Hello everybody.
I'm Suzy Taraba I'm the Director of
Special Collections and Archives here at Wesleyan
and i'm really delighted that so many of
you could join us tonight for our
program Hidden Treasures. Tonight we're going to
introduce you to the spectacular
collection of Americana owned by the
Dietrich American Foundation and housed at
Wesleyan.
We hope to feature other collections and
similar programs in the future.
One of the hallmarks of the experience
of studying at a liberal arts college
is the opportunity to interact directly
with material objects of the past
documents, rare books, artworks
cultural objects, in ways that are often
reserved for only graduate students and
faculty at other institutions. Many of you
already know that Wesleyan's Special
Collections and Archives has a very
active program of outreach to students
and faculty.
Over the past two decades we've given
well more than a thousand class
presentations and helped countless students working with primary sources of all sorts.
Our collections include university archives, contemporary artist books,
rare books, local history, and much much
more.
Some of you may also know that we're
looking forward to a greater synergy
between the library including Special
Collections
and the Davison Arts Center. The DAC
is leaving the historic Elsa Palace for a
new home in the beautifully renovated lower level of the Olin Library. In a few moments you'll see images of
what this may look like. A new gallery will be nestled between
the Public Affairs Center and Olin. This project will help to bring together
two of Wesleyan's unique
collections that have historically been
across the campus from each other. The Dietrich American Foundation
collection is centrally located
on the east end of that corridor at this
new campus hub. So i'm thrilled to be able to welcome
you to this program.
We'll explore the richness of the
Dietrich Collection and learn how Wesleyan students and
faculty are inspired by the experience of
hands-on study of the stuff of history.
We have three distinguished panelists.
I'll introduce them briefly now. Further
biographical information is available on
the program's site. You can submit written questions for any
of the participants throughout the program by using the Q&A
function at the bottom of your screen.
We'll answer as many of your questions
as possible after our speakers have finished this
program is being recorded and will be available on Wesleyan's
website soon. And now to our speakers, first
we have H. Richard Dietrich III, who is
the president of the Dietrich American
Foundation. He is the co-editor of "In Pursuit of
History: A Lifetime Collecting Colonial American
Art and Artifacts" an exploration of his
father's lifelong passion for collecting.
Richard graduated from Wesleyan in 1992
and earned an MBA from Yale.
Morrison Heckscher is curator emeritus
of the american wing of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City.
Morrie graduated from Wesleyan in 1962
and he earned an MA from the Winter
Tour Program in Early American Culture at the
University of Delaware. His PHD is from Columbia University.
Morrie is a member of the board of the
Dietrich American Foundation.
Demetrius Eudell is the dean of the
social sciences and professor of history
at Wesleyan. He specializes in 19th century U.S.
history, intellectually history, the history of
Blacks in America. He is the author of the political
languages of Emancipation in the British
Caribbean and the U.S.
South. His current research projects include an
exploration of the discourses of
hierarchy of race and caste
as well as an examination of ideas of
history,
nature, and human differences in the 18th
century enlightenment.
Demetrius earned his AB from Dartmouth
and his PHD from Stanford
and he frequently brings his classes to
Wesleyan special collections and
archives. And now without further ado i'll turn
the program over to our first speaker
Richard Dietrich. Richard. Suzy
thank you very much and hello to
everybody
who's joined this this zoom call I'm
so humbled by the turnout
and i'm so honored to be on this panel
with Morrie Heckscher
and Demetrius Eudell and of course Suzy
Taraba
and I'm going to be talking as Suzy
mentioned about this book
"In Pursuit of History" and the book
as Suzy mentioned briefly is a book
about my father's collection
and it's something that he assembled
over a lifetime
and so it's very much it was for him
a pursuit of history
and we produced the book as a
foundation we did it
in affiliation with the Philadelphia
Museum of Art
and we were also very lucky to have Yale
University Press
carry the title first what we did
with this book is we thought about
really describing a collection and the
component parts of a collection
and then we really thought about how to
describe a collector
and so to do this we identified authors
and Kathy Foster and David Barques
both of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
wrote on paintings in silver
respectively
both of them along with Maury Heckscher
are on the board of the foundation
Ned Cook at Yale also on the board of
the foundation wrote about
american furniture and then
the board is rounded out by my brother
my sister
my brother-in-law my wife Ginger and me
and other authors included Debbie Reebok my co-editor of the
book and she wrote a great chapter on
wares for the american market from the
china trade
Lisa Minardi wrote about Pennsylvania
German
art and decorative and fine art and
artifacts
and then Michael Dyer of the New Bedford
Whalen Museum
wrote about whale trade related objects
and then finally the the the subject
matter that i'm going to be focusing
mostly on in this talk Bill Reese we
were very fortunate that Bill Reese the
great
manuscript and book dealer in New
Haven, Connecticut
wrote the section on books and
and then Phil Mead of the Museum
of the American History Museum of the American Revolution in
Philadelphia did the captions for that
section
so i'm going to share my screen and
share
a presentation now
and
i'm hoping that everybody can see that so this is the the title this is what
Suzy put up
and then Suzy mentioned
that she was going to share a couple
slides and this is this incredible
architecture
that Wesleyan is
is is going to be undergoing this
transformation
and again that's the section of of Olin
Library
where it connects to PAC
here's the book and the book again we
we identified these authors we also
identified
a great designer and that was a
company called Mikko McGinty
Company in Brooklyn New York
and I just was told to
not forget to share my screen so i think
i've done that
okay and so um again this is the
design work
this is the full jacket and
below you can see a promo and when I
told Yale books that I was going to be
doing this
this talk they offered this promotional
if through Yale Press if you go to
yalebooks.com
you get a 25% discount when you
key in YEIPH so iph is in pursuit
of history
YEIPH 
and then here's the book in the
Smithsonian American
Museum of Art in Washington DC
and then here's here's my father again
as Suzy mentioned he was class of 1960.
