The Elizabeth Cowling Celebration

The Elizabeth Cowling Cello Celebration March 24-26, 2011

UNCG School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Greensboro, NC

Honoring cellist and scholar Elizabeth Cowling

Cello choir showcases and master class performance opportunities available to registered participants.

Direct all inquiries to Alexander Ezerman

aezerman@gmail.com / 336 334 5518

Event Website
Elizabeth Cowling Collection
Cello Music Collection

Lois Lenski: Voices of Children

February 7 - March 18, 2011
Hodges Reading Room

Lois Lenski (1893-1974) was one of the most popular and most gifted among children's authors and illustrators of the twentieth century. This small exhibit is an attempt to document her talent and to show, in her own words, her intense feelings for the proper literature and education for children.

Born and reared in Ohio, Lenski gravitated early to a career in art. Although she majored in education at Ohio State University and prepared for a career in teaching, she took many art courses in college, decided on art as a vocation, and pursued this career at the Art Students' League in New York, furthering her art studies in England and Italy. At the Art Students' League,she became an assistant to the muralist Arthur Covey and married him in 1921. Advancing from part-time jobs designing greeting cards and drawings for advertisements, Lenski spent the decade of the 1920s illustrating the works of others, primarily for children's books. In addition to illustrating works such as Padraic Colum's The Peep-Show Man and Kenneth Graham's The Golden Age and Dream Days (which allowed her to exercise her passion for medieval costume and culture), she developed an association with the New York publishing firm Platt and Munk, illustrating such well-known works as Cinderella and The Little Engine That Could.

At the suggestion of an editor, Lenski decided to try her own hand at writing for children, publishing in 1927 Skipping Village, based on her own childhood experiences in Anna, Ohio. In her long and illustrious career as both writer and illustrator, Lenski authored more than eighty books for children of various ages, including the immensely popular "Davy" and "Mr.Small" series for younger readers and the influential and provocative "Roundabout America" and "Regional America" books for older children, as well as historical novels and poetry. In addition to providing riveting entertainment, her books invariably made a plea for tolerance and understanding among all people. Among her many awards were the Newbery Medal for 1946 for Strawberry Girl, one of her fifteen regional novels for young readers, and the National Child Study Association Award in 1948.

Special Collections & University Archives, Jackson Library, has many signed first editions, translations, manuscripts, original art work, artifacts, and ephemera in its Lois Lenski Collection, as well as a collection of miniature and early children's books collected by Lenski.

For her many contributions to children's literature, Lois Lenski in 1962 was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

-Dr. William K. Finley

What They Were Wearing While They Were Reading; The 1920s

January 24 – March 31, 2011
First Floor Lobby, Jackson Library

The 1920s was one of the most exciting decades in US history. It was a time of prosperity and excess when Americans embraced a modern culture, which included dancing to the “Charleston” and joyriding in Ford Model T automobiles. Women won the right to vote, attended colleges in droves, and sought out careers outside the home.

Prohibition began on midnight, January 16, 1920, making “intoxicating liquors” illegal to transport, consume, or sell. Prohibition created an underground bootlegging industry, which fueled widespread criminal activity. Men like Al Capone rose to power, ordering the largest gangland hits in crime history known as “the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

Jazz was hot! Singers such as Charles Peterson, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and Rudy Vallee were popular and could be heard on a new invention, which allowed entertainment to be broadcast into America’s living rooms - the radio. Americans were also flocking to movie theaters to see popular stars as Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson.

Other important milestones of the 1920s included Babe Ruth setting the home run record in 1927, celebrity pilot Charles Limbergh flying solo across the Atlantic in 1927, and archaeologist Howard Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922.

The decade came to a screeching halt on October 29, 1929, with the most devastating stock market crash in US History. The panic of 1929 sparked the Great Depression and the economic downturn of the 1930s.

This exhibit focuses on the fashions, literature, and cultural aspects of the 1920s. It features the textile collection of Dr. James Carmichael, professor of the UNCG’s Library and Information Studies program.

-Kathelene McCarty Smith

Celebrating the Cello Music Collection: The Greenhouse Legacy

Among the most distinguished cellists of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Bernard Greenhouse, now in his 95th year, continues to teach at his home on Cape Cod and to inspire music lovers the world over, largely through his many recordings with the Beaux Arts Trio. As the founding cellist of this legendary trio, Greenhouse joined forces in 1955 with pianist Menahem Pressler and violinist Daniel Guilet (later followed by Isidore Cohen) to perform and record the entire standard piano trio repertoire before retiring from the group in 1987. However, as Greenhouse is ever quick to point out, his career on the international chamber music stage represents only one dimension of a richly varied musical life. This exhibit of materials from his personal library, now part of UNCG’s monumental Cello Music Collection, throws welcome light on the range of Greenhouse’s activities—as a virtuoso cello soloist, as a student of Casals, as a collaborator with composer Elliott Carter, and as the long-time cellist of New York’s Bach Aria Group.

- Mac Nelson

Exhibit dates : January 24 - February 3, 2011

2010 Women Veterans Luncheon

On Saturday, November 6th, the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project hosted our 13th annual women veterans luncheon.



Our speaker this year was Command Sergeant Major Teresa S. King, the first female commandant of the U.S. Army's Drill Sergeant School at Fort Jackson, SC. CSM King, a North Carolina native,spoke about her life and career and was given a standing ovation.





UNCG Chancellor Linda P. Brady gave remarks. The Chancellor comes from a military family and always makes very insightful comments.



The luncheon is a great chance to catch up with all of the women who have donated their oral histories to the collection and to meet and greet other women veterans.

More photos of the event are on flickr. CLICK HERE.

North Carolina WWII Experience Documentary includes WVHP veteran

WUNC-TV has produced a two-hour documentary North Carolina's WWII Experience about North Carolinians during World War II.

The film includes The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project's "very own" Virginia Russell Reavis, who served as an air evacuation nurse for the U.S. Army Air Force, telling her story.

• Virginia Russell Reavis' Papers: http://library.uncg.edu/dp/wv/collection.aspx?col=286

• Information about the film: http://www.unctv.org/pressroom/wwII/mediaadvisory.html

• Website for the film: http://wwii.unctv.org/

Promoting Archival Material

One of the goals of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives is to promote its many collections to University classes. In early November 2010, Reference Librarian Jenny Dale, sent Interim University Archivist Hermann Trojanowski an e-mail requesting an exhibit tailored especially for the History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education (KIN 351) class. Jenny said the class's instructor Pam Kocher Brown wanted to integrate University Archives material into the session and asked that we display vintage items for the class to view.

On November 23rd, fourteen students and two instructors from the KIN 351 class visited the University Libraries' Conference Room where Kathelene Smith and Hermann Trojanowski displayed items from University Archives including twenty-eight photographs of athletics and sports, five yearbooks, and six vintage athletic uniforms such as a 1913 black wool gym suit and 1931 red athletic vest with archival photos of early students wearing the items. The yearbooks from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s gave the students a visual touchstone with early campus sports.


When the students arrived, Kathelene and Hermann gave an overview of the textiles and other items on display. Then the students viewed the items and asked questions.


At the end of the session, Jenny asked the students to pick one artifact and talk about why it was their favorite. After the students left the Conference Room, they went to the CITI computer lab where they reviewed the UNCG Timeline, which had been created by University Archives staff. Their assignment was to pick two dates and give their reason for those dates being important to them.

This is an excellent example of outreach that the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives Department has been conducting in the past few years to promote its collections.