Collections: arx

Maurianne Adams was one of the pioneers in social justice education at UMass Amherst. Arriving at the university in 1973 as Coordinator of Academic Affairs for Project 10, the experimental residential education program in the Southwest Residential Area, she developed an elective curriculum focused on racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism. When that project was ended in 1982, she took her ideas to the School of Education, where she became the Director for Social Issues and Instructional Development for Residential Academic Programs (RAP). Over the next several years, she and her colleagues developed one of the first general education diversity courses and she became part of the founding faculty for the graduate program in Social Justice Education. Since her retirement in 2015, she has remained active in promoting social justice activities working with the Coalition of Amherst Neighborhoods (CAN) and the Amherst Community Land Trust, which provides opportunities for affordable homeownership.

The Maurianne Adams Papers document a career committed to teaching, learning, and writing about diversity and equality on this campus and in the residential neighborhoods nearby. The papers offer an important perspective on the emergence of social justice courses in the General Education Program and the formation of the Social Justice Education Program within the College of Education, and given the extensive collaboration among social justice education faculty, it includes materials from several of Adams’ colleagues. The collection includes early drafts of curricula; course and workshop materials on diversity, inclusive teaching, religious oppression, anti-Semitism, and classism; and materials relating to grants to support her efforts.

A influential and flamboyant educational reformer, Dwight W. Allen served as Director of Teacher Education at his alma mater Stanford from 1959 until accepting a position as Dean of the School of Education at UMass Amherst in 1967. A proponent of integrating technology into teaching and co-developer of the technique of microteaching, Allen cemented his reputation as an innovator during his time at UMass (1968-1975), a time that coincided with the rapid expansion of the university. Allen helped recruit students of color to the graduate program in significant numbers, opened admissions to students with unconvential credentials, allowed students a voice in directing and governing the program, and abolished grading, among other initiatives, but while supporters lauded the creativity and excitement of the period, his radical ideas elicited considerable opposition as well. He resigned in 1975, in part due to the increasing demands his international consulting, later accepting a position at Old Dominion University, where he remained until his retirement in 2008. Allen is author of nine books, including American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge, written with his former graduate student Bill Cosby.
The Allen papers contain a wealth of materials pertaining to the tumultuous years at UMass, including Allen’s curricular and teaching reforms, special projects, and his efforts to recruit African American students and address institutional racism. The correspondence, memos, and private reports that Allen maintained are particularly valuable for understanding the period as are the various surveys, studies, and reports on the state of the School of Education. The collection also includes material relating to some of Allen’s academic interests in education, including microteaching, alternative schools, and certification.

The once active photo morgue of the Alumnus Magazine, the Alumnus Magazine Photograph Collection captures diverse aspects of campus life during the 1970s and 1980s, including portraits of campus officials, sports events, commencements, a visit to campus by Julius Erving, and assorted campus buildings and scenery.

Arlene Avakian arrived at UMass in 1972 as a graduate student working on the social history of American women, but quickly became a key figure in the creation of the university’s new program in Women’s Studies. As she completed her MA in History (1975) and EdD (1985), she helped in the early organization of the program, later joining the faculty as professor and program director. Through her research and teaching, she contributed to an engaging departmental culture in which the intersection of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were placed at the center, building the program over the course of 35 years into the nationally-recognized Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Avakian has written and taught on topics ranging from the lives and experiences of Armenian American and African American women to culinary history and the construction of whiteness. She retired in May 2011.
Documenting the growth and development of Women’s Studies at UMass Amherst, the collection includes valuable material on the creation of the department (and Women’s Studies more generally), second- and third-wave feminism, and Avakian’s teaching and research. The collection includes a range of correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of articles, along with several dozen oral historical interviews with Armenian American women. Also noteworthy is the extensive documentation of ABODES, the Amherst Based Organization to Develop Equitable Shelter, which established the Pomeroy Lane Cooperative Housing Community in South Amherst in 1994.

A literary scholar and much admired teacher, Normand Berlin joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in 1965, four years after receiving his doctorate at the University of California for his study of Elizabethan drama. The author of five books and numerous articles on topics ranging from medieval poetry to contemporary film, Berlin was known equally for his work on early modern drama and for his work on Eugene O’Neill, for which he was awarded the Eugene O’Neill Bronze Medal. He was equally popular in the classroom, where his course on Shakespeare became a campus staple for many years, earning the university’s highest teaching award in 1976, the UMass Amherst Distinguished Teaching Award. After retirement in 1995, Berlin remained in Amherst. He died at home on July 13, 2015, at the age of 83.

This small collection contains scattered notes, writings, and correspondence from Normand Berlin’s career, much of which pertains to his research on drama.

The Black Mass Communications Project was founded as an educational and informational outlet for Black students at UMass Amherst in 1970 and authorized in the following year as a Registered Student Organization. Over the years, BCMP played varied roles on campus, hosting cultural events, lectures, workshops, and social gatherings as to help keep black music alive. Many of its early members were also affiliated with the student radio station WMUA, and throughout the 1970s, the organization played a prominent role in providing programming to the station, offering programming highlighting African American music and current affairs.

