Archive

Born in 1963, Feuchtenberger was raised in East Berlin, where she trained as a graphic artist at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, motivated by the East German citizens’ movement, she co-founded the political artists’ collective PGH Gluhende Zukunft—a group that ironically called itself the “Glowing Future Productive Collective.” In her comics, theater and political posters, and other works, Feuchtenberger blends different artistic traditions, including German Expressionism. Her work frequently reflects her feminist activism by focusing on the relationship between women and their children and society. Since 1997, she has taught drawing and media illustration at the Academy of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, Germany.  

The works included in this collection were part of the first major solo exhibition of Feuchtenberger in the U.S. curated by UMass MFA student Bibiana Medkova and on display at the Olver Design Building in 2018. The collection itself was donated by German Filmmaker Jörg Foth. Both Foth and Feuchtenberger were active in the art scene at the time of German reunification and their work occasionally overlapped. For example, Feuchtenberger created film posters as well as art for the opening titles, closing credits, and intertitles for Foth’s 1994 film, Tir na nOg. The works in this collection reflect Feuchtenberger’s printing oeuvre for theaters, plays, and films during the 1990-2000s with a focus on works in color, and including a selection of black and white drawings and political artwork of the post-Berlin-Wall pre-unified Germany era.

A collection of t-shirts, gift cards, and posters designed by activist and political artist Bonnie Acker. Each item features an illustration by Acker in support of various issues relating to social change ranging from peace with Nicaragua, to nuclear abolition and from lifting the debt of impoverished countries, to the Burlington, Vermont community land trust.

A long-time faculty member at UMass Amherst, Dean Albertson was an historian of the twentieth century United States with a specialty in oral history. A veteran of the Second World War, Albertson received his BA from University of California Berkeley (1942) and doctorate from Columbia (1955), joining the Department of History at UMass in 1965 after several years at Brooklyn College. The author of books on Dwight Eisenhower, Claude Wickard (Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture), and the student movements of the 1960s, Albertson was interested throughout his career in new methods in research and teaching history. He died at his home in Longmeadow, Mass., on March 31, 1989, at the age of 68.

Dean Albertson’s History 384 class at UMass Amherst, required students to conduct oral histories relating to a theme in contemporary U.S. history chosen each year. Between 1975 and 1977, Albertson’s students interviewed social activists of the 1960s and early 1970s, participants and observers in the North End riots of 1975 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and war and nuclear power resisters. The collection includes transcripts of 15 interviews conducted during this period, as well as the students’ papers, which put the transcripts into context.

Sonia E. Alvarez’s research specializes in social movements and protest politics, comparative and transnational feminisms, and Latin American politics and cultures, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone. Before coming to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the fall of 2005, she taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for nearly two decades and also served as visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo in Campinas, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and the Federal University of Bahia.

Alvarez is the author of Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics and co-editor of Quem São as Mulheres das Políticas para as Mulheres no Brazil? Vol. I, O Feminismo Estatal Participativo Brasileiro; Vol. II, Expressões Femnistas nas Conferências Nacionais de Políticas para as Mulheres​ (2018); Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America (2017); Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Américas (2014); Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements (1998) and The Making of New Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Stragegy and Democracy (1992), as well as a two-part special issue of the journal Meridians on “Afro-descendant Feminisms in Latin America” (2016) and five additional special journal issues. Alvarez has published over 120 journal articles and book chapters, many written collaboratively, and in Portuguese and Spanish, as well as English, on topics including movements, feminist politics, NGOs, civil society, race and racism, transnational activism, and democratization. At UMass Amherst, she served as the Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Latin American Politics and Studies (2005-2022) as well as the Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies (2005-2018) before assuming the role of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science and Leonard J. Horwits Professor Emerita in 2022.

The Sonia E. Alvarez Papers features an extensive collection of her research materials and notes, writings, lectures and talks, conference materials, and publications related to feminism and women’s movements and Latin American politics and cultures.

Established in 1968 in response to the war in Vietnam, the AFSC office in western Massachusetts did not limit its focus to draft and military counseling, instead the organization broadened its focus over time to include educational and outreach programs for a variety of peace and socal justice issues. Today the chapter focuses on economic justice, campaigns against U.S. military intervention, and actions to combat racism and classism. With an emphasis on serving the community of western Massachusetts, the program is equally committed to calling attention to issues of both national and local importance. Recent campaigns range from ending the war in Iraq and supporting peace in Columbia to preventing the construction of a new jail in Chicopee.