This was taken um probably
about 1963 it was about 25
and his love of collection of collecting
his kind of passion for collecting
really started
as an undergraduate at Wesleyan and what
he was collecting at the time were books that appealed to him as a
reader so authors like F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway, Mark Twain, you know Herman Melville
so these authors that he just loved as a
reader and what he was buying were
early copies first editions if possible
he was kind of doing what he could
after Wesleyan he went on to business
school
with this passion for history
for for early american history but he
went on to business school because he
knew that he was gonna
ultimately follow in his father's
footsteps in business
it was in 1962 that his father my
grandfather passed away
and my father ended up having to drop
out of business school
and help with the family estate but then
also
really take on the mantle of running
the company and so this was a big
time of tumult for him it was a
difficult time
but it was something that he knew that
he had to do at the same time
that love of history and collecting was
something that was
you know really just brought him a lot
of joy
so this is the family business Lewdens
Cough Drops these are early
products not from the 60s or 70s but
much earlier
my grandfather and great uncle
purchased the company in 1928 they
did it at the kind of
insanely young ages of 19 for my
grandfather and 24 for his older brother
and they floated a bond
and they raised money among the Reading
business elite Reading, Pennsylvania
it's where they were from and William
Luden wasn't you know somebody who was
sort of back up against the wall he was somebody
who just wanted to retire
and I get into this in the book I really
don't have time now but I think it was a nice thing for me
personally to be able to study them a
bit
and because they were so young before
because they died before I was born
really well before I was born
they always seemed kind of a generation
removed in history and I liked highlighting them a bit and
I also liked bringing forth William Luden who
started it all but importantly this company really
was such an important part of my father's life
and it enabled him as a collector but it
also tied him
to this business world but as I said the
collecting
now that he had the means was something
that really brought him comfort
and joy here's an early piece this is something that he
collected only a couple years after
graduating from Wesleyan and I hope that
you can all read that it says view of Wesleyan
University Middletown and this was from the early
1830s and this is by the Connecticut Cityscape
Engraver so he did this artist did
scenes like this this is a sperm whale
tooth again early 1830s soon after Wesleyan
was established and this engraver you know
this he scrimshaw teeth and this is
you know
the scenes that he chose there was a lot
of free time on a whaling ship
but again my father was was just you
know this was such a great find
and I think to me it really points to
that love of Wesleyan
that love of collecting and really at
an early age
so now I turn to something this is something that
is is much more attuned with what's
actually at Wesleyan
Wesleyan has virtually the entire
collection housed at Wesleyan and Olin
Library as Suzy mentioned
Special Collections of the Dietrich
American Foundation's books and
manuscripts
this one in particular my father bought
in 1963
and you can't see a signature but this
is from
George Washington to Lund Washington who was the caretaker at Mount Vernon
and the date is what's really extraordinary here it's
the 10th of December 1776 the letter's multiple pages and it gets
into the plight of the continental army
it gets into the how desperate the
situation is the things that they're doing to prepare
and then it also gives specific
instructions to Lund about his care for
Mount Vernon the letters continued on 17th of
December 1776 and of course eight days
later
Washington makes the audacious move to
cross the Delaware
attack the Hessian Garrison in Trenton, New Jersey
so this one the same sale 1963
sale of Forest Sweet who was a great
collector and my father also scooped up this this
is a detail here of none other than Alexander Hamilton
and since we're talking Wesleyan
now we have to talk Hamilton and
Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant musical
of course there's a song in which
Lin-Manuel keeps saying a dot ham well
this is A dot Hamilton but it is just perfect Hamilton because
he's writing to Jeremiah Wadsworth a Connecticut
delegate and he's imploring him to vote
for anybody
in the election of 1796 as a delegate
except
Thomas Jefferson because as he says
in Thomas Jefferson there is everything
to fear in his principles the next slide
again Hamilton and this is the federalist paper it's kind of hard to
tell but what's wonderful about this copy is
it looks kind of grungy but it's actually a really
perfect copy and the pages are still uncut
and so if you were to cut the pages and
view it you'd really be viewing
something that no one else has
so here again we have Hamilton we have
Madison we have John Jay and again from
Lin-Manuel's musical
we know how much Hamilton wrote he wrote 51 of the 85
essays and here again we've got that
great refrain
running like writing like you're running out of time
right so this was a great copy
and this is a really interesting
item it just looks like a map but this is early in Ben Franklin's
career this is from 1733 and Franklin here is
doing this map and he's also done a pamphlet and
both describe the border between Penn's colony
and the colony of Lourdes Baltimore or Maryland
and so here we're seeing the the delineation
of the two and this was a wood block map that he did
important early work here this is even earlier this is
another pamphlet and this one was done by William Penn
and it was from 1681 if you can make out that date and what I'm
doing here is I'm kind of it sounds like
I'm sort of working backwards in time
but actually that's how the book was laid out
Bill Reese when he wrote his section decided to write
in accordance to when the items came into the foundation
and and then all the other authors followed suit with that
and so here we have the pamphlet and then this is just an
amazing thing this is the the plan of Philadelphia that was
drawn out and it looks very much like Philadelphia today
you've got the River Delaware and
you've got the Schuylkill River on both sides
and so again this is a pamphlet and
this is something that was printed in
London with the map
and the purpose here is to try to
attract people to to make the move to
come to this new colony of Pennsylvania
here we have another great item this
is housed at Wesleyan all these things
are at Olin Library
and this is the Francis Scott keys
sheet music it's the star-spangled banner this
is actually a rather large item and you know visually it's
very appealing it's in great shape for something that's
old and it's actually only one of four
copies known to exist there may be
others but but we doubt it at this point
here's something this is Ben Franklin
again and this is kind of a great
psychedelic you know thing to look at don't look too closely
or you might go cross-eyed
but what this is is is Ben Franklin's
magical circle of circles and he has
he has center points and so i think
you can see my cursor
there's one here and then these four other
so five total points and what he's illustrating is if you
put the foot of a compass here and you bring it out
to any point along the circle or you do the same
thing in any of these other points
the sum of those numbers is always 360.
and of course the a circle is 360 degrees
so he's describing this to an individual
as part of the royal society of science
this is from 1766 and he's saying you
know if i can sit down with you i'd love
to describe all the other great properties of this
thing but again this is Franklin there's an
area of strength in the foundation of Ben Franklin
material this is one of them Franklin again this
is something printed in London but it's Ben Franklin's copy
and basically it's the same year or i'm sorry this one
is 1763 and i'm sorry 1766.
