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The Society for the Anthropology of Europe was founded as a section of the American Anthropological Association in 1986 to promote study of European cultures and to encourage scholarly connection between scholars working in Europe. The meetings and publications of the Society provide an important forum for discussion of issues in the discipline and raising the visibility of the field, and they recognize scholarly achievement at all levels of the profession through awarding a best book prize in Europeanist anthropology, pre-dissertation fellowships, and prizes for best student paper.

This small collections contains official records of the SAE from its founding, including organizational and administrative materials and records of officials of the Society.

The European Field Studies Program has played a critical role in graduate and undergradute training in the UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology since its inception in the late 1960s. The program provides opportunities for graduate students and honors undergraduates to gain practical experience in fieldwork by taking part in intensive projects at selected sites in Europe. The program is designed to assist students in developing concrete research plans and to begin to put their plans into effect.

The EFS collection contains correspondence between faculty and students about fieldwork, student research proposals and final reports, publications and data on the distinguished lecturers, departmental memos and meeting minutes, and range of other miscellaneous and financial material.

Frederic Allen Whiting at his typewriter

Frederic Allen Whiting Jr., the “Poet Laureate of Perkins Cove”, was born on January 10, 1906 in Boston Massachusetts to Olive Elizabeth Cook, a singer, and Frederic Allen Whiting Sr., a philanthropist and museum director and president of the American Federation of Arts. They moved to Cleveland in 1912 where Frederic Sr. became the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Having a father as the director of a cultural heritage institution, exposed young Frederic to the intellectual class. He met poets, scholars, and others from the world of arts and letters including Sir Lawrence Binyon, Langdon Warner, Carl Purington Rollins, and Thomas Whitney Surette. He attended the private Hawken School in Cleveland and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, which he referred to later as “redolent of witchcraft and Indian massacres, and compliance with chamber of commerce goals and attitudes”. He went to Harvard for two years before becoming a freelance writer.

Adopting the pen name Allen Whiting, his first foray into writing began when he wrote commentary and criticism for the Magazine of Art, the organ of the American Federation of the Arts, where he was also editor from 1931-1942. Some of his pieces for the magazine were republished in the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post. Under his tenure, the circulation rose and he became familiar with all aspects of magazine production and made contacts with members and chapters of the American Federation of Arts, which consisted of artists, writers, teachers, museum officials, art dealers, and officials working with U.S. government cultural projects. On one occasion in 1940, Whiting took charge of the Federation’s annual convention, which met in San Francisco. He left the magazine in May 1942 to participate in the war effort.

Whiting was appointed Chief of the Office of War Information’s Overseas Exhibit Section. Charged with developing programming and staff, Whiting aimed to project positive visual images of the United States to Europeans. He was responsible for planning and carrying through creative programming, administrative duties, and liaison work with other civilian agencies, Army & Navy administrators, business leaders, and the press. Following the end of the war, he was brought to Washington by Elmer Davis to develop an exhibit aimed at explaining to liberated Europe the demand on resources of the continuing war in the Pacific. The project was abandoned following the surrender of Japan in August of 1945.

Following the war, Whiting became a freelance writer and photo editor, wrote two novels, short stories, and non-fiction pieces on a variety of subjects, including politics, the arts, and food. He designed and produced a brochure for a New England children’s camp and was a contracted photo research and editor for the State Department.

In 1951 he was recruited to work as a civilian information specialist with the Department of the Army’s Reorientation Division for occupied areas, which was responsible for supplying materials used to re-educate the people of Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. Out of an office in New York, he supplied the U.S. Information Centers in Japan with musical recordings and other media. The job ended following the end of the U.S. occupation in December, when he resumed freelance writing and editing. He moved his parents from Florida to Ogunquit, Maine in 1952, where he became the Associate Director of the Museum of Art of Ogunquit where he assembled a Winslow Homer exhibit but was later “politely fired” by Henry Strater.

