast, along the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and into the deserts of the Southwest. Seventy-five years after Ruesss disappearance his bones were supposedly discovered in 2009. Misguided journalism led to bad science and erroneous DNA results. In the first probing biography of Everett Ruess, acclaimed environmental historian Philip Fradkin goes beyond the myth to reveal a troubled, idealistic adolescent who flirted with death and lost, and finds in the artists astonishing afterlife a lonely hero who persevered.
The campus community is invited to join us at this talk and learn more about a talented young man who, had he lived, might have been a noted California artist and poet and whose grandfather, William H. Knight, worked for H. H. Bancroft and Company.