Joseph Cabay, or Kewakezhig: A Home in the Skies
The Clements Library is thrilled to have recently acquired a mid-19th-century calling card for a Saginaw Band Ojibwa man named Joseph Cabay which will be a welcome addition to the Native American History Collection. Born around 1837 in Saganing, Michigan, to...
The Grosvenor L. Townsend Scrapbooks: First-hand insights from the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
At the beginning of March 2021, a grand total of 59 new finding aids for Graphics Division collections were made available online. While the vast majority of these finding aids were produced for collections that already had pre-existing catalog records, six of them...
New and Improved Graphics Finding Aids: Spring 2021
The Clements Library is pleased to announce that the following collections are now described online and may be requested for use in the reading room. (The Clements Library is currently open by appointment only for U-M faculty, students, and staff.) Before planning...
“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...
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...
Writing the Injured Body
Guest post by Jean Franzino, Clements Library 2019 Norton Strange Townshend Fellow * * * In 1904, New Jersey Civil War veteran George R. Shebbeard published his life narrative, a 32-page booklet of the sort sold by disabled veterans for their economic support. The...