so this this is something that
Franklin is basically annotating on all
these different pages his his answers
to this British printing that's a rebuttal
of of the Americans arguing against the
Stamp Act so that sounds a little
confusing but basically the Americans
are arguing against the Stamp Act this
is printed in Britain both to
kind of guilt those in parliament who
are supportive of the American cause
and also to really hammer home how
important the Stamp Act is and here 
Franklin's
preparing to write his own long rebuttal
of that
here's something that again was same year 1766
this is 10 individuals it's hard to read
but it's beautiful
handwriting it's hard to read at this
you know at this
distance but it's 10 individuals all
kind of a who's who
of Philadelphia in 1766 excuse me and what these individuals are
doing is they're appealing to the crown to get
a land grant in the Illinois country which is which
is Indian country and it would be something
that would really be in violation
of the agreement that ended the French
and Indian War and the British crown
really didn't want that they didn't want
colonists to kind of spread too far and
so
this was this was shot down by the
British crown
and this kind of caused more chafing
among the colonists
but you can see some of the names
probably we have three Whartons
there's a William Franklin Ben Franklin's son
and then down here if you can see my
cursor there's a Joseph Galloway
GOS Galloway and Professor
Eudell is going to give a little bit of a
talk on another item that pertains to his
wife a diary and Galloway was just a fascinating
person because he was chafing under the British crown he was
arguing for for more rights
and then really when push came to shove
he picked his side
with the British and he he very much
partnered with them he became
general house chief of police in
Philadelphia and when the British fled Galloway
fled with his daughter and his wife stayed behind to kind of
safeguard the family property and they
never saw each other again so it's a
it's a sad story this is a plan of Fort Stanwix
this is in present-day Rome, New York this is from 1758
again you know just a wonderful visual
but here we can see
Oneida Station so this is Oneida
lands and the Oneida were tribe who as
some probably know they sided with
Washington and the continental army
and they in fact rescued Lafayette at
one point
but this represents to my father both
an interest in
earlier history this French and
Indian War but also an interest in
Indian affairs and the Indian tribes of the Americas here
again kind of pertaining to that but
obviously a different story this is the westward migration
this was from 1858 if you can see that
date down there it's not
the 49ers it's it's really when the
wagon trail became much more established
and easy to do but
still a lot of hardship but this was
kind of a how-to guide to get from
Missouri on a certain route out to
California where to stop where to you know how to
do it and a wonderful depiction of a buffalo
this was collected in the late 1960s by my father
and in his own western migration
my father and his two brothers moved
from Philadelphia 40 miles west
in Chester County, Pennsylvania they
purchased land out there and the idea
was really Daniel and my my father moved there
William remained closer to Philadelphia
but they all three
purchased this land in order to start
a dairy business and the idea of the
dairy business was to supply
milk for the candy operations in
Reading for milk chocolate and
it had about a thousand acres under corn
and soy and rotation
these at one point were all fields and
there are a lot more fields and then
there's pasture land for the cows and
for hay and here's another view
these are drone views not from the 60s
here's a view though from early on
and these are the cows
and it was really a state-of-the-art
dairy operation and amazingly
right about the time that it became
fully operational not a drop of milk from Bryn Coed
Farms ever made it into Lewden's candy because
right at about that same time best practices dictated that
it should be powdered milk and so the
milk didn't make it in
but some of the broken up fifth avenue
bars that broke in the assembly process
actually made it to the cows and they it
was ground into some of their feed
they were pasture grazed and also
some feed grazing
or feed feeding and then some of the
peanut husks made it into silage so
there was a little bit of benefit
from Ludens when I gave a presentation
actually to at one point to one of my
daughters in first or second grade they
were probably
pretty bored but one of the things
that caught their attention is that fact
and one of the kids raised their hand
and said wow that's where chocolate milk
came from no not quite but it may have made the
milk taste better so here's a view of the land
and this actually is is kind of a great tree on the property
but what i want to say here is
all this land is now under easement
and 600 of the 1500 acres is park and preserve
and then 900 acres is has been sold to owners
who have either kept it in agriculture
but signed off from conservation
easements or they've kept it in open
space and are limited by what they can build
through all that property run 10 miles of trails so it's a
wonderful thing for the public as a family we're just
thrilled by the outcome right
among that land this is my father's
house and if you can see this this is the
original room over room from 1721 and so he bought this house in
the late 60s it took a few years to you know get
it move in ready and by that time
what he was doing is he started
collecting to kind of fill the house so
there are paintings this painting of a Boston family this
extraordinary picture of a British officer who
after the revolution joined the Creek Indians
and then these great Chester County
desks that he really uses so what I'm
trying to show here is he really lived with these items all these
old items this relates the book relates also
to an exhibit that is right now in kind
of suspended animation at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art it opened
at about the time of the publication of
the book in early February the Museum then shut down sadly due
to COVID like everything else
and it will when it reopens hopefully at
the very beginning of September the
exhibit will reopen
and it will remain open until November 15th
so I hope if anybody's in the
Philadelphia area that you might
be able to see it these are just some of
the objects that you can see
again a lot of these things are objects
depicted in the book
and so it's Debbie Reebok our curator
did an amazing job with this it's really
a wonderful exhibit
and here's something that that
again this is the most formal room in
our home
but this is something that i wanted to
show this is a bombay chest one of his
earliest pieces of awesome bombay chest
by Nathaniel Gould and on top is this
Paul Revere teapot silver teapot a
Revere
print and then above that a portrait of
this
boy John B Holmes by John Singleton
Copley
here you can see it in the exhibit and
so what we tried to do is group things
somewhat together like they were in the
home the teapot again now in a case
which might might have been a good idea all along
and this teapot is actually one that
Paul Revere's portrait was painted by
Copley and he's seen holding this
with his artist tools and his sleeves
rolled up and it's a great portrait
here this boys has a pet squirrel if
people can see that
six-year-old homes which is kind of an
extraordinary portrait
you seldom see portraits of children
like that again a close-up of the teapot and the
print the Revere print
and then this is a little bit more in
the exhibit but what I want to show here
is that the case
here we see a miniature very very small
truly miniature
here we see a much bigger view this is
what's on the cover jacket of the book
and this is a piece by James Peel
and it's of Washington obviously
and inside which is really fun
inside the locket is Washington's hair
and on the back is a scene of Washington
crossing the Delaware that fateful night
and then I just want to also end
with my views of these objects with
something that's at Wesleyan back to
Wesleyan
so this is a letter from Washington to
Ben Franklin
congratulating him in 1785 on all his
years
in diplomatic service I think you
know this really
again these items at Wesleyan there are
so many more
and there's so much more richness to
them and
we as a foundation are just so excited
to to really
extend this partnership to really expand
upon it
and I think that you'll love hearing
from Morrie Heckscher next
and also Professor Eudell about
Morrie's you know inspiration for his
career and and Professor Eudell's
using these primary source materials
to teach
and I just wanted to say just again how
grateful we are to Wesleyan
I went there I was class of 92 as you
know my father went there
there are about a thousand different
uh books and manuscripts housed in Olin
Library and I want to um really name a few
people here I'd love to thank
President Roth and also Barbara
Jan Wilson John Driscoll who's a classmate of my
father's at Wesleyan a longtime friend
Frantz Williams in development Mark Davis
who organized this call and and just
has done such a great job
and then also Andrew White who heads
up Olin Library and of course Suzy
Taraba who's just been an incredible
collaborator
over the years and also Professor
Eudell
so I'm happy to take any questions at
the end I'm going to now
end the screen share and resume it when
Morrie tells me to
I'm going to turn it over to Morrie now I
hope that people
are able to hear and see him
Richard can you hear me yes I sure can
yep
well Richard thank you so much that was
an absolutely
marvelous crazy and introduction of your
father and
and the extraordinary collection and I
particularly want to say
how pleased and honored I am
as an old-timer to have been invited to
come in with all your young folks
to look at these great great American
Americana objects my role in this book that's
being celebrated tonight
is it's just a bit part all I did was
write a little forward
I'm of an age when I said no I'm not
going to do the hard work of writing
I'm going to leave that to others and as
Richard said the different essays dealing with the
different types of objects that Richard collected
were done by by leading specialists in
the field there's a lot of new research here
when you read the book as a totality you get
you get different takes on colonial America
through objects or through books of
original manuscripts
which is really what we're all talking
about here learning from the original
realizing that secondary sources
are just that books written by other
people are fine but if you want to get excited
you want to go back to the real thing
the book is is is it it really is a
permanent memorial
to a great collector and as such it
allows the foundation going forward to
do many other things knowing that Richard Dietrich Class of
60 at Wesleyan his his achievement
is on record and available to anybody
you might ask
why I'm the one who who is on the board
why I am a member of the Dietrich
American Foundation board
Richard and now let me interject just
say I talk about Richard Dietrich
when I say Richard Dietrich tonight i'm
talking about Richard Dietrich
class of 60 Richard Dietrich Jr.
