Elizabeth A. Clark Collection of Research Materials, ca. 2000-2020

Elizabeth A. Clark was a groundbreaking scholar of early Christianity, especially feminist approaches to early Christian texts and the role of women in the first Christian centuries. An alumna of Columbia, she was also a celebrated teacher and mentor of many scholars now working in the field.

Testamente Nutak: Kaladlin Okauzeennut Nuktersimarsok, Nar'kiutingoænniglo Sukuïarsimarsok

This is an extremely rare 1827 edition of the New Testament in Greenlandic.

Collection on Pandemic Response and Public Health of China

This collection consists of about 200 special publications in Chinese and English that range from a photograph album on the Harbin plague epidemic of the late Qing Dynasty and pandemic prevention reports of the Republican Period to booklets, pamphlets, posters, handbooks, and statistical reports on exterminating the "Four Pests" and eradicating schistosomiasis of the 20th century.

LBGT Films by Chinese and Taiwanese Queer Filmmakers

In association with the Libraries’ Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) program, "Affirming Queer Intimacies in Sinophone Cinema," which featured two classroom discussion sessions, three film screenings, and discussions with the directors in February 2023, the Starr East Asian Library acquired the films and related publications of critically-acclaimed queer filmmakers Zero Chou, Zi'en Cui, and Popo Fan. The new acquisitions includes 21 films, of which four streaming film contents have been uploaded into the Libraries’ hosting space, AVON (Academic Video Online), for convenient streaming access.

Yin Pu Huang Collection

Donated by the family members of Yin Pu Huang, a Columbia alumnus (B.S. 1924; M.S. 1925, Business) from Canada and the United Kingdom, items from the collection include three hand scrolls, which artistically integrate dozens of paintings, poems, and calligraphic inscriptions by noted artists, scholars, calligraphers, and poets of  20th-century China.

Body of Evidence

This artist book by Ana Paula Cordeiro, who was born in Brazil but lives in northern Manhattan, documents the life of an immigrant artist, from 9/11 to ICE and the pandemic, through letterpress episodes. Excerpts from the author’s personal journals are supplemented by literary quotations and images of Cordeiro’s Manhattan neighborhood in woodcut, photographic processes, screenprint, and photopolymer on a variety of substrates. The shape of the volume reflects the opened envelopes that Emily Dickinson used to draft her poetry, and by design, the book is unable to stand on its own.

Book of the Canonesses Regular of the Lateran Congregation of Saint Augustine

This 1511 Italian manuscript contains an unedited and unpublished collection of specific prescriptions to guide the daily conduct of a community of nuns at the Abbey of Sant’Andrea della Porta in Genoa. The book was copied specifically for this community by their confessor, Father Gregorio da Piacenza, and its handsome illuminated frontispiece may well have been designed and painted by the nuns themselves, with lace-like decorations alluding to one of the likely products made by these nuns at the time. As such, it is a fascinating and unusual source of information regarding the way this female community may have viewed themselves, as well as how they were expected to conduct their daily lives.

Edward Schwartz Photographs, 1930s-1960s 

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Schwartz grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He graduated from Hebrew Technical Institute in 1922 and then attended City College at night while working factory jobs as an engineer during the day. Schwartz joined the Photo League in 1938 and began taking street pictures of New York's immigrant neighborhoods. Schwartz's photographs of New York City street scenes combined elements of photojournalistic and artistic forms. His photographs of the protests against the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are especially significant.

Estate Survey and History for a Parcel of Land in the Area of San Vito

Written on parchment, and measuring nearly nine feet unrolled, this manuscript is an estate survey for the sale of a valuable parcel of land in the vicinity of the village of San Vito on the outskirts of Lodi. Most unusually, it was owned by a Jewish family under the protection of the Renaissance general Filippino Fieschi. We don’t know very much about the family that owned this land, other than their names: Chresino and Grassino, sons of Jacob, as well as Benedicto. Also mentioned in the document are Leo and his sisters Ventirie and Belle. The family is documented as having arrived from “Roine,” which is possibly Rhone in the south of France.The estates listed were evaluated as worth 1950 livres ‘valoris,’ a very high sum of money. In many places, Jews were not allowed to own land, much less an estate of this size, and so this manuscript has much potential for new findings on the history of the Jews in 15th-century Italy.

The Female Forme: A Suite of Prints Celebrating Jewish Women's Participation in the Development of Early Hebrew Printing

These prints riff on the "Woman of Valor" section from Proverbs to focus the "work of her hands," highlighting women involved in the Hebrew press from the 1480s to the 19th century.

Fly Papers

Fly (née Elen Orr) is a comics artist, textile artist, "crust-punk" musician, feminist, squatter, illustrator, chronicler, teacher, and community activist. She has documented the Alphabet City/Loisaida neighborhood in comics, zines, photography, and more over the course of more than three decades. This collection of artwork, zines, sketchbooks, photographs, clothing, tapes, etc. document much more than just an artist's career; it documents the history of a movement and a neighborhood.

