Collecting area: Women

Born into a working class family from New Bedford, Mass., in Nov. 1829, Hannah Sisson was the daughter of a cooper Job Tilton and his wife Patience, and was raised in the multigenerational home owned by her grandparents John and Nancy Tilton. In April 1853, Hannah married George Oliver Tilton, a farmer from Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard, and moved to the island.

The first 340 pages of this daybook detail the daily transactions of a general store in New Bedford between 1845 and 1847. The store traded in very small quantities of consumable goods, ranging from a gallon of molasses to 150 crackers, a pound of butter, a peck of potatoes or apples, flour, pork, and fish. Most purchases were for less than a dollar.

Trained as a teacher of physical education at the Sargent School in Boston, Ruth J. Totman enjoyed a career at state normal schools and teachers colleges in New York and Pennsylvania before joining the faculty at Massachusetts State College in 1943, building the program in women’s physical education almost from scratch and culminating in 1958 with the opening of a new Women’s Physical Education Building, which was one of the largest and finest of its kind in the nation. Totman retired at the mandatory age of 70 in 1964, and twenty years later, the women’s PE building was rededicated in her honor. Totman died in November 1989, three days after her 95th birthday.

The Totman Papers are composed mostly of personal materials pertaining to her residence in Amherst, correspondence, and Totman family materials. The sparse material in this collection relating to Totman’s professional career touches lightly on her retirement in 1964 and the dedication of the Ruth J. Totman Physical Education Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Supplementing the documents is a sizeable quantity of photographs and 8mm films, with the former spanning nearly her entire 95 years. The 8mm films, though fragile, provide an interesting, though soundless view into Totman’s activities from the 1940s through the 1960s, including a cross-country trip with Gertrude “Jean” Lewis, women’s Physical Education events at the New Jersey College for Women, and trips to Japan to visit her nephew, Conrad Totman..

Susan Tracy, Dean of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies and Professor of American Studies and History at Hampshire College, received a B.A. in English and an MA. in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before earning her PhD. in history from Rutgers University. Her primary interests are in American social and intellectual history, particularly labor history; Afro-American history; and women’s history. She has taught United States history and women’s studies courses at the UMass Amherst.

The Susan Tracy Papers consist largely of Tracy’s files during her tenure as a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (ca. 1966) and her time as a member of the University staff (ca. 1984). Included in the collection are documentation of the campus Everywoman’s Center and the Chancellor’s Committees on Sexual Harassment and Human Relations; issues of the “What’s Left” newsletter; records of the Women’s Studies Policies Board; and research for a student project on the Southwest Residential area.

Born in 1948 to Robert Trigére and Jane Ellis, Trigére grew up in New York City and Argentina. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she remained close to both. Trigére attended the Lycee Francais de New York, a preparatory high school that taught in French. She was accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in 1969, which she attended for two years before transferring to the University of Boston to study Architecture. She moved to western Massachusetts in 1992 and became involved in a myriad of community organizations and projects. Notably, in 1997, Trigére helped found the Hatikvah Holocaust Education and Resource Center and served as the first director. Trigére was also active in several Jewish schools and educational centers as both an instructor and a leader. She and her husband, Ken Schoen, lived and operated a rare Jewish Bookstore out of the old firehouse in Deerfield, Massachusetts. She was on several committees dedicated to the preservation of the town, such as the Deerfield Historical Commission and she helped to create other community organizations such as the Deerfield Arts Bank. In 2016, Trigére was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died in 2018.

The bulk of this collection dates from the time when Jane Trigére finished her undergraduate studies in 1975 to her passing in 2018, although there are some photographs and correspondence from her childhood. The collection includes materials that relate to her education and employment, artwork and writing, and community involvement as well as correspondence and family materials. Within the family materials are items related to Pauline Trigére, a prominent fashion designer.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Maria Tymoczko was lured away from the study of biochemistry into medieval literature, remaining at Harvard through her doctorate and eventually making the subject into an academic career. Since joining the faculty at UMass Amherst in 1974, she has written or edited six books and has built an international reputation in three fields: Celtic medieval literature, Irish studies, and translation studies. A popular instructor, she has also played a leading role on several university committees.

The Tymoczko Papers document both the career and university service of a scholar of Irish literature and theorist of translation. In addition to her professional correspondence (1973-1980), the collection includes a significant quantity of material documenting Tymoczko’s university service, including notes from her time as chair of the General Education Council (1986-1994), from the Joint Task Force of UMass and Community College Relations, and the Rules Committee and Ad-hoc Committee on Retention of Administrators of the Faculty Senate. Additions to the collection are expected in the future.

The Division of Continuing Education was established in 1970 as the de facto academic outreach arm of the University. Designed to improve access to the academic resources of the University for part-time students, this entailed both the development of a specialized admissions process and an integrated counseling, advising, registration, and records operation geared to the needs of part-time students. The Division continues to provide specialized services and programming for part-time students including Tutoring Enrichment Assistance Model for Public School Students (TEAMS) and the Arts Extension Service, which acts as a catalyst between the fine arts resources of the University and the people in the Commonwealth.

