The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collecting area: Printed materials

Goldspinner, Jay

Jay Goldspinner Collection

1973-2012
3 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 909

1977 Spring Equinox cover of WomenSpirit

All social change and cultural movements have their associated resources for the exchange of information, ideas, stories, and art. Particularly in the women’s movement, the effort to create newsletters, journals, and other forms of information dissemination was a proactive step taken to assert women’s stories and to locate the power of the press within women-run communities. These periodicals, both large and small in scale, reveal the ways women connected to each other and to larger spiritual and cultural concepts. Local artist, activist, and feminist Jay Goldspinner was engaged with many of these communities, particularly those characterizing the spiritual elements of the women’s liberation and feminist movements, and collected and saved their periodicals. Her collection includes journals focusing on feminist linguistics, goddess myths and spirituality, Wiccan and witch traditions, progressive politics, and women’s spirituality and community in local and international settings. Each is a unique window into discourses of women’s history, feminist movements, and social change work.

The Jay Goldspinner Collection consists of issues of feminist and progressive periodicals, journals, and newsletters from over five decades, along with correspondence, ephemera, and scrapbooks from Goldspinner’s life, especially her work as a storyteller. Published titles represented include Always in Season, Goddessing, The Lonesome Node, The People’s Voice of Franklin County, Themis/Thesmophoria, Wicked Word, and an almost complete run, including the two indexes, of the seminal magazine of feminist spirituality, WomenSpirit.

Subjects

Feminism--PeriodicalsFranklin County (Mass.) --PeriodicalsGoddess religion--PeriodicalsNeopaganism--PeriodicalsSpiritual feminism--PeriodicalsWicca--PeriodicalsWitchcraft--PeriodicalsWomen and spiritualism--PeriodicalsWomen's rights and spiritualism--Periodicals

Types of material

Periodicals
Grillo, Jean Bergantini

Jean Bergantini Grillo Collection

1969-1974
12 24 linear feet
Call no.: MS 950

Jean Bergantini Grillo was the Cambridge and Boston Phoenix’s Senior Editor from its first issue in 1969 through 1972. When the original staff of the Phoenix was let go after the paper’s sale in the summer of 1972, Grillo helped start The Real Paper with the rest of the fired staff. While at the Phoenix, Grillo was an art critic and covered feminist issues and activism. She graduated from Rhode Island College in 1966 with a degree in English and after working at the Phoenix, continued an active career as a journalist, art critic, television writer and playwright.

The Jean Bargantini Grillo Collection contains a complete run of the Phoenix from its first issue as the Cambridge Phoenix in 1969 until the original staff moved to the Real Paper in 1972. There are also several early issues of The Real Paper until Grillo left the paper in late 1972. There is also a small group of reporter’s notebooks used by Grillo in 1971 and 1972, index cards from her rolodex, and a proof for a political cartoon created for the Phoenix by William D. Steele.

Gift of Jean Bergantini Grillo, 2016

Subjects

Counterculture--United States--20th centuryJournalism--Massachusetts--20th centuryPolitics and culture--Massachusetts

Contributors

Boston Phoenix

Types of material

NewspapersNotebooks
Halpern, Paul

Paul Halpern Collection

ca.1975-1985
2 boxes 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 646

A theoretical physicist at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Paul Halpern is the author of a dozen popular books on science and dozens of scholarly articles. After spending his undergraduate years at Temple University, Halpern received a doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook, and has since written on complex and higher-dimensional solutions in general relativity theory and the nature of time as well as the history of the modern physical sciences. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

The hundreds of ephemeral publications, fliers, and handbills in the Halpern Collection provide a window into political and social activism in Philadelphia during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The content ranges widely from publications produced by peace and disarmament groups to the literature of anti-imperialist (e.g. CISPES), antinuclear groups (SANE and post-Three Mile Island mobilization), radical political parties, and religious organizations including the Unification Church and the Church of Scientology.