George Hunt Kwak'wala Ethnographic Manuscripts, 1890s-1930s

Thirty volumes (about 8,500 pages) of linguistic and anthropological notes were made about the Kwakwaka'wakw by George Hunt in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, between 1898 and 1931, at the request of and in collaboration with Franz Boas. The texts, which consist of a wide array of stories and cultural information, were written by Hunt in Kwakʼwala with interlinear English translations. Hunt would mail small batches to Boas, who then made extensive corrections and notations on the page.

This re-description and digitization project was inspired by requests from Kwak'wala language revitalization groups. The digitized images will not be published by the Libraries, but are available to community members. Library staff are now working with communities to determine access restrictions to the materials.  

Grant of the Castle Moreda to the Monastery of San Vicente de Pino in Galicia, Spain/Arias Arias

This document is a precisely-dated example of one of the rarest of medieval European scripts, used in the Iberian peninsula from the 8th to the 13th centuries. Examples of this script are extremely rare outside of Spanish institutional archives. 

Homelessness and Healing Oral History Collection

Interviews in this collection document the experiences of unhoused people and individuals working on the issues of homelessness and housing. All participants were involved in life skills empowerment programs, which are run by faith-based organizations and include elements of personal goal setting, storytelling, and service.

Joan Konner Papers: Audiovisual Digitization Project

Joan Konner was an American academic and journalist who served as Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism for nine years. She was a reporter, editorial writer, and columnist for the Bergen Record (N.J.); a producer, reporter, host, and editor at WNET/Thirteen; a documentary and news producer, writer, director, and program director at NBC News; an executive producer for national public affairs programs; and executive producer of "Bill Moyers Journal.” This project digitized her extensive audiovisual materials.

Josefina Báez Papers

The Josefina Báez Papers document Báez's career as a Dominican American writer, theater director, actor, dancer, and teacher in the United States and abroad. Dating back to the 1970s, this archive of writings and related documents provide an invaluable understanding of the significance of Báez's career as a writer and performer. The archive will enable researchers to comb through the different stages of her writing process, visual inspirations in her writing through her travels around the world, and her evolution as an actress and dancer.

Judaica Digitization Project

This project involved digitization of about 130 manuscripts which were not otherwise accessible in any way and conversion of microfilm of manuscripts to digital images. All images have been loaded to the Internet Archive.

La Semplicità Ingannata/di Gaelerana Baratotti

This book by Archangela Tarabotti (1604-1652) is a feminist manifesto by a woman who was forced into a convent as a girl. Circulated in manuscript during her life, the text was so controversial that it was printed only in 1654, after her death, and in Leiden, far from her hometown of Venice. Even so, the book was added to the Index of Prohibited Books in 1660.

Michael I. Sovern Papers

A Columbia University graduate, former faculty member, dean, and provost, Michael I. Sovern was Columbia's first Jewish president. Sovern oversaw the admission of women to Columbia College for the first time in 1983 and successfully resolved the most explosive issue since the 1968 protests: South African divestment. The issue of South African divestment, which pitted the trustees against students and the community, was carefully negotiated by Sovern. In 1990, Sovern gained community approval for the development of property adjacent to the Health Sciences Campus, including Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated.

Obama Presidency Oral History Project

This project included 1,100 hours of audio and video oral history interviews with 470 administration officials, activists, organizers, and others whose lives were shaped by the administration.

PEN/Faulkner Foundation Records

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation Archive (ca. 1976-present) documents the origins, founding, development, and operations of an organization whose activities support writing, reading, and literature through public programs, education, and two literary awards for which the foundation is best known: the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. The foundation has from its inception been organized, administered, and supported by writers, with its awards judged by writers. The foundation’s first educational program, Writers in Schools (WinS), which started in 1989, sent writers to DC-area schools and provided students with copies of culturally diverse works for discussion with the books’ authors; the program is particularly well documented in the archive by teacher/student-created classroom portfolios and administrative materials.

Quaerimonia Terrarum Pocuciae Podoliaeque/Georgius Ticinus

This unrecorded Polish imprint from 1536 contains a poem by Polish diplomat and humanist Jerzy of Tyczyn (ca. 1510-1591) on a conflict in the region that is now Ukraine.

Tania León Papers

Tania León is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. She is credited with playing an important role in introducing Latin American music to American audiences, and her compositional style, with influences from gospel and jazz, has been described as “utterly distinctive.”

Voces Cubanas

Voces Cubanas was the first large-scale oral history project authorized by the Cuban government since a similar study led by Oscar Lewis was closed in 1970. The project is an important addition to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s Latino Arts and Activisms collections, specifically holdings related to the Latinx diaspora. The interviews document in-depth life histories of Cubanas across the island from 2004 through 2015. Narrators are from different generations and social positions, with diverse racial, gender, sexual, and religious identities and political views. Many narrators spoke with the research team multiple times over the years, which make the longitudinal aspects of this project incredibly valuable. Several narrators who relocated to Miami described the process of leaving Cuba, their adjustment to the United States, and their divided lives, split between Cuba and Miami. The Ford Foundation generously funded a summer internship to process this collection, enabling a doctoral candidate in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures to add archival processing to their skillset. Materials will be available in both English and Spanish.