the other Richard Dietrich here tonight
it gets confusing so we we we have another name for him we call him Richard
III and he takes it very seriously
no it's so why did Richard III
ask me to join this
the obvious reason is that that as a
museum curator I knew his father
personally there's always a a synergy between
the private collector and the curator
you can imagine why so I knew Richard
for many years through the auction houses through the
Metropolitan Museum and all but I actually knew him far far
longer than that way back into the early 1950s
it turns out that Richard went to school
high school
with my older brother and this was
three years older than me
actually my brother Ghee who lives in
Tacoma now
agreed to sign up and listen tonight
so he's told me he's going to be
fact checking what I say about his
classmate
imagine me three years younger
well there's there's a syndrome it's
called the younger brother syndrome
and and I had it seriously because they
were doing a lot of things together I'll never forget
going to the big house there in Villanova in the
in Philadelphia's main line tagging along
and in the living room there was this
great mahogany box
with the tiny screen in front of it and
bracketed in front of the screen was
this huge magnifying glass
who would have thought that today those
screens rule our lives
but then then something Richard maybe
has never heard my brother and Richard were
were out working in the woods which is
what we always did
growing up but they they were building
and they built a big bonfire and they
were burning poison ivy
and my brother inhaled it he never
forgot that
and finally to go to the custom body shop and watch
these two seniors in high school drooling over
over fast modern cars so I was I was there I saw Richard
Dietrich as a young man and I sensed
even then he didn't say much he was
he listened and he was so clearly
a man with a mission with a clear idea
of where he was going and and so he went to Wesleyan where he
pursued the history we've learned that from
from Richard III and then he took over the family
business and all which we've heard about but in
my case I ended up going to Wesleyan too but
but I went there because I think I went
by default I wanted to be a cabinet
maker in Vermont but I was ahead of the curve that wasn't
done so I guess I thought that Wesleyan
halfway up the Connecticut River was as close as I
could get to it so I arrived at Wesleyan
and fortunately it's my sophomore year I 
 took a seminar
from a young professor named David Trask
and listening tonight about the
Dietrich Collection I thought
what if I what if that collection had
been at Wesleyan in 1960 and if David Trask a
brilliant superb young teacher had been
able to show the Washington letter to me
perhaps I would have become a historian
the collection wasn't here and anyway
I'm more visual than literary and
in the end I was drawn to the
Davison Art Center
and I was drawn there because
the strange eccentric
combination of a great historic house
and a superb collection of graphic arts
architecture and
graphic art three-dimensional
and one-dimensional monumental
and miniature but both of them
architecture and prints are to me the most democratic
of works of art types of works of art
architecture is available to
everybody if their eyes are open to it
and prints are multiples
they're they are images that can be
reproduced
endless times and so they offer an
opportunity it seems to me
for a very large public and for Wesleyan
students
now
at the Davison Art Center were two great
professors
two great faculty members who hugely
influenced my life and
now if we could have the first slide
please
if you could do that Richard
yeah there
Wesleyan at the time that I was an
undergraduate
had an extraordinary
European trained print curator
his name was Heinrich Schwarz he was
educated in Vienna
he was trained at the
he's trained there and
forgive me forgive me and he was
the first of several extraordinary art
historians I got to know over
the years all refugees
from Hitler's Europe and this was the generation
of mostly men who formed the history of art as a
profession in America and
I saw in the course catalog my senior year
why there was a a two semester survey
of the history of western graphic arts
1450 to 1950 and describing
the George Davidson collection of prints
and I thought you've got to be crazy not
to take advantage of such an opportunity and so I signed
up for it I was one of two people two students to
sign up for it and so it turned out to be a two
semester tutorial handling original works of art
and the next slide we saw Durer here's a
woodcut the the death of the virgin from
the life of virgin
one of these large series dated 1510
and we saw Rembrandt and Heinrich would
hold out the actual prints and Bart Browning
the other student and myself we would
ultimately tell stories about how it
acquired them and he would describe the art market and
the fact that they were still adding to the collection
but this is where the the excitement of actually handling
an original object was embedded in me and became a
guiding force for me I showed this particular
print because Heinrich took us to New York and
this was the first print I ever bought well it was
one of an impression of the first print I ever bought
and and this was the exciting the next slide
this I found I couldn't find the bill for
for that particular print but I remember it was 65 dollars
which in 1962 was a bit of money
it was just about the price of a month's
board at our fraternity so I was
willing to eat hot dogs for a month so that I could buy
a wonderful print by one of the world's greatest artists
not the first impression printed by the artist himself but printed maybe
20 years after his death and here from
the once famous nodular company
galleries is the bill for the print the framing and preparing for
the matting and framing for that and some other prints I bought
then at the bottom it says called for by Dr. H
Schwartz March 10th, 1962
18 dollars so you can imagine how
this kind of hands-on involvement
and doing in a very modest very modest
way what Richard did with so many other
things later but the excitement of it
I spent two years in the print department at the met
and I would have stayed there all
because of Heinrich Schwartz
except that other opportunities at the
other end of the building
came my way and to explain them let's
have the next
image please the other professor who
hugely influential in me was Sam Green
he was the director of the art center
and the art center consisted of
the back of the house with a vault and
and one gallery for prints
and then the front building was was the
the historic villa
built for Richard Alsop
in the early 18 in 1838 and
Sam taught the history of art European
he was a marvelous teacher
he would take those students who were
interested
we piled into the back of the university
station wagon
and we'd drive to Boston to go to the
MFA or we'd drive to Newport to see the
architecture
and again it was the wherever possible the original works
of art and the next slide is really
the one I love most because
here is Sam with his wife Bunny in the
in the fancy parlor of their house
on the Meridian Road going west out out
of Middletown
the room is now at the Wadsworth
Athenian but
it is probably the most important
surviving mid 18th century
Connecticut interior or almost all of new England
with its original painted decoration
the woodwork is all white pine but
most of it is grain to look like cedar
and then over the mantelpieces is a
magnificent big imaginary landscape
and the students would get invited
once maybe once a year maybe, maybe once
maybe just once to come and have a drink and