Subjects

Antinuclear movement--United StatesEl Salvador--History--1979-1992Nicaragua--History--1979-1990Peace movements

Contributors

Halpern, Paul
Hapgood, Beth

Beth Hapgood Papers

1789-2005
67 boxes 35 linear feet
Call no.: MS 434
Depiction of Beth Hapgood and members of the Brotherhood, ca.1969
Beth Hapgood and members of the Brotherhood, ca.1969

Daughter of a writer and diplomat, and graduate of Wellesley College, Beth Hapgood has been a spiritual seeker for much of her life. Her interests have led her to become an expert in graphology, a student in the Arcane School, an instructor at Greenfield Community College, and a lecturer on a variety of topics in spiritual growth. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hapgood befriended Michael Metelica, the central figure in the Brotherhood of the Spirit (the largest commune in the eastern states during the early 1970s) as well as Elwood Babbitt, a trance medium, and remained close to both until their deaths.
The Hapgood Papers contain a wealth of material relating to the Brotherhood of the Spirit and the Renaissance Community, Metelica, Babbitt, and other of Hapgood’s varied interests, as well as 4.25 linear feet of material relating to the Hapgood family.

Subjects

Brotherhood of the SpiritChanneling (Spiritualism)Communal living--MassachusettsGraphologyHapgood family--CorrespondenceMassachusetts--Social life and customs--20th centuryMediums--MassachusettsNineteen sixties--Social aspectsOccultism--Social aspectsPopular culture--History--20th centuryRenaissance CommunityRock music--1971-1980Warwick (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Babbitt, Elwood, 1922-Boyce, Neith, 1872-1951Hapgood, Beth--CorrespondenceHapgood, Charles HHapgood, Elizabeth ReynoldsHapgood, Hutchins, 1869-1944Hapgood, Norman, 1868-1937Metelica, Michael
Jakubowska-Schlatner, Basia

Basia Jakubowska-Schlatner Solidarity (Solidarnosc) Collection

1979-1989
26 boxes 38.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 723

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

As a university student in Warsaw, Poland, in January 1977, Barbara Jakubowska-Schlatner made the decision to join the democratic resistance to the Communist regime. For more than twelve years, she was an active member of the Solidarity (Solidarnosc) movement, organizing opposition to state oppression, producing and distributing underground literature, and working with the pirate broadcasts of Solidarity radio.

Recognizing the importance of the underground press to the Solidarity movement, Jakubowska-Schlatner went to extraordinary lengths to collect and preserve their publications. At various times, the collection was kept in the basement of her mother’s house, spread around among a series of safe locations, and sometimes even secreted in small caches in back lots. The collection of over 1,500 titles is centered on the underground press in Warsaw, but includes titles published in Wroclaw, Gdansk, Krakow, and other cities. These include a startling array of publications, from fliers, handbills, and ephemera to translations of foreign literature, newspapers and periodicals, a science fiction magazine, and instructions on how to run a small press.

Gift of Barbara Jakubowska, May 2007
Language(s): Polish

Subjects

NSZZ "Solidarność" (Labor organization)Poland--History--1945-Underground press publications--Poland
Japan Occupation

Japan Occupation Collection

1943-1983 Bulk: 1945-1955
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: RB 027
Depiction of

For seven years after the end of World War II, the United States led an occupation force in Japan that oversaw comprehensive reforms of the country’s military, economy, politics, and social order. Under the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) dismantled and disarmed the military, conducted a series of war crimes trials, and undertook significant reforms in land tenure, industry, and the economy, culminating in the imposition of new pacifist constitution that shifted power from the Emperor to parliament. In the face of the rise of the Cold War and change in international priorities, the U.S. brokered a final peace settlement with Japan that formally ended the occupation in 1952, leaving American bases and bilateral security pact intact.

Focused on the period 1945-1952, this collection includes a sampling of printed materials aimed at average American servicemen and their dependents involved in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan. The collection includes histories and guidebooks, picture books aimed at tourists, and a few examples of instructional materials and propaganda.

Gift of James and Sibylle Fraser, 2014

Subjects

Japan--History--Allied occupation, 1945-1952Japan--Pictorial works

Types of material

MapsPhotographs
Kress, Claude Washington

Kress Political Economy Collection

1673-1925 Bulk: 1750-1850
2,934 items 46.5 linear feet
Call no.: D8 .A2

The heart of the Kress Collection lies in the lively pamphlet literature regarding Anglo-American political economics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although somewhat miscellaneous, the collection contains thousands of titles touching on many of the major issues in trade, finance, political reform, and public policy in Britain and to a lesser degree America. Topics range from tariffs and free trade to public debt and taxation, imports and exports, banking, unionism, and socialism. Nearly three quarters of the collection dates from before 1848.