The collection consists chiefly of subject files that together provide a picture of the various issues in which the western Massachusetts AFSC was involved. Topics range from the organization’s earliest focus, the Vietnam War, to the first Gulf War, landlord/tenant relations, immigration, and landmines. The collection also includes materials relating to public figures, some of whom traveled to the region to speak.

View of the proposed the Amherst Fields

In May 1971 Otto Paparazzo Associates announced their plans to develop 640 acres of land in East Amherst upon which a proposed 2,200 residential units, a commercial center, and a golf course would be built. Concerned about unnatural growth of the community and about the effect such a development would have on the environment, a group of residents formed the Amherst Growth Study Committee within a few months of the announcement. Despite these concerns, the Zoning Board of Appeals issued a formal permit for construction in December 1971, which the AGSC immediately appealed. Even though the group was unable to overturn the zoning board’s decision, they did achieve their ends, in part, when state and town agencies prevented the project from moving forward due to an overloaded sewage system. More importantly, the group increased public awareness about growth and housing in the town of Amherst.

Records include notes from AGSC meetings, correspondence, and newspaper clippings documenting coverage of the story in local papers.

In 1984 at the age of 24, Linda Andre was coerced into receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), an experience that turned her into an “accidental activist” in the psychiatric survivor movement. A talented photographer and writer on photographic theory before treatment, Andre suffered profound memory and cognitive loss after electroshock resulting in permanent harm. Soon after undergoing ECT, Andre connected with a psychiatric survivors resistance movement group, Project Release. She advocated for informed consent to ECT and for holding the FDA accountable in its failure to appropriately regulate electroshock devices.  In 1992, when Marilyn Rice, the founder of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP), died Andre assumed the role of director. Her decades of activism, research, and writing about ECT culminated in the 2009 publication of her book Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment. Andre died by suicide in 2023 at the age of 63.

Linda Andre’s collection is a vast resource for the of study electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), its unethical promotion and use, as well as its harmful, long-term effects on individuals. Included are articles and writings related to ECT, personal stories of survivors forced hospitalization and ECT treatment, and materials related to the psychiatric survivor’s movement. Andre’s own presentations and writings related to ECT are featured along with research and drafts that resulted in her book, Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment. Her photographs and creative writing document her immense artistic talent, while her journals, family photos, and correspondence reveal Andre’s personal history.

Priest, lawyer, activist, war veteran, devoted father, and music lover Nigel Lyon Andrews lived a full and varied life. Born in New England May 24, 1921, he attended Yale University before becoming an Air Corps Captain in World War II. After his service, Nigel returned to New England to earn his law degree before being called to priesthood; a calling her pursued until his retirement and death in 2006. His wife, Constance Doane Young Andrews, born June 1, 1921, was a dedicated and passionate musician, choral director, organist, sailor, spouse, mother, grand and great-grandmother, and mentor who was active in her local communities before her own passing on June 17, 2018.

The collection spans almost 200 years and includes a variety of other family members and their stories and effects. The bulk of the collection is correspondence and family papers/materials such as diaries, notebooks, legal, work, and school papers, and photographs.

Born in Cork, Ireland to a prosperous family, the Anglin siblings began immigrating to Canada and the United States in 1903. The first to relocate to Canada, brothers Will and Sydney pursued vastly different careers, one as a Presbyterian minister and the other as a salesman at a Toronto slaughterhouse. George and Crawford both served in the military during World War I, the former in the British Infantry as a medical officer and the latter in the 4th University Overseas Company first in France and later in Belgium where he died saving the life of a wounded soldier. Gladys Anglin trained as a nurse, but worked in a Canadian department store and at the Railway Office before suffering a mental breakdown and entering the Ontario Hospital as a patient. Ethel remained in Ireland the longest where she taught Domestic Economics at a technical school. The only Anglin to immigrate to the United States and the only female sibling to marry, Ida and husband David Jackson settled in Monson, Massachusetts where they raised four daughters.

The Anglin siblings were part of a close knit family who stayed in contact despite their geographic separation through their correspondence. Siblings wrote and exchanged lengthy letters that document not only family news, but also news of local and national significance. Topics addressed in their letters include World War I, the Irish revolution, medicine, religious ministry, and domestic issues from the ability of a single woman to support herself through work to child rearing.

Since 1989 the Arcadia Players have been performing Baroque music with the aim of providing an authentic experience both for the musicians and the audience by employing instruments and performance practices that draw from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In residence at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies at UMass Amherst, the ensemble performs an annual series of concerts in several communities throughout western Massachusetts.

The collection consists of brochures, programs, photographs, videorecordings of performances, and financial and administrative records. Together the items provide a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of a small but successful professional ensemble of musicians.