Collecting area: UMass history

An accomplished and distinguished scholar of politics and the federal judiciary, Sheldon Goldman is also one of the longest-serving faculty members at the University of Massachusetts, having taught in the department of political science (known as the department of government until the early 1970s) from 1965 until his retirement in 2020. He earned his bachelor’s degree from New York University and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard. Goldman is known and lauded as much for his influential research and writings on federal courts, the politics of federal judicial selection, and constitutional politics, as for his teaching and mentorship of his students. Among his honors are several awards for outstanding teaching and the Chancellor’s Medal. He is the author of Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt Through Reagan and many other books and articles and has been interviewed on national news programs and in major publications.

The Goldman Papers document Goldman’s intellectual and pedagogical life and contributions as well as the evolution of UMass Amherst’s political science department. The collection includes correspondence, research notes, and administrative materials, along with copies of Goldman’s own publications and publications in which he is interviewed or quoted.

Brass mouse-head stencil used in genetics work at Mount Hop Farm

An applied geneticist associated with Massachusetts Agricultural College and Mount Hope Farm, Hubert Dana Goodale made important contributions in poultry and dairy science.

The Goodale Papers contain correspondence written to Goodale, primarily by his friends and colleagues in poultry science, Al Lunn (Oregon Agricultural College), Loyal F. Payne (Kansas State), and John C. Graham (Mass. Agricultural College). Mixing both personal and professional content, the letters touch on academic life in post-World War I period and a variety of issues in poultry husbandry and genetics.

The son of a missionary based in Constantinople, Henry Hill Goodell was born on May 20, 1839. After graduating from Amherst College in 1862, Goodell saw Civil War service with the 25th Connecticut Infantry in the Department of the Gulf, returning to New England to accept a position as Professor of Modern Languages at the newly-formed Massachusetts Agricultural College when it opened in 1867. Over the next four decades, Goodell taught a wide range of subjects, including military tactics, natural science, and elocution, and became its first librarian, before becoming President of the College from 1886 to 1905. As President, Goodell oversaw remarkable changes, including the admission of the first women and African American students, the first offering of electives in the curriculum, the development of the Experiment Station, and Extension Services, and the awarding of the first graduate degrees. Goodell died in April 1905.

The Goodell papers are a faint reflection of one of the key figures in the history of Massachusetts Agricultural College. The bulk of the collection consists of lectures given by Goodell in courses he offered at MAC, however there are a handful of items from his student days at Amherst College, his Civil War service, and a few items relating to the period of his presidency.

Ann Gordon served as the editor of the Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton papers as a member of African American Studies department from 1982 until the project’s conclusion in 1989. While at the University, Gordon, along with John Bracey, Joyce Berkman, and Arlene Avakian planned a conference discussing the history of African American Women voting from the Cady Stanton’s meeting at Seneca Falls to the Voting Rights Act. The conference, called the African American Women and the Vote Conference, was held in 1988.

The collection is comprised of proposals, reports, meeting transcripts, and correspondence from Gordon’s work planning the 1988 African American Women and the Vote Conference. Also included is preliminary work by Gordon to organize the papers given at the conference into book form.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

The economic geographer Julie Graham (1945-2010) and her colleague Katherine Gibson have been influential in envisioning alternatives to capitalist economics and economic development. After studying at Smith College (BA, 1965) and Clark University (PhD, 1984), Graham joined the faculty at UMass Amherst where she helped shape the new graduate program in geography. From early in her career, she worked so closely with her Australian colleague Gibson that they often published jointly under the pen name J.K. Gibson-Graham, and Graham developed close working relationships across several departments at UMass. A prolific author and inspiring mentor for students, Graham’s academic work drew upon an innovative mix of political economy, poststructuralist theory, feminism, and community-based research. Among her more significant publications are the now-classic The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (1996), on representations of capitalism and their political effect, A Postcapitalist Politics (2006), which explores alternatives to capitalism, and two edited volumes, Class and Its Others (2000) and Re/Presenting Class (2001). Graham died in Nashville on April 4, 2010.

The Graham Papers offer a detailed perspective on the radical geographer Julie Graham. The collections documents Graham’s life and career beginning in her undergraduate years and extending through her last research projects in community economies. Through correspondence and writings, photographs, and research — closely intertwined with her colleague Katherine Gibson — the collection gives shape of Graham’s radical challenge to human geography tinged with an optimistic economic and social possibility. The collection also includes letters, photographs, and genealogical matter relating to Graham’s family, extending back to the time of the First World War.

Barrie Barstow Greenbie was a key member of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at UMass Amherst from 1970-1989. In a long and remarkably diverse career, Greenbie worked as an artist with the Works Progress Administration, as a soldier and journalist, as a professor of theater, an architect, inventor, author, and landscape planner. After earning a BA in drama from the University of Miami (1953), he worked for several years in the theatre program at Skidmore College. While there, he added architecture to his array of talents, designing the East 74th Street Theater in New York in 1959, and founded a company to produce a “self-erecting” building designed to substitute for summer tent theaters. Two years after joining the faculty at UMass in 1970, he completed a doctorate in urban affairs and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin and continued with a characteristically broad array of creative pursuits, designing the William Smith Clark Memorial, among other things, and conducting an extensive aerial survey of the landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley. In monographs such as Design for Diversity and Spaces: Dimensions of the Human Landscape, Greenbie examined the interactions between humans and nature. He died at his home on South Amherst in 1998.