experienced being in an interior that was lived in
and loved by by Sam Green so
his it was he who brought American architecture to to life
for me and the next image here's the Alsop
house which i think everybody knows it's a marvelous
example of really German romantic
classicism from the early 19th
century extremely geometric
and basically extremely simple
looking out over the Connecticut River
Valley
it's one of the two great architectural
treasures at Wesleyan and the other being
the Russell house but this
one is particularly important because if we look inside
and are a pair of parlors at the center at the front of the
house which retain their original decorative scheme
done in 1839 by Nicola
Manichini who came from Rome
to Philadelphia in the early 1830s
was highly popular highly influential
but this is I think without question the
best surviving example of his work
two matching parlors uh the adjacent
and then a a sun room if you will and
we see them in these old black and white photographs
back in the 1950s when they were just being restored by the Fog
of the the conservators at the Fog Art
Museum at Harvard
for the university in fact the next image
will show you a conservatory at work
I don't think they they look like this
today the people who do the conservation
but that was 70 years ago and these
these murals walls and ceilings have
are greatly in need of restoration
today and it gives me immense pleasure to be able to say
that the university has committed not only to the structural
restoration of the building but to the the conservation of of the
murals fun you know when the funds are
available there's one more slide i think
perhaps yeah and but
imagine these as an undergraduate
these interiors which were used for
receptions and rather furnished but for an
undergraduate to go in rooms like that
and imagine what life was like in
Middletown in the really just at the time the
university had been founded and then go out back and see learn about
Rembrandt and Durer
and to think today that
the university is making some made is
making
major initiatives and commitments to
preserving its heritage and
re-imagining its its assets for new generations
you saw from Suzy the images of where the
print collection is going in Olin so the prints will be
with the Dietrich Collection of works
of manuscripts on paper in the library and at the center of
the campus this building will be restored and
instead of being in conjunction with old master prints
it will be in conjunction with a modern
digital design
thing so an odd but interesting combination
in either instance it took me as an old-timer
who was trained and and breastfed if you will by
by the combination of architecture and
graphic arts it took me a while to
to understand the wisdom of moving
the prints to a more central location where they
could be better preserved and used and
finding a creative new way
to use the back of the house it's such a
pleasure for me to be involved with
the university as well as with the
Dietrich Foundation
and all of this thank you
can I turn over now
yes am I on I'm on
okay very good so good evening I'm
delighted to be here and
excited so many people at this time of
the evening are here so again i'm Demetrius Eudell and I have
used the Dietrich collection twice in a couple of history
seminars and the idea to teach from the
collection was proposed by Suzy to me and it was
in the context of I wanted to do something to commemorate the War of 1812
by centennial we thought perhaps
that might not sustain the interest of
students for a semester so what I did was to combine it with the
other major wars so the course was entitled War and
National (Re)Formation with the re in the
parentheses where we looked at 1776, the War of 1812
the Mexican-American War and the Civil War
and of course the holdings of the
Dietrich collection the pre-national and
the national holdings are really
rich in this form the classical part of
what was called the history department is
we used to have it's called sophomore seminar
and the idea for the sophomore seminar
was to introduce
students presumably majors which is part
we're also a recruiting tool
to the practices of undertaking
historical research
and to that in a couple of the
assignments in the course involved
one was a transcription and another was
reading a broadside
so actually i only have three images for
you and i'll just talk a bit about them
and one of them is the broadside
could i have that first image yes one second Demetrius
thank you so much
that is great thanks so much so you can
see here that
this is it's a broadside that's
announcing a resolution
dissolving allegiance to King George III
and the colonies are assuming their own
autonomous authority and power
because according to them their humble
petitions of the colonies
for redress of grievances have not been
properly answered
those of you obviously familiar with the
history of what led to 1776
Charitable Act, Stamped Act coming on
the
heels of the French and Indian War
what's wrong in Europe as the seven
years and this is one of the documents that is
featured in the book
and the it's very well contextualized
and they should you know it states how
it's evidence of a sentiment that
is going to pre-figure the Declaration
of Independence
that's going to be issued later on July
4th which of course is much more well
known
this document forms part of
an important history that in fact
inaugurated
written constitutions
and this is very important because the
US Constitution is going to be the first
entirely written constitution the
history of other constitutions
charter and England
the many mostly in treaties and
legislative acts and also in
what can go back as far as Ancient
Greece where you have
certain some partially written
constitutions but the
a fully executed constitution actually
is unique to
the United States and this was a
precursor to it
but also it's probably admired noted
that 88 other local resolutions of
independence were adopted in response to this
resolution so it's really
ushering in a momentous occasion in
history and in fact
we all know the U.S. Constitution has
become a model for many constitutions
across the world so in the classroom
we talk about this we talk about the
importance of written constitutions what
does that mean if you look at it you can also follow up
on Morrie's excellent example
look at the document also in terms of
material culture and what we see on the document there
are two names that appear you may not be
able to see them
the secretary Charles Thompson and
then John Dunlop as the printer
so what one would do in class is you
would ask the students to like who are
these people
right of course now they have google so
it makes things a little
easier but still you need additional
reading secondary sources to
to flesh out things so what we would
discuss for example would be that
Charles Thompson was
secretary of the continental congress
was born in Ireland
he immigrated after the death of his
mother with his
brothers and his father his father
unfortunately
died on the voyage over
then you would try to encourage the
students to look a bit
more just ask well are there other
things that Thompson has been known for
one thing they might come upon was that
in 1759 he authored a book that looked at the
different approaches to Indian policies
of the brent of the British and the
French right
and then that might put this document in
a different context
we asked ask the students to try to
connect how is it the secretary of the
continental congress is also writing about British
and French Indian policy
the other person name on the document is
John Dunlap
interestingly enough also Irish so one
thing you could
discuss is Irish immigration to the U.S.