Throughout the 1950s Whiting’s wife Rose suffered from several strokes and eventually died in 1960. Whiting was also caring for his aging parents, which caused much stress and led to excessive drinking where his “control over beverage alcohol had left me behind”. His mother died in 1955. During this time he found solace in the Roman Catholic Church and was committed to the Augusta State Hospital in 1957. Whiting’s battles with alcoholism and simultaneous search for God was explored in his unpublished 1965 autobiographical novel, Minutes of the Days.

The collection contains evidence of an attempt to start an organization called The Society of Servants of Rose Hill, whose aim was to “bring to bear in a practical manner the venerable and curative offices of prayer and work upon those in particular need of them”. The goal was to create cooperatively governed outpatient retreat centers in bucolic settings for people recently released from psychiatric institutions. The mission statement stated that no one would be turned away for financial or religious reasons. There is no evidence that the organization ever came to fruition.

Whiting’s career as a published poet began in the 4th grade. He was eventually published in several magazines including Spirit: A Magazine of Poetry, The American Poetry Magazine, The Harvard Advocate, Voices, and The Cecelian. He spent much of his creative life in Ogunquit, Maine reading his work at informal gatherings of “mostly young people of creative bent, gathered in the vicinity of Perkins Cove”. In 1952 he completed his first novel, The Gift of Merlon Crag.

The collection consists of copies, drafts, published and unpublished copies of Whiting’s poetry written throughout his lifetime. The manuscript of his unpublished autobiographical novel, Minutes of the Days is also contained herein. Some biographical information, written by Whiting while planning to release Minutes of the Days, is in the collection as well.

Eastern Europe’s socialist republics of the Cold War era strove to establish national cultures that reflected communist objectives and withstood Western influences. In order to promote collectivist ideals, state authorities supervised the production of literary works, motion pictures, television programs, sound recordings, and other forms of cultural content. To centralize the manufacturing of music records for its national market of sixteen million citizens, the GDR maintained a state-owned record company. Formally under the supervision of Ministerium für Kultur (Ministry of Culture), VEB Deutsche Schallplatten (German Records, NOE) provided the GDR audience with classical, traditional, and popular music as well as literary and educational recordings.

Mandated to cover a broad spectrum of content, Deutsche Schallplatten established separate divisions to develop artists and repertoire, releasing the vast majority of its works on five major labels:

• Amiga: popular recordings for all age groups
• Eterna: classical and political recordings
• Litera: literary recordings like audio books for adults and children
• Nova: recordings that reflected socialist lifestyles
• Schola: educational recordings for use in schools

Apart from the producers affiliated with these labels, the company’s creative division also included graphic designers who crafted cover art and musicologists who documented the growth of the respective catalogs. Counting managers, administrators, technologists, and the sizeable workforce of its industrial plants, Deutsche Schallplatten after the mid-1970s had around 800 employees. Yet, in the course of German reunification and the privatization of nationally owned enterprises, the enterprise lost its cultural relevancy and failed economically. Ultimately, competing firms acquired the catalogs of Amiga and Eterna, which encompassed the master tapes of and exploitation rights to Deutsche Schallplatten’s commercially most viable recordings.

As the former monopolist underwent its eventual dissolution in the early 1990s, a time when public interest in GDR culture hit an all-time low, most of its material legacy was to be discarded. Aware that a unique cultural heritage was earmarked for destruction, the former music producer Volkmar Andrä intervened to preserve decommissioned recordings and files. With assistance from Sven Kube, an academic historian who has reconstructed Deutsche Schallplatten’s evolution, these materials were transferred to UMass Amherst.

Comprised chiefly of sound recordings and text files, but featuring other media types, this collection offers unique insights into the music life of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the early 1960s and the country’s demise in 1990.

