Scrapbook history talks at Hampshire College Nov 27 and U Mass Amherst Nov 28

Two talks in Amherst, November 27 and 28.

Talks at Hampshire College Nov 27 and U Mass Nov 28:  If you’re in Western Mass.

All invited! Two engaging topics:

November 27, 2012 5 pm Hampshire College, Amherst, MA “Too Much to Read: Scrapbooks and How People Managed Information before the Internet.” Franklin Patterson Hall, West Lecture Hall.

November 28, 2012 4 pm University of Massachusetts, Amherst “Strategic Scrapbooks: Nineteenth Century Activists Remake the Newspaper for Women’s Rights and African American History.” Herter Hall, 601.

Scrapbooking the Civil War in the New York Times

A piece drawn from Writing with Scissors is in the New York Times Disunion blog, following the Civil War. How the rage for clipping newspapers helps us interpret what everyday people thought about the conflict.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/scrapbooking-the-civil-war/

Scrapbooks: The Facebook of 1800s — The Durham Herald-Sun’s write-up of my scrapbook talk at Duke

Write up of my Duke University talk

So great that the Duke University library put some of the scrapbooks I was speaking about on display for people to look at.

Treasures at the University of Washington

I had the treat of speaking to the Book Arts Guild in Seattle Nov. 1. What fun to connect the scandal of reality TV star Lauren Conrad turning book spines into box decorations with the reuses 19th century scrapbook compilers made of books!

Sandra Kroupa with scrapbooks

Early 20c scrapbook made up of hacked up early printed books and bits of medieval manuscripts. Don’t do this!

Book Arts and Rare Book Curator Sandra Kroupa laid out an array of the University of Washington’s scrapbook treasures. They included the truly horrifying work of a man who had hacked up early printed books and medieval music manuscripts to save the choice bits in his scrapbooks. He probably thought he was engaged in scholarship or some form of preservation — saving the best of these books. It reminded me of the collection of snipped off decorative letters from medieval manuscripts that another collector donated to the Marmottan Museum in Paris. Far more troubling than Lauren Conrad fiddling with Lemony Snicket.