you know what is about in these two
particular instances
Dunlap was one of the most successful
printers during the
during the era and also printed the
Declaration of Independence
and at this time Philadelphia was also
the primary
paper-making center in the 13 colonies
so it's known very well known for its
intellectual and cultural history
and so going a bit further with looking
at the broadside as an object
you will actually talk about it as you
know how is it what is it made of it's
made of paper
well paper at the time before you
know pulses late 18th century was usually
made from
pulverized cotton and linen rags
and then it was formed into the paper
broadsides were meant to be
ephemeral they were printed on one side
has a single sheet hence the name
broadside and were cheaply
produced
the idea behind them is they were to
convey you know the latest news
legislation they were announced important events I tell students it was a twitter of the late 18th century
it's just short it's to the point
you see some things don't change uh some
broadsides even had poetry and songs so
the way in which
okay my social media
knowledge is very small but I think is
that with Tik ToK or one of the ones
where you're able to show the
the videos so you see you you have a
written version of that with the with
the portrait of the songs
on on the broad sides
okay may I have the next document give
me the next slide please
so this is a diary from Grace Galloway
Richard has always already spoken a
bit about Joseph Galloway
who was a son of a landowner and became
a major voice
for the loyalists in britain before that
he was very important
figure politically in the Pennsylvania
House Assembly having been served
as speaker of the house
he initially as well served in the first
continental congress
and had proposed what was then called
the grand union and this was an attempt to reconcile
the ongoing dispute between the colonists
and and the British monarchy
in parliament and the gallery's grand
grand council was going to be composed of
elected colonial legislatures as well as a
presidential general who's appointed by the king
the rebellion colonists did not like
this plan found it unacceptable
that's when Richard said Galloway joined
the loyalist cause
which forced him in October 1778 to leave
for Britain with his daughter
his wife Grace Brown herself from one of
the wealthiest and most powerful families in
Pennsylvania stayed behind to handle the
family's affairs
in the hope that she'd be able to avoid their
estate and properties being confiscated
the diary which which you see here is
she began to keep during the during this moment
this is really one of the treasures of this
very impressive collection the diary is
very small it's hard to see with the
images it's about seven by four inches
Wesleyan possesses seven of them and
another fragments correct me
I'm wrong on that and as far as we know
only the first one or two of them have
been transcribed and published and one of the places
where you can find excerpts published is in the
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography
so what this means in terms of teaching is that
this is for a student to work with this
diary they would really be producing
original scholarship because this is something that is not
available to the public it's only available here so if anyone
wants to consult it you have to come to
Wesleyan so as you can see the print
is very small it's very neat
almost geometric and as I mentioned
before one of the assignments in
addition to having to examine the
broadside was to was a transcription
just to show students how hard it is to
to extract knowledge from these original
documents
now it's also probably small because of
the cost of paper paper
today and or at least in wealthier parts
of the world it's very easy accessible
and relatively inexpensive but at the
time
paper was quite expensive and we're
all familiar with the Stamp Act of
1765 which assessed the revenue of tax on
magazines a lot of legal documents in particular
and also certain kinds of paper
so clearly here she's also being
economical in the way that she's using
the paper
in terms of the content of the diary it
gives us a sense
into gives a window into the late 1770s
and 1780s but from a perspective
that differs from if one wants to define it in
contemporary terms a male-centered political history
as part of what has recently called
intimate history or history of
intimacies women who were supposed to be
relegated to the private sphere by the men the
politics and public schools
so what one acquires from here is a
sense of gracious feelings of private feelings
who comes to visit her 
she clearly you can tell from that
she embraced her elite class position
there was one moment where she's forced
to walk in
the rain she was able to summon a
carriage and she says like a common
woman so this is clearly her
embodying a certain class position but
there are also times when she breaks
with certain traditional gender roles and
in fact she was evicted from her home
by Charles
Wilson Peale who is the other older
brother of
James Peale who was earlier mentioned
and was normally known for his
portraiture the founding fathers
who also fought in battles and was
captain of Pennsylvania militia he was the person
who evicted, who evicted Grace Galloway
and so in doing this he
she states that nothing but by force and
nothing but force should have made me give up my
possessions and when Peale tries to lead her down the
step she refuses his arm
and says I want not your assistance
right she also did other things where she
challenged publicly she actually was
involved in writing to lawyers and
trying to bring a legal case to
hold on to her family's possession so
again in this regard
we realized acknowledging the
complications of her class position
but she was also bridging certain
gender boundaries okay
I am going to I think I'll go through
the third document because I'm looking
at the time and I want 
so this last document is a talk from
George Washington to the Cherokee nation
which provides really interesting
insight into
Washington's attitudes for indigenous
peoples
the first thing it's really hard to see
but at the indentions
it it says beginning a paragraph
spectrum
it says my beloved Cherokees
so it's interesting that Washington uses
this term of endearment
but I should like just to read the first
line too many years have passed away since the
white people first came to America
in that long space of time many good men
have considered how the condition of the
Indian nations of the country might be
improved and many attempts have been
made to affect it
but as we see at this day all those
attempts
have been nearly fruitless
so essentially what you see here is part
of
Washington's strategy of civilization of
the Indigenous peoples
right he says he goes on further
to say that he has I have thought much
on this subject anxiously and wish that
the various Indian tribes
as well as their neighbors the white
people might enjoy in abundance
all the good things which make life
comfortable and happy
but of course here he's defining what
those good things are
and what makes them comfortable and
happy
he also notes that he's appointed as his
Indian agent Silas
Dinsmoor who is going to
help the Indians choose as he says in
the talk this path Dinsmoor also is
Irish so in order to achieve this path
Washington says
you really shouldn't bother with reading
books
you'll be taught in the didactic manner
he says instead of beginning with books
I wish you first to learn those things
which will make books
useful to you when you should have
learned to till the ground
to build houses and fill them with good
things as the white people do
then like them you will find the
knowledge of books to be plenty
and useful
one of the central things that he is
going to emphasize
is the use of land of the Indigenous
peoples and here he's talking back to
Locke you know Locke says that god gave
the world to men in common and it
was meant to always remain in common it
was not meant to remain in common
and uncultivated or lying waste
and this is something that you find
throughout this talk
Washington says something very similar
this also can be found John Winthrop's
the governor of Massachusetts state
parliament and falling upon this
genealogy Washington says
some among you already experienced
advantages of keeping cattle and hogs
let all keep them and increase their
numbers and you will ever have a plenty
of meat to them add shoe and they will give you
clothing as well as food
your lands are good and of great extent
by proper management you can raise
livestock not only for your own wants
but to sell to the white people so here
the idea of use of land has to be
commercialized with commercial relations
and not
merely subsistence as it was represented
the Indigenous people
what's also very interesting is the
allocation of gender roles that
Washington mentions here
by using the plow you can vastly
increase your crops of corn
you can also grow wheat which makes the
best bread and other use for grains
to these you will easily add flax and
cotton to be sold to the neighboring
white people or made by your own women into clothing
for yourselves your wives and daughters can learn soon
to spin and to weave this is
not an institution point and in some
ways relates to what
the question of gender roles is just