L-R: Steven Botkin (MRC Executive Director), Thulanu Nkosi (men's work leader in South Africa), and Rob Okun (MRC Associate Director), ca. 2000

Joining a men’s group soon after his arrival in the Pioneer Valley in 1979, and finding the support and community there important personally, and professionally for his graduate work in anti-oppression education, Steven Botkin began his now decades long work in anti-sexist activism. While doing his doctoral work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 1982, Botkin co-founded the Men’s Resource Connection (MRC) to promote healthy ideas of masculinity and male leadership by challenging harmful stereotypes involving violence, sexism, and oppression and to create a local network devoted to this work. He completed his Ed.D. in 1988 (dissertation entitled Male Gender Consciousness: A Study of Undergraduate College Men) and continued to guide the MRC into a successful non-profit community-based organization, whose programs became a model for men’s organizing in communities around the world. In 2004, Botkin founded Men’s Resources International (MRI) to support the development of masculinity awareness and men’s engagement as allies within a global network. MRI eventually merged with MRC to form MERGE for Equality, Inc. Botkin additionally co-founded the Springfield based Men of Color Health Awareness (MOCHA), and the North American MenEngage Network, and has served as a leader, trainer, educator, and consultant for local, national, and global men’s groups and organizations, including in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and for groups such as the YMCA, Planned Parenthood Federation, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, and the Women’s Peacemakers Program.

The Steven Botkin Papers document Botkin’s long career in global men’s organizations and networks and their work in policy, education, empowerment, and organizing around the intersections of masculinity, gender, violence, sexism, oppression, power, politics, and society. Materials related to the men’s movement include significant records from the various groups Botkin co-founded and assisted, including organizational histories, program records and reports, meeting agendas, resource pamphlets, posters, networking and training curricula handbooks and handouts, a full run of the MRC magazine Voice Male, and video tapes and recordings. Botkin’s collection compliments and enriches the materials in the Men’s Resource Center Records.

Nina Yolande Du Bois (1900-1961), better known as Yolande Du Bois, was an American teacher best regarded for her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. Her father was sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and her mother was Nina (née Gomer) Du Bois. She was born on October 21, 1900, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She faced many health-related issues in her early childhood and also quarreled often with her parents. In her early adulthood, she enrolled at Fisk University in 1920 and graduated in 1924. While attending Fisk, she was in a relationship with Jimmie Lunceford, a prominent jazz musician. At her father’s insistence, she ended her relationship with Lunceford and would later go on to marry acclaimed Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen on April 9, 1928. Their highly-publicized wedding was the talk of many African-American socialites at the time, with every minor detail recorded by the press. However, Yolande and Countee soon grew distant in their marriage, resorting to counseling at first and then divorce following Countee’s coming out as gay to Yolande. With the divorce finalized in the spring of 1930, Yolande chose to pursue higher education and rewrite the course of her life.

After a period of illness, she began to teach English and history at Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. There, she met Arnette Franklin Williams, whom she married in September 1931 and then later divorced in 1936. She had one daughter with Williams, Yolande Du Bois Irvin Williams, whom she took care of following the divorce. However, during this period, Yolande also moved to New York City with her mother, where she began to take courses at Columbia University’s Teachers College, eventually earning her master’s. She then continued to work as a teacher and to raise her daughter in Baltimore until her death in March 1961. She was survived by her father and her daughter.

Yolande’s scrapbooks, photo albums, and other personal artifacts from her youth (approximately 1915-1929) reflect her travels, undergraduate experiences at Fisk University, outings with her family and friends, artistic pursuits, and more. These scrapbooks showcase trips to England, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe, across Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, as well as other sites of importance in her life. These scrapbooks capture snapshots of her time at Fisk University, from breakups to athletic events, and from classical music concerts to Zeta Beta Phi rush week materials. Each scrapbook showcases a different aspect of Yolande’s late teenage life as well as her early adulthood, coupled with notes, sketches, and illustrations from friends, postcards and fliers from all over the United States and Europe, and her personal takes on the world around her.

