Author: Annie Tummino

This month, in collaboration with the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, the Library’s Special Collections and Archives welcomes two visiting fellows who will be conducting research with the James J. Periconi Collection of Italian-Language American Imprints. 

To meet the Fellows and learn about their research, please register for the luncheon on November 14.

2023 Inaugural Fellows 

Lindsey N. Kingston is an Associate Professor of International Human Rights at Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri. She directs the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, which includes overseeing the undergraduate program in International Human Rights. Kingston edited Human Rights in Higher Education: Institutional, Classroom, and Community Approaches to Teaching Social Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press, 2021). She also authored the monograph Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights (Oxford University Press, 2019), which won the International Studies Association’s 2020 Human Rights Best Book Award. She is an Italian-American dual national with advanced Italian language proficiency. 

Carmen Petruzzi is a postgraduate research fellow at the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Foggia. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Literature, a Master’s degree in Modern Philology, and another in Science of Education. In 2022, she passed the national competitive examination as a teacher of Italian and History at High School. She obtained her PhD in April 2019 at the University of Florence and immediately afterward she perfected her knowledge of qualitative and quantitative methods in a one-year internship in New York between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2020. She currently collaborates with Antonella Cagnolati, Full Professor of History of Education and Comparative Education at the University of Foggia. She has always been interested in migration with a specific focus on the effects on children’s life histories and projects. Since 2020 she has been working on the reconstruction of educational processes within the broader topic of the history of Italian emigration. Her research investigation intends to illuminate the lesser-known path of autonomy and independence achieved between the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly by the second generations who filled the educational gap between the parent’s generation and long-standing American residents. 

To learn more about the collection, you can browse titles in the CUNY OneSearch catalog or explore a curated website that includes images and essays. 

In Celebration of Black History Month, this month we share an item from our digital shelves: an oral history with Nathaniel Smith.

Nathaniel Smith is Director of NYC Men Teach at Queens College, CUNY. The interview was conducted by former staff member Obden Mondésir over Zoom in two parts, in November and December 2020. In the interview, Smith talks about his early childhood, family, and education throughout his life. He also touches on Hurricane Katrina, the organization of the BLFSA (the Black & Latinx Faculty & Staff Association) at Queens College, and the lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this clip, Smith discusses the work of the BLFSA on campus after the murder of George Floyd:

You can watch the full interview on the Queens Memory Aviary portal. You can read the full BLFSA 2020 statement and call to action here.

From February 6-10, 2023, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world are sharing free coloring sheets and books based on materials in their collections. Sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine, the initiative is a wonderful way to publicize unique holdings and create new uses for public domain materials. Please download, print, and share your favorites! 

Here at the Queens College Library, members of the Special Collections and Archives and Web and Digital Services units teamed up to create a coloring book based on illustrations from the text Pepper and Salt or Seasoning for Young Folk (Harper Brothers, New York, 1885). The item is one of several hundred in our rare juvenile literature collection.

Please share your coloring on social media using the hashtag #ColorOurCollections and make sure to tag @qclibrary and @queenscollegearchives on Instagram and @LibraryQc on Twitter! 

By Annie Tummino and Caitlin Colban-Waldron 

A collaboration between the Department of Special Collections and Archives and the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies provided students a special opportunity to gain real-world experience in the library’s archives during the summer 2022 term. 

In the course, “Library Science 790.3 Advanced Archival Practice,” students developed advanced proficiency in archival appraisal, arrangement, and access through embedded fieldwork. Under the supervision of course instructor Caitlin Colban-Waldron and with the assistance of Head of Special Collections and Archives Annie Tummino, students engaged in a hands-on project from beginning to completion, processing portions of the archival collection of artist Barbara Rosenthal. The class was held in the Charles J. Tanenbaum Room, funded by the Pine Tree Foundation of New York for use as a special collections classroom. 

Barbara Rosenthal, a QC alumnus and multi-media artist, whose donated work and materials served as the basis for all practical coursework, was an invaluable resource to the students as both a unique and compelling subject and as a rich source of information and context for the materials themselves. By the end of the term, students completed processing work on specific sections of the larger collection and will be able to translate coursework into tangible skills and outcomes for inclusion in their professional résumés. 

The course is one of several initiatives developed by the Department of Special Collections and Archives to fulfill its strategic mission of “training the next generation of archivists.” Barbara Rosenthal’s collection is an exciting new addition to the archives, encompassing a lifetime of record-keeping, notes, drafts, versions, and materials for every project in many media, plus household, family, and moment-to-moment life-recording and professional correspondences.