The record group documents the activities of the Division of Continuing Education (1970-2007), Everywoman’s Center — including the Women of Color Leadership Network (1971-2007), and the University Conference Services (1906-2007).

Roberta Uno was the founder and long time artistic director of the New WORLD Theater at UMass Amherst, a theater in residence dedicated to the production of works by playwrights of color.

Established by Uno in 1993, the Asian American Women Playwrights Scripts Collection contains manuscripts of plays, but also production histories, reviews, and articles, along with biographies and audio and videotaped interviews with playwrights. Among the individuals represented are Brenda Wong Aoki, Jeannie Barroga, Marina Feleo Gonzales, Jessica Hagedorn, Velina Hasu Houston, Genny Lim, le thi diem thuy, Ling-Ai Li, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Nobuko Miyamoto, Bina Sharif, and Diana Son.

Rae Unzicker’s exposure to the psychiatric system began at a young age. Growing up in an abusive home, her parents sent her to psychiatrists off and on for years before she was involuntarily committed. While there, she was quickly introduced to the chaotic and damaging atmosphere of a psychiatric institution, exposing her to mandatory drugs, seclusion rooms, forced feeding, and work “therapy” that required her to wash dishes six hours a day. Once she was release, Unzicker’s road to recovery was long, but after several suicide attempts and stays at other treatment facilities, she ultimately counted herself–along with her friend Judi Chamberlin, an early leader in the movement–a psychiatric survivor. Like Chamberlin, Unzicker embraced her role as an advocate of patient’s rights and for the radical transformation of the mental-health system. In 1995, President Clinton appointed her to the National Council on Disability; two years later she was elected president of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). Unzicker was widely known for her public appearances, conferences and speeches, and her writings, including numerous articles and contributions to the book Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out. A survivor of cancer of the jaw and breast, Rae Unzicker died at her home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 22, 2001 at the age of 52.

Although a small collection, Rae Unzicker’s papers document her activities as a leading advocate for the rights of mental health patients, including transcripts of speeches and videotaped appearances, correspondence and feedback related to workshops and conferences, press kits, and newspaper clippings. The most important materials, however, are her writings. It is through her poems and her full-length memoir, You Never Gave Me M & M’s, that Unzicker’s story and voice are preserved.

An avid botanist and naturalist, Mary (Morris) Walker was born in Stamford, Conn., on April 1, 1923, the daughter of renowed surgeon and naturalist Robert Tuttle Morris. After graduating from Vassar in 1944, Morris took her MA in Geology at the University of Michigan, marrying a fellow geologist Eugene H. Walker in 1947. Moving to Kentucky, Iowa, and Idaho before settling in Concord, Mass., in 1968, the Walkers raised three children. In Concord, Walker studied for an MA in library science at Simmons College (1971), but her work in botany and natural history became increasingly important. As a plant collector, writer, and educator, Walker traveled widely in the United States and the Caribbean, and she became a leader in organizations including the New England Wild Flower Society, the New England Botanical Club, the Thoreau Society, and the Appalachian Mountain Club. Walker died in Concord on Oct. 2, 2012.

The Walker Papers are a rich assemblage of materials documenting the life of an energetic amateur botanist. Beginning during her time as a student at Vassar, the collection offers insight into Walker’s growing interest in the natural sciences, her botanizing, and her commitments to several organizations devoted to natural history. The collection also includes a small number of letters and photographs of Walker’s father, Robert T. Morris.

Sheila S. Walker, PhD, cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, has done fieldwork, lectured, and participated in intellectual and cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora, and her goal is to educate the public about this diaspora. Her edited book, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, resulting from her international conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World,” has a companion documentary, Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora. Her also edited volume, Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afro-sudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Conhecimento desde dentro: Os afro-sul-americanos falam de seus povos e suas histórias [Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Stories] (in Spanish and Portuguese, not yet English), features chapters by Afrodescendants from all the Spanish-speaking countries in South America. She co-produced the documentary, Slave Routes: A Global Vision for the UNESCO Slave Route Project. And her most recent documentary is Familiar Faces/Unexpected Places: A Global African Diaspora, which was shown at the United Nations as the 2018 Black History Month program for the UN International Decade for People of African Descent. It was sent for showings at UN Information Centers in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. Dr. Walker was a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and held an endowed chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College.

The Sheila S. Walker Collection highlights how the life experiences of an African American cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, focusing on the Global African Diaspora and relationships between the Diaspora and Africa and among African Diasporan societies, allude to, exemplify, and elucidate significant issues of her era. It provides archival materials of various sorts that characterize dynamics of the period both nationally and internationally. The Collection reveals information that does not fit the usual narrative, such as that Operation Crossroads Africa, founded by an African American minister, inspired the creation of the United States Peace Corps, a U.S. government institution helmed by a relative of the then president of the nation. Also, U.S. northern, urban African Americans continued to participate in Mutual Aid Societies, as were so important historically, and sometimes presently, in much of Africa and the African Diaspora.