“Framing Identity” exhibition examines Black empowerment, resilience through 19th century photography
Frederick Douglass once said: “Poets, prophets, and reformers are all picture-makers—and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the...
New Finding Aids and Subject Guides: January 2021
The Clements Library is pleased to announce that the following collections are now described online and two new Subject Guides have been published to our website. Subject Guides highlight selected areas of strength in the collections and advice for researchers. The...
Empire and Encounter at Detroit: Native Nations, Native Labor
Guest post by Jonathan Quint, University of Michigan Department of History PhD candidate and Clements Library Intern. This third blog post in a three-part series titled “Empire and Encounter at Detroit” (read part 1 and part 2) uses James Sterling’s letter book to...
Student Curators discuss collaborative process developing ‘No, not even for a picture’ online exhibit
In 2020, University of Michigan students Veronica Cook Williamson and Lindsey Willow Smith worked with Clements Library staff and others—through a pandemic—to produce a new online exhibition examining early photography of Native Americans. In this guest post,...
New Virtual Exhibition Reexamines Photography of Midwest Native People, Tribes
Group portrait of five unidentified Ojibwa Indian men wearing mixtures of western and traditional clothing posing outside tree bark wigwam at White Earth Indian Reservation, Minnesota. Photography can be a tool of colonialism, as well as a tool of sovereignty and...
Empire and Encounter at Detroit: “Habitants,” Hired Labor, and the Enslaved
Guest post by Jonathan Quint, University of Michigan Department of History PhD candidate and Clements Library Intern. This second blog post in a three-part series titled “Empire and Encounter at Detroit” (read part 1) uses James Sterling’s letter book to enter the...
A picture is worth a thousand words: Illustrations from the Clements in “The History of Cartography Volume 4”
Mary Pedley, Assistant Map Curator at the Clements Library, is co-editor with Matthew H. Edney of The History of Cartography Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press 2019). * * * The old adage about pictures and words has...