Browse Exhibits (10 total)

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, the Shain Library held an exhibit in fall of 2020 featuring materials from the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association collection as well as items from the College Archives portraying student activities around the struggle to achieve suffrage and members of the College community who were active in the movement and the years after its success.

The Cuala Press was founded in the early 20th century as the Dun Emer Press, part of Dun Emer Industries which sought "to find work for Irish hands in the making of beautiful things," namely embroidery, weaving, and hand-press printing. Inspired in part by the fine printing movement in England as exemplified by the Kelmscott Press, the press strived to teach Irish girls the handicraft of producing exquisite books. It was operated by Elizabeth C. Yeats working with her brothers William B. and Jack B. Yeats as the press's editor and artist respectively. 

In 1908 the Dun Emer Press began producing a series of monthly broadsides. After the first issue, the press changed its name to the Cuala Press and continued the broadside series for seven years. The broadsides featured works of poetry, signed, unsigned, and pseudonymous, and hand-colored woodcut illustrations. Each issue was limited to 300 copies. 

The poetry in the broadsides covers a wide range of topics. Some praise fighters for Irish independence going back to the 18th century. Others laud early Irish mythic or historic figures. Some cover famous sporting events, especially boxing. Others trace the successes and failures of emigrants to America. As a whole, they bear powerful witness to the rebirth of national identity in the years leading up to the reestablishment of home rule in Ireland.

Linda Lee Abel is a graduate of the Connecticut College Class of 1969.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the college in June of 1969. Before attending Connecticut College, she resided with her family in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, where she attended North Attleboro High. During her undergraduate years at Connecticut College (1965-1969) she majored in Zoology. She achieved high academic status throughout her years at Connecticut College and was the recipient of The E. Frances Botsford Prize in Zoology in May of 1969. During her time at the college, Linda served as a Library Representative, a student officer position, and was also involved with the college radio station WCNI.

While Linda attended Connecticut College (Sept. 1965 - June 1969) it was a women’s college, hence the college's former name Connecticut College for Women.  In September of 1969, Connecticut College became coeducational, a decision by college President at the time Charles E. Shain.  Even though the college institued this change a semester after Linda graduated, debates on whether or not Connecticut College and other academic institutions should become coeducational were taking place during Linda's undergraduate years. Therefore, coeducation at Connecticut College and other academic institutions, such as Yale, Vassar and Wesleyan are prominent subjects in the scrapbook.

Linda's scrapbook contains newspaper clippings, college event programs and tickets, theater pamphlets, stickers, pins, personal letters, drawings, cards and many assorted pieces of ephemera and memorabilia related to the social and educational environment of Connecticut College during the years 1965-1969.  

- The scrapbook has been digitized for this online exhibit, but is available for viewing in the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives, located in the Charles E. Shain Library at Connecticut College.

Time Capsule New London 

The historic New London City Hall building (built in 1856 and renovated in 1912) is currently slated to undergo a major renovation. In the Fall of 2018 and the Spring of 2019, two Connecticut College seminars worked on the development and public presentation of the proposed contents and design of the New London City Hall time capsule. Students explored historical objects and documents held in various New London public collections like the New London Historical Society, New London Landmarks, the New London Custom House Maritime Museum and Connecticut College's Linda Lear Center for Special Collections.

In collaboration with the New London city government, the fall seminar prepared a proposal for the contents and design of a time capsule to be placed within the building during construction. Building on the work of a fall 2018 seminar, which explored New London’s history and present to formulate a time capsule proposal, students in the Spring 2019 seminar prepared an exhibition to be hosted at Charles E. Shain Library, with a linked exhibition website.

We would like to thank Tom Bombria, Community & Economic Development Project Coordinator, City of New London, for his championship of the project. Many thanks to the institutions and individuals who have permitted the reproduction of images, credited in the Source line of individual entries.

The American Women’s History Collection at Connecticut College began in the early 1940s, under the direction of librarian, Hazel Johnson, and professor of history, Chester Destler, with the support of the President of Connecticut College, Dorothy Schaffter.  Their efforts resulted in obtaining original materials of notable American women such as Belle Moskowitz, Frances Perkins, Prudence Crandall, Alice Hamilton, Roberta Bitgood, Anna Hempstead Branch, Mary Jobe Akeley, Lillian Wald, and Mary Morrison.  A significant addition to this collection were materials from the World Center for Women’s Archives founded by Mary Ritter Beard.  More recent additions include the Linda Lear Rachel Carson collection and the Jewel Plummer Cobb Collection.