“If David Sedaris could draw, and if Bleak House had been a little funnier, you'd have Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.” So says novelist Amy Bloom on the cover of one of the books to be discussed at a late-November event sponsored by the Schlesinger Library. Hillary Chute, a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, will talk about contemporary graphic narratives by women, focusing on two memoirs—Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon, 2003), about growing up in Tehran in the 1980s, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), about growing up gay in rural Pennsylvania with a closeted gay father. Both books are immensely popular among young readers.
The library has a continuing commitment to promoting such conversations about popular culture and also to collecting materials about it. The library's executive director, Marilyn Dunn, says, “The Schlesinger Library collects popular culture because it both influences women and is influenced by women. The library also has a substantial collection of monographs analyzing and documenting the history of popular culture. By studying the library's books, periodicals, and papers, one can chart popular culture for more than two hundred years.”
Marylène Altieri, the library's curator of books and printed materials, points to the nineteenth-century women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book as an early example of popular culture in which women are depicted. Contemporary publications collected by the library include the mainstream Seventeen and Oprah as well as the niche periodicals Latina and Azizah: The Voice for Muslim Women and the comic book Ms. Marvel.
But the edgiest publications at the Schlesinger may be its zines, small-circulation noncommercial publications such as Doris, published in Portland, Oregon, and Fuel, published by Harvard undergraduates. Altieri says some zines are periodicals and others are individually issued. “We collect women's and girls' zines because zines offer uncensored, frank, and creative views of their lives,” she says. She and several of her colleagues have formed a popular culture committee to locate and acquire zines and other nonmainstream materials. The six-member committee assembled when the Schlesinger rewrote its collecting policies—as a result of the recently completed strategic plan—and decided to strengthen its collections in popular culture.
Among the books that Altieri purchases for the library are NASCAR romances, Christian romances, and fiction about women detectives. All of these genres are immensely popular, Altieri says, and provide windows into women's lives.
Pop culture comes in many varieties at the Schlesinger. The papers of Marjorie Henderson Buell document the birth of Little Lulu, the comic-strip heroine who rose to fame in the 1930s and appeared in newspapers throughout the 1950s. And the story of the most famous toy of the twentieth century, the Barbie doll, which Ruth Handler invented in 1959, can be gleaned from her papers at the library.
Women's music of the 1970s is documented in the papers of the singer, composer, and political activist Holly Near, who began performing at an early age and became an anti–Vietnam War activist in the 1970s. In 1975, Near became involved in the women's music scene and performed around the United States and abroad. The papers of the lesbian singer, songwriter, and activist Alix Dobkin are also housed at the library but have not yet been processed. Dobkin appeared regularly at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (1976–1990) and at the West Coast Women's Music and Comedy Festival (1984–1989).
The records of organizations often shed light on the subcultures in which women participate. The Moving Violations Motorcycle Club was founded in 1985 by a small group of Boston-area women who enjoyed riding together and sharing information about motorcycling. The group donated its papers to the library in 2001.
Harvard undergraduates appreciate the pop culture gems at the Schlesinger. Janine Mandel '07, for example, used her Carol K. Pforzheimer Fellowship to write her honors thesis in the history department, “‘Remember the Wonder': Wonder Bread and American Society, 1921–2007.” Mandel relied on the library's archival holdings, including “The Art of Serving Bread,” a recipe pamphlet published in 1935 promoting the use of Taystee Bread.
One way Harvard students learn about the library's popular culture riches is through classes that visit the library. In the fall of 2006, reference librarian Sarah Hutcheon provided an introduction to Schlesinger materials for students taking the course Body Sculpting in Modern America, offered by the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Among the library materials Hutcheon showed the class was the periodical Transgender Tapestry and the book Bodysculpture: Weight Training for Women by Valerie and Ralph Carnes (Simon and Schuster, 1978).
It's no surprise that many of the Schlesinger's librarians are themselves experts in popular culture. Marilyn Morgan, a manuscript cataloger at the library, for example, serves on the board of the Journal of Popular Culture.
Clearly, for anyone wanting to explore the history of women in popular culture, the Schlesinger Library is a must-visit.
— Pat Harrison
Publications Manager
Image: The cover of Ms. Marvel, volume 1. Trademark and copyright 2006 Marvel Character Inc. All rights reserved