raised in the previous document
as it has been well documented in a
number of Indigenous societies in the
Americas you can also add outside the Americas
women took on the role of farming
and there are a number of thinkers from
Adam Smith George Washington who found this objection
in fact Adam Smith once said their
women plant a few stalks of Indian
corn at the back of their huts but this can
hardly be called agriculture
so again the idea is also to make them
proper men and women
in the image of the whites
and Washington also makes clear that
this is not a policy owner for
Cherokees but for all Indigenous peoples
but the cares of the United States are
not confined to your single nation
the extent of all the Indians dwelling
on their borders
for which reason other agents are
appointed and for
the four southern nations there would be
a general agent who would all visit them
and then again he reinforces the idea of
women and spinning
and weaving and then he even suggests
that they should adopt a system of
governance
where the wise men in the United
States will meet once a year
to consider what's good for their people
perhaps they can adopt these kind
this sense of government and then he
ends a letter basically by saying that
he'd be willing to meet
the most important chiefs of the Indians
to discuss these things
this is important because what you see
here is what the
teaching out of this collection enables
us to do
is that you have in a sense the first
document
a fairly canonical document and but also
very important this is not
to be underestimated that something
that's happening here is actually
tremendous
and then you have the perspective of a
woman of an elite class
but also giving you some sense of gender
role allocation I didn't talk about the fact of you
know there's one thing she does very
interesting ending
the the diary she refers to her husband is Mr Jesus
right and what does it say about the
nature of gender roles at the time
and the third document you have really
what I think helps to flesh out
understanding what the founding of the
United States actually means
it's fairly well known inside Colin
Callaway has an excellent book on George
Washington Indians who came out
a couple years ago really excellent I
would highly recommend it
and so what we see is that George
Washington's grandfather was a land speculator in
fact he was known as the devourer of villagers
Washington himself had had a degree from
planned surveying from
William and Mary and
part of what's going to happen when he
becomes president is a shift
at least in tone where it becomes more
civilizationist and assimilationist
and not so aggressive of course this is
one of the biggest piece between
the British and the rebellion colonies
in the central Indian War was the Indian
policy
so at the very origin of the founding of
the nation when you have problems that
you watch the news we're still
confronted with
and I think this is really what's great
about using this primary document it
enables us to see
crucial showns and it does change but
also
to say that mentions
Richard I think you might have one final
slide
there possibly do you
one second I'm bringing it up O just
thank you so much Professor Udell and
let me bring up the final slide here uh-oh that's my whole
anyway I think that that was really terrific and
i'm going to stop the share I kind of
lost it but
that was great thank you and you know to
be doing this as you're navigating
COVID and the students coming back to
the school
and also to be chair of the social
sciences department
thank you very much for being a part of
this I'm so honored to be
on it with you and I just also want to
say to Morrie
Morrie says that all he did is write the forward
the forward really set the tone for the book and
Morrie was also an incredible advisor every step of the way
on our writing of the book
so we have a few questions submitted by the audience
and we could try to answer those questions now
and I can't actually see them but I wrote them
down so I will read out the at least the gist of those
questions so the first question came up
around the time that Richard
shared that beautiful image of the
federalist papers
the uncut pages
and an audience member wrote in
will the pages ever be cut
and I'm going to answer that one yeah
please
and I think the answer is no
because there's an
artifactual value to that particular copy
that would be completely lost if it was cut or if it was rebound and trimmed
as would be a practice for
traditionally for treating a book like
that in closer to its own time the federalist is
a has been published in zillions of
different editions and in fact at Wesleyan in a different
collection the Davison Collection we
also have a first edition
of the federal list but it is not in that kind of
shape it's in a 19th century fancy collector's binding but then of
course you can read it online you can
read it in a modern paperback
you can read it in that first edition in
the Davison Collection
and from the Dietrich Collection copy
you learn
different things about that book as an
artifact what was it like to handle an
early book what did they look like in a way that
hasn't been altered
from its original time period so
many texts that are unopened
and haven't been read by somebody before
in a university library you might
open it the or cut the pages so that
a patron could read it
but not something like that
so then the second question that was
asked by an audience member
was for Demetrius and
it is asking for a comparison
between the well-letted or
double-spaced broadside that we looked
at showing a quite a liberal use of paper
versus Grace Galloway's tiny little
handwriting
very clearly writing all the way out
no margin sparing the paper
so our questioner wondered if
that broadside meant that the paper was
more plentiful in that case or how would you
speak to the difference between the use
of paper in those two artifacts from
very close to the same time period
Demetrius you have to unmute yourself
first
yes unfortunately I don't think I heard
all the questions but you
it was something about the difference
between the broadside
the use of paper in the broadside and
the diary
yes because the broadside has
liberal leading lots of comparatively
a lot of empty space on it i mean it's
still
quite tightly printed but not in
comparison
well I mean there there's
really interesting difference one you
know obvious gender difference male
female one is actually printed and one
is handwritten right and I think that and and it's not
there's a point I was making it's not
printed by anyone it's printed by the
printer of the 18th century I mean dunlap was
sort of Declaration Independent so
it has a kind of formality to it you
know as well
and and it's um
you know was clearly meant for public
consumption in a way in which
hers you know was not I can't remember it's been so long since
I've seen um the actual paper of of the diaries is
I don't know if you remember
anything else about it but I think part
of it is again this is private public
distinction
and the other is one is cleared and much
more professional and you're working
with professional printmakers versus
and the intent you know we talk about
the whole question of virtue in the 18th
century and the way in which
even as a private person one was in a
sense more public
than than you know um
than say in the 19th century
contemporary so that but my understanding that she
really didn't mean it for to be
privately consumed that she didn't think
so many people would be so
interested in her private thoughts
because some of them are just really trivial
so-and-so came over today there's one
time when she goes and
she wants to speak to the husband of
someone about what's happening
and his wife won't let her in and she
storms away angry
you know about that and talks about I'm
totally abandoned and no one
likes me anymore but it's actually in a way
kind of important I mean I'd say
you know obviously the differences in
terms of perspective and the kinds of
knowledge that actually generates
right whereas the the broadside again
was really meant to be consumed publicly
right and then the other question
is for you as well and that is
can you explain how George
Washington's talk to the Cherokee
was given was it given as a
speech as well as being printed or was it
exclusively printed do you know how the Cherokee
did they read it was it delivered orally to them do we know
I think whether or not it was
delivered orally to them
without well as many of you may imagine they didn't
all speak English so in fact if you're familiar with
things like the requisition
and the in the early modern Spain these
things were given actually requisition
was given
initiative in Latin and then translated
to Spanish and then into Indigenous
languages and this also had to be translated into
Indigenous languages
so that it's a talk but it's not like
he's actually literally talking right
unfortunately what we don't have which
would be the other side of history
of course of their responses to it right
now in there he refers to the Treaty of Holston which
is one of these treaties defining
boundary lines between
Indigenous lands and settler lands
and so clearly there would be and
and part of the wholesome treaty was
prisoners of war and
changing prisons award and also settling
these boundary lines so there was
clearly some understanding you know