Living in Keswick, England, at the start of the second world war, parents Jack D. and Audrey S. Monro were separated from their children, Elspeth and Robin, for nearly six years. Throughout this time they each wrote letters fairly consistently, detailing the war itself and personal news. Elspeth and Robin traveled from England to the United States in the summer of 1940, aged 8 and 10, as fears of bombings and violence from Germany dominated the news in Europe. They moved in with the family’s close friends to a house in Baltimore, Maryland. By moving to the United States, they left behind a whole life in England: a majority of their family, their friends, and a culture with which they were familiar with.

The collection details civilian life via letters written in England during the second world war from the perspective of parents separated from their children. Spanning from 1938 through 1946, they document the general instability that was faced during this time, including personal family news, everyday life during a time of war, issues regarding divorce, and issues relating ot the separation with their children.

Klaus Postler was a visual artist and curator who lived and worked in New England. Born Michael Edward Postler on March 23, 1951, he grew up in Yonkers, New York, and Connecticut. He was an avid collector of paper ephemera, which he included in his large-scale paintings and collages. From the late 1970s he was an enthusiastic participant in the international mail art movement, labelling his enterprise the Social Artists Reality Empire (S.A.R.E.). One of the exhibitions he curated was the Ray Johnson Memorial Mail Art Show at UMass Amherst, in 1996, for which he put out an open call and received mailed responses from around the world. Postler traveled in Europe and forged relationships with artists there, especially in Germany. In addition to his art practice, he worked for many years picking apples and pruning trees at New England orchards. Postler pursued his education at a number of institutions, with some difficulty due to his dyslexia, and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1998 through the University Without Walls program at UMass Amherst. He was a MacDowell Colony fellow in 2000, and returned to UMass to earn his MFA in studio art in 2005. Late in his life he cared for the estate of the artist Robert Mallary. He died on January 6, 2013, at his studio in Conway, Massachusetts.

The Klaus Postler collection contains a variety of sketchbooks that also functioned as diaries, as well as daybooks and dream journals; slides of his work; and photographic prints. Also included is an assortment of mail art, some created by Postler but mostly work sent to him by other artists, which Postler included in exhibitions he curated in Brattleboro, Vermont, and at UMass Amherst. Thomas Jahn, known as Horsefeathers, is a prolific contributor of mail art. The collection also includes documentation from posthumous gallery shows and a commemorative book about his work published by his partner, Eileen Claveloux.

The human geographer, Richard Wilkie received his doctorate from the University of Washington in 1968, the same year he joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. His research has included a long-term longitudinal study of the assimilation of Argentine migrants, a study of the periodic market system in the Guatemalan highlands, and other projects that range from the European Mediterranean to Hawaii, Malaysia, and Ecuador. Beginning in the 1990s, he turned increasingly to analyzing the concept of attachment to place and the importance of place in the lives of people. Wilkie retired in 2009, but has remained active in teaching, mentoring graduate students, travel, and photography.

This collection consists of town maps excised from mid-nineteenth century atlases, including Smith’s Map of Hartford County (1855), Clark and Tackabury’s New geographical map of the State of Connecticut (1860), and F.W. Beer’ Atlas of Litchfield County (1874).

A landscape architect and extension horticulturist, Hal Mosher was born in Sterling, Mass., in August 1920. Mosher started his undergraduate studies at Mass. State College in the fall of 1942, but after an interruption while he fulfilled his military obligations, he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees after the war. Beginning his academic career at the University of Missouri, Mosher returned home to Massachusetts in 1960 as an associate Extension Professor of Horticulture, joining the Department of Landscape Architecture in 1969. He was an enormously popular instructor, known particularly for his introduction to landscape ecology, nicknamed by students ‘Hiking with Hal.’ Mosher retired to emeritus status in 1987 and remained in Amherst until his death on October 3, 2019, aged 99.

Documenting the career of a popular faculty member and distinguished landscape architect, this collection contains materials from throughout Mosher’s career, with an emphasis on the years 1960 through 1987. Volumetrically, almost half of the collection consists of 35mm slides taken during Mosher’s numerous travel throughout the United States and Europe, but there is a good cross-section of materials relating to his teaching, landscape projects, and research, and small number of photographs and ephemeral items from his undergraduate years.