The Greenbie Papers document a long career as academic, writer, artist, architect, and theatrical designer. Of particular note is the extensive and engrossing correspondence, which extends from Greenbie’s years as a student at the Taft School in the late 1930s through his World War II service with the Sixth Army in the South Pacific and Japan, to his tenure at UMass Amherst (1970-1989). The collection also includes a small but interesting batch of correspondence between Greenbie’s parents (1918-1919).

James C. Greenough was born in 1829 in Wendell, Massachusetts. After working as a schoolteacher in Heath, Massachusetts, from 1854 to 1856, Flint returned to the State Normal School at Westfield to become assistant principal, leaving there in 1871 to become principal of the Rhode Island Normal School. In 1883, Greenough came to the Massachusetts Agricultural College to become president, serving for three years. During his tenure, he was noted for raising academic standards, extending the course of study, and guiding a transition from a small vocational college to a more comprehensive institution supporting agriculture and extension services. Greenough saw the construction of the college chapel and the establishment of the Experiment Station before finishing his term in 1886.

The Greenough collection includes 3 letters (1885-1921); biographical materials; a published letter to alumni (1884); photocopy, and an Annual Report (1883).

An ornithologist and conservationist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Joseph A. “Archie” Hagar’s career was rooted in the generation of naturalists such as William Brewster, Edward Howe Forbush, and Arthur Cleveland Bent. Born in Lawrence, Mass., on May 13, 1896, Hagar’s undergraduate career at Harvard was interrupted by service in the First World War, after which he completed his studies at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, graduating with the class of 1921. An expert field biologist and ecologist, he was appointed State Ornithologist in the Department of Fish and Game in November 1934 serving in that position for almost twenty-five years. A specialist in waterfowl and raptors, Hagar was deeply involved in early conservation efforts in New England, noted for his work on wetland conservation and for linking the use of DDT with eggshell thinning in peregrine falcons, and he was famously at the center of a dispute with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the design of the Parker River Wildlife Refuge. Never a prolific writer, he was an active member of the American Ornithological Union, the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the Wildlife Society, and other professional organizations, and after retirement, he was specially cited for his work in waterfowl conservation by Ducks Unlimited. Active until late in life, he died at home in Marshfield Hills on Dec. 17, 1989.

The Hagar Papers are a deep and valuable resource for the study of New England birds and the growth of modern conservation biology. With abundant professional correspondence, field notes on shorebirds and raptors, and drafts of articles, the collection documents the full range of Hagar’s activities as State Ornithologist, including a particularly thick run of material for the controversy over the Parker River Wildlife Refuge. Hagar also acquired a set of field notes, 1897-1921, from the Harvard ornithologist John E. Thayer.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

An actor and motion picture assistant director and producer, Michael Haley was born in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1942. While an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, Haley became involved in theater, joining the avant garde Buffalo Meat Company that performed original works in Massachusetts and New York City. Following a chance call from a producer looking for local help in 1969, Haley worked on his first film, the low-budget crime drama Honeymoon Killers. After work on several other film and television productions, Haley was among ten people selected for the Directors Guild of America’s Assistant Directors Training Program. During his forty year career, Haley’s credits have included work with a number of noted directors, including Sidney Lumet, Barry Levinson, and Penny Marshall, and he has enjoyed a particularly long and productive association with Mike Nichols. His films have included The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Stepford Wives, Biloxi Blues, True Colors, A League of Their Own, Groundhog Day, Primary Colors, and Closer. He was the recipient of two Humanitas Prizes (for Wit and Angels in America), and among others awards, the Christopher Award (for Wit), the Directors Guild of America award, Producers Guild of America award, and an Emmy (for Angels in America), a Directors Guild of America plaque (Working Girl), and the Berkshire International Film Festival Life-Time Achievement Award. He was named Artist of the Year at UMass and has been selected for a Bateman Fellowship.

Reflecting a diverse career in film, the Haley collection consists of scripts, photographs, memorabilia, and diaries, with a small quantity of notes and correspondence. The scripts, approximately 110 of them, are from films ranging from The Godfather Part II to Charlie Wilson’s War and Angels in America, may include several drafts. The photographs are both numerous and particularly rich, including some particularly interesting candid shots taken on film sets, as well as official shots taken by photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

The anthropologist Joel Martin Halpern (1929- ) has worked in regions from the Alaskan arctic to Laos and Lapland, but he is best known for his studies of modernization in the Balkans. Following undergraduate study in history at the University of Michigan (BA, 1950), Halpern entered the renowned anthropology program at Columbia, receiving his doctorate in 1956 for a study of the village of Orašac in the former Yugoslavia, which in turn became the basis of his first book, A Serbian Village (N.Y., 1958). After two years working in Laos as a Field Service Officer with the Community Development Division of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration, Halpern was a member of the faculty at UCLA, Brandeis, and the Russian Research Center at Harvard (1965-1967) before coming to UMass Amherst in 1967. A prolific author, Halpern has written or edited dozens of books on the Balkans and Southeast Asia, including A Serbian Village in Historical Context (1972), The Changing Village Community (1967), The Changing Peasantry of Eastern Europe (1976), and The Far East Comes Near (1989). Since retiring from the university in 1992, Halpern has remained in Amherst.

A massive collection documenting the long and varied career of a prolific ethnographer, the Halpern Papers include a wide range of textual and visual materials documenting the anthropological study of modernization, ethnicity, rural life and urbanization, the economy, and cultural change. Much of Halpern’s research centered on the Balkans (Macedonia and Serbia), Laos, and arctic Alaska and Canada, however he has worked on Asian immigrant communities in the United States and many other topics.