communication that occurred right but
this was actually you know was
drafted in English and translated into
Indigenous languages
excellent thank you 
Richard you might be able to see more
questions on your screen
I could only see them when you were
sharing it oh sure let me see if there was one
and it's a rather long question but the
gist of it is
what's the process for donating
interesting American historical
items mostly books and newspapers from
the 1700s and 1800s to Wesleyan
so maybe Suzy can answer that question
just send me an email and
let me know what what it is
that you have that you're interested in
donating and we'll start a conversation
Suzy could you just say your email for
everybody who's on
to absolutely who is on S as in Suzy
Tabara@wesleyan.edu
great thank you here's one
that came in and it says how was
Washington's quote-unquote talk to the Cherokee
delivered to them Professor Udell can you answer that
yeah that's the one we just answered
right now oh I'm sorry okay that's me
rolling through questions and being I
can do two things but only one thing
well at a time
and you weren't supposed to have to do
this part anyway
that's all right yeah I just saw one
question where someone asked how do
students react to
working with primary sources and I
can just say that I
they really enjoy they enjoy
you know actually seeing these objects
and then Suzy and her excellent
staff whom I also want to make a huge
huge plug to because they are really
really great do allow us to touch
the books and turn the pages and it's
certainly one thing to
read something in a book it's another
thing to really actually
see and see that someone made it and
then to try to figure out
a context to understand it
that's great another question came
in the name again of the book on George
Washington and the Indians
it's he's Colin Callaway he's at
Dartmouth College he's the
I should know this I'm sorry
things one knows more than one forgets
it's called
the Indian World of George Washington
the First President
the First American and the Birth of the
Nation
which you absolutely must read I mean a
lot of what he's saying is we're unknown
but no one has taken Washington's policy as a point to
departure to then talk about what's
happening in this time period
and it's really marvel it's really
marvelous that's all of his
all of his work so another question came
in
Professor Eudell how did you get
interested in rare manuscripts and books
and what hook have you used to lure
the students to study rare manuscripts
and books
two excellent questions
I don't know maybe Suzy can help me
with this I
you can't hear in the background I'm
wearing these because I have a very old
house which doesn't have central air and heat
and it's really hot here and I had to go buy a
window unit and it's really loud
so I like old things when I saw the
house I fell in love
I perhaps it's i studied very
I studied 18th 19th century history I
even go back and
into early modern middle ages I'm very
interested in the encounter
era of encounter and I always say if I
could do it over I would do Egypt and
Rome so I don't know how I became
interested in studying the past and
studying things so far back
but one thing I do in my courses
is I basically you know I ended with
[speaking french: crois en chance a la meme chose] because
there's so much about the past
that we can really learn from and the
ways in which the kinds of questions
that you know that you see what
Washington and the founding fathers are
dealing with
who's to say we're dealing with those
questions
better right in some ways they're a bit
more explicit but
so I try to use the past really as a
window onto understanding the future
but to say that history is not just you
know
to use the Hegelian concept what
happened
but it's also the account of what
happens and that kind of what happens
really shapes who we are
and yeah and I think there's
something about especially today when we have I think
an obsessive kind of homogenization
sometimes you go to cities
you can't really tell one place from the
other with strip malls and shopping
malls and all I mean you can be in a mall I mean I've
been in mall in Germany and I could be
in
West Hartford but there is something to
looking at as
you know Morrie shows with this
wonderful architecture but something of
a time right something of that exquisite
furniture that there isn't was in their
parents houses
or if you think about mid-century you
know American furniture it tells us
of a moment of a time where
actually was not like where we are and
I don't see how you cannot be interested
in something other than
because the world wasn't always the way
in which we perceive it and that could
be a very interesting I think sort of instructional mode if
you want to change it to think about it
actually can be
you know another way because it hasn't
always been like
how do you get how do you get students
interested well you know unfortunately
there's all these
if you read the New York Times if you
read the content of higher education if
you read inside higher education they
say there's the death of the humanities and
and students are majoring less in humanities
and here I'll just quote Elizabeth
Alexander who's the head of Mellon
Foundation someone asked her that she says oh I
don't listen to all that noise
and I think that when you tell students that
you know what they're doing is imagining
their worlds it's very exciting and
Wesleyan students respond very well to
this because they're really
engaged intellectually that's great I
can add a little bit
to that as well that question asked
something about what was the hook
that we use and I think Demetrius said
it very well
in his presentation when he mentioned Tik Tok
so
one of the things that he does and that
I do very deliberately when we're
talking with with students in a classroom setting
when there are students who
don't know yet how interested they are
in the past as we try to relate it to today we know
they're interested in their lives today
and so for instance
we connect social media to
the diaries of the past week we
mentioned Tik-Tok we mentioned email
we mention current
events of different kinds and how they
connect
to the past sometimes
more senior students or sometimes even
junior students
who already come with the love of the
past and the interest in the past
don't need that kind of hook but it's
very effective
often in getting them interested if
they're wondering you know
okay Ancient Greece and Rural Greece and
Rome or colonial America what does that
really have to do with me
and in fact it has lots to do with them
but sometimes it takes a moment to show them
right good point so another question came
in has the Russell House Collection
been moved elsewhere
and Russell House Morrie
highlights the Alsop house one of the
real architectural gems
the other of course is the Russell House
the great Greek revival house
and I don't know the answer to that I
know when I've been in Russell
I've seen furniture that's clearly
original to the house
but Suzy or Professor Eudell do you know
if the collection
if there is a collection from Russell
that is somewhere
it's very interesting that that question
came up because we've been asked that question
in special collections very recently
and you don't really know the answer we
know that there are some
there certainly are some materials in
Russell house that are original to the
house that's not in question
but there used to be more and
whether what the whereabouts of the rest
of that collection you know Wesleyan has not always
owned the Russell house so
we don't really know there may well
be information in the university archives
that will answer this question for us
but we're still working from home so
we're not in a good position to answer
that yet but we will be working on it
so Richard if there's maybe one more
question that could be answered quickly
we probably should wrap this up because
we're at 8 34 yes
so a question came in also
how does one access the Dietrich
American Foundation Collection at
Wesleyan
and is it available to the public and
I'll answer that
it the answer is it is available to
the public
and really the avenue for that has
been people getting in touch with
either the foundation or with Suzy
and what I'll say to that is that I
really would love to see through this
enhanced you know expanded re-imagined
partnership with Wesleyan
that the collection becomes even more
discoverable what Professor Eudell is talking
about transcribing the other Grace
Groudon Callaway diaries you know all
this stuff to involve
Wesleyan students in this and involve
them and making it discoverable
and kind of newsworthy would be a great
thing
going forward but the items are all
available
and all people have to do is ask and
we'll  make things available to
people to see for research
excellent thank you very much to all of
our panelists
thank you special thanks to Richard for
stepping in as moderator when technology
didn't allow me to do it and everybody
Richard if you can show can you share
your screen no you can't do that anymore
I can do it I can do it let me try
it would be great to see that last slide
which okay tells people how they can
get the book at a nice discount
so let me
okay so many thanks to everyone
for coming and we hope to
hear from you thank you everybody
thank you thank you
thank you everybody for coming