Subjects

Economics--History--18th centuryEconomics--History--19th centuryGreat Britain--Politics and Government--18th centuryGreat Britain--Politics and Government--19th century
Kweskin, Jim

Jim Kweskin Papers

1907-2018 Bulk: 1960-2018
57 boxes, flat files 85 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1064
Depiction of Jim Kweskin playing guitar at Fort Hill, 1967
Jim Kweskin playing guitar at Fort Hill, 1967

The Jug Band visionary Jim Kweskin was one of the major lights of the 1960s folk revival, and an influential figure in Americana music since. A native New Englander, Kweskin was born in Stamford, Conn., in 1940. As a student at Boston University, he was drawn into the Boston-Cambridge folk scene and inspired to learn the guitar, developing a ragtime-blues fingerpicking technique that he inflected with jazz and blues that became a bedrock style of the folk revival. Following a sojourn in California, he returned to Boston in 1963 and formed the Jug Band with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Siggins, and Bruno Wolfe, later joined by Maria Muldaur, Mel Lyman, Bill Keith, and Richard Greene. The Jug Band developed a national following performing pre-World War II American music, laced with a sense of humor and 1960s sensibility. At the height of their popularity, the Jug Band dissolved in 1968. For several years in the 1980s and 1990s, Kweskin was relatively removed from recording, but he resumed work as a soloist, as a member of the U & I Band, the Texas Sheiks, the Jug Band; and as fellow performer with a long list of artists.

A rich record of eclectic musical tastes and a passion for American music, the Kweskin collection offers important documentation of a major figure on the folk scene. The collection includes scrapbooks, newsclippings, concert posters and fliers, and ephemera from throughout Kweskin’s career, along with hundreds of personal and prozfessional photographs of Kweskin, the Jug Band, U and I, and later collaborations. As an historian of American music, Kweskin also assembled discographies of major arists and labels and built a library of works on blues, country, and other forms of popular music, along with hundreds of 78 rpm records, 45s, LPs, and compact disc recordings. Finally, there are hundreds of reel to reel, cassette, CD, and DVD recordings of Kweskin from throughout his career.

Gift of Jim Kweskin, 2018

Subjects

Blues (Music)Folk musicians

Types of material

Open reel audiotapesPhotographsSound recordings
Lerner, Frederick Andrew, 1945-

Frederick Andrew Lerner Science Fiction Collection

1939-1996
304 titles 15 linear feet
Call no.: RB 016

Fred Lerner is a librarian, bibliographer, and historian who has written extensively on American science fiction. After earning three degrees from Columbia University, including his MLS and DLS (1981), Lerner worked for many years in information science for Spectra, Inc., and the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. His diverse including work in radio, writing about the history of psychiatry, libraries, Rudyard Kipling, and science fiction.

The Lerner collection contains a cross-section of American science fiction writing concentrated largely in the 1960s through mid-1980s.

Gift of Frederck Andrew Lerner, 2010-2011

Subjects

Science fiction
Lewis, Benjamin F.

Benjamin F. Lewis Collection of Robert Frost

1901-1986
301 items 24 linear feet
Call no.: RB 036

An avid collector of Robert Frost, Benjamin F. Lewis was born in Boston, on 23, 1941, to Leo and Anne (Starr) Lewis, Benjamin Lewis. Lewis enjoyed a distinguished career as a social worker, an adminstrator, a researcher in drug and alcohol abuse, and on the AIDS epidemic, working in his latter years as a member of the Department of Psychiatry at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Lewis died on Jan. 29, 2019, leaving his life partner Karen Orsini and two children. While working at Goodspeeds in Boston as a college student, Lewis was presented with a Robert Frost first edition, beginning a lifelong collecting habit.

The collection assembled by Lewis includes first and early editions of Frost’s books (many inscribed), early printings and later (life-time) editions of most, selected first appearances of his poetry in magazines and anthologies, scarce ephemeral printings of his work and association pieces, a handful of letters and holograph poems, and phonograph recordings of Frost reading his own work.

Gift of Benjamin F. Lewis and Karen Orsini, 2018-2019

Contributors

Frost, Robert, 1874-1963