The BCMP collection consists of many dozens of reel to reel audiotapes of radio broadcasts aired over WMUA during the 1970s and early 1980s by and for the university’s African American community. Included is a range of locally-produced public affairs, cultural, and music programming, with some content licensed from around the country. A few of the tapes are associated with the Five College’s National Public Radio affiliate, WFCR. An inventory of the collection is available to view which includes dates, descriptions, program titles and tapes that have been digitized.

Born in Rome, Italy, in 1929, Ercole Canale-Parola suspended his studies in 1951 to join his mother who had remarried and moved to Chicago. Continuing his education at the University of Illinois, Canale-Parola earned three degrees in microbiology in quick succession and marrying a fellow student, Thelma. On faculty in the Department of Microbiology at UMass Amherst from 1963 until his retirement in 1994, Canale-Parola’s research on the structure and metabolism of the cellulose cell walls of Sarcina helped him build a reputation as one of the world’s leading experts in the biology of spirochaetes. One of the crowning testimonies to his career was the naming of a spirochaete in his honor: Canaleparolinas. Thelma Canole-Parola died in 2011, followed by Ercole in March 2013.

A mixed assemblage of publications, lecture notes on microbial diversity, and specimens from a key figure in microbiology at UMass, this collection is highlighted by Canale-Parola’s notes on lectures delivered by Cornelius B. Van Niel (1961) and 52 (of 58) reel to reel tapes of lectures on microbiology and lab techniques by van Niel.

The Cannabis Reform Coalition at UMass Amherst was founded in 1991 and is considered the oldest student-run organization devoted to ending the prohibition on marijuana both locally and nationally and advocating for its industrial, medicinal, and recreational use for moral, environmental, and economic reasons. The CRC is one of the more active student organizations on campus and among other events, it sponsors the annual Extravaganja in April, which has attracted as many as 10,000 participants.

The CRC collection contains an assortment of fliers, posters, ephemera, and photographs, documenting the organization’s activities and activism, along with a small number of published and unpublished essays on the utility of hemp and cannbis products.

Center for International Education

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

The Center for International Education (CIE) was established in 1968 as a research and implementation organization within the Department of Educational Policy, Research, and Administration in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In partnership with the academic program in International Education, CIE helps to foster a community of learning and practice on campus and in international development settings, offering opportunities in the areas of International Development Education, Education Policy and Leadership, Nonformal/Popular Adult Education, Basic Education and Literacy, and Internationalizing U.S. Education. The Center has a long and successful history of grant and contract management for projects designing, implementing, and evaluating educational initiatives internationally, and does additional work locally, including Massachusetts Global Education for teachers, and educational and leadership trainings for transitioning students and for immigrant and refugee communities. Additional material from CIE is available through the university’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks.

The bulk of this record group consists of files associated with CIE projects, organized by country and topic, including projects in Central Asia, South Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, North America, and numerous projects in Africa. The records of CIE faculty member David R. Evans are heavily documented, particularly his work in Uganda. This material also includes multiple examples of “games” used by the Center in various teaching and training sessions to stimulate discussion and creativity. Additional records cover the administrative history of CIE, including founding materials and early files, reports and committee records, newsletters, photographs, and information about Center activities, celebrations, and visitors. A number of CIE publications, including their series, Technical Notes, are also available.

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

A scholar of Yeats and long-time professor of English at UMass Amherst, David Ridgley Clark was born in Seymour, Conn., in Sept. 1920, the son of a school superintendent. A convinced Quaker, Clark was part of a pacifist Ashram in Harlem in 1941 and became a conscientious objector during the Second World War, working as an orderly at a mental hospital in Concord, N.H., and as a forest fire fighter in Oregon as part of his alternative service. When he returned to civilian life, he worked his way through Wesleyan University, receiving his BA in 1947, before earning a MA at Yale in 1950 and doctorate in 1955 for a study of William Butler Yeats and the Theatre of desolate reality. Beginning at UMass while still in graduate school, Clark quickly became a key member of a rising contingent in the humanities. Along with Sidney Kaplan, Jules Chametzky, and Leon Stein, he was instrumental in founding the University of Massachusetts Press, as well as the Massachusetts Review, and he was credited with starting a program with the National Association of Educational Broadcasting that brought major poets to read their work on the radio. In the late 1970s, he served as chair of the English Department and helped to organize the Five College Irish Studies Program. After his retirement from UMass in 1985, Clark taught briefly at Williams College and served as chair of English at St. Mary’s College from 1985-87. He settled in Sequim, Wash., after his full retirement, where he died on Jan. 11, 2010.

The Clark Papers document the research and professional life of an influential member of the English faculty at UMass Amherst. The collection contains a particularly rich assemblage of Clark’s notes and writings on W.B. Yeats, but includes materials relating to his efforts in building the English program and, to a lesser degree, the UMass Press and Massachusetts Review.