Collecting area: UMass history

New WORLD Theater was founded at UMass Amherst in 1979 by Roberta Uno with the mission of presenting innovative works of theater by contemporary artists of color, with the goal of fostering creative communities, promoting cultural equity, and embracing diverse cultural backgrounds, social engagement, and a commitment to justice. For more than thirty years New WORLD Theater produced many dozens of plays and other dramatic works representing new voices in the theater, as well as plays from the traditional multicultural repertory, and they have supported the arts through performance residencies, conferences and colloquia, and a variety of initiatives aimed at the diverse communities they serve, youth, and theater professionals. New WORLD Theater has contributed significantly to national conversations on cultural equity. After more than three decades of acclaim and recognition, New WORLD Theater was closed by UMass Amherst in summer 2010.
The bulk of the New WORLD Theater collection consists of administrative records documenting the day-to-day activities of the theater, however, it also contains an extensive and exceptionally rich archive of taped interviews, conferences, and theatrical productions. Taken together, the audiovisual material traces the history of New WORLD through the words and performances of artists who both contributed to and benefited from the theater.

A scholar of Francophone literature in Asia and Director of the United Asia Learning Resource Center, Lucy Nguyen Hong Nhiem was born in Kontum, Vietnam, in 1939. A graduate of the University of Saigon and teacher of French, she fled Saigon in 1975 just three days before its fall. From a refugee camp in Arkansas, she traveled through Connecticut and then to Springfield, Mass., before arriving at UMass in 1976 to resume her studies. After completing her MA (1978) and PhD (1982), she held positions at Smith, Amherst, and Mount Holyoke Colleges before beginning her tenure at UMass in 1984. An Adjunct Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, she also served as Academic Advisor to the Bilingual Collegiate Program and Vice-Chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants.

Nguyen’s papers are a small but critical collection of materials on Southeast Asian Refugees. Included among the papers are materials relating to the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees, materials relating to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants (1983), and a paper on the status of refugees in Massachusetts in 1987, along with unpublished writings, professional correspondence, and a handful of notes from a search committee.

A Professor of Speech in the English Department at UMass Amherst, Arthur Ellsworth Niedeck was born in Ithaca, N.Y., in 1910, and educated at Ithaca College (BS) and Cornell University (MA). He began his career teaching theater in Ithaca schools prior to the Second World War, and after a stint working with the USO, joined the Speech Department at UMass in about 1947. An advisor to the Roister Doisters, the UMass theatre troupe, Niedeck became Professor and Head of Speech Department by the late 1950s and was involved in producing and supporting theater on campus for nearly four decades. Niedeck died in Amherst in June 1984.

Joining a small quantity of memorabilia, handbills, and fliers, the Niedeck collection consists primarily of audio recordings of theatrical productions he oversaw at UMass Amherst. Copyright was retained by Niedeck.

Established in 1983 and published twice a year at UMass Amherst with the support of Five Colleges, Inc., Nineteenth Century Theatre offered scholarly, critical, and documentary coverage of a broad range of subjects. Issues of the journal contained essays, documents, book reviews, bibliographical studies, and analyses of archival holdings.

The records of the journal include essays and reviews submitted for publication, correspondence, and published issues.

Mark G. Noffsinger’s tenure as Associate Dean of Students at UMass Amherst was relatively brief, but tumultuous. Brought in during the fall semester 1964 as coordinator of student activities, he was promoted to Director of the Student Union in 1966 and Associate Dean of Students in 1968. Although he earned a reputation as a supporter of the student press, he became a focal point of controversy during the school year 1967-1968, when he prohibited the sale of the underground “hippie” newspaper, Mother of Voices on campus. Published by UMass students, the paper drew wider fire when John Norton and David Bourbeau were arrested and convicted on charges of selling obscene matter to a minor. The Mother of Voices folded in March 1969. After resigning in 1969 to accept a position at Baldwin-Wallace College, Noffsinger went on to a distinguished career as a university administrator before his death in 1994.

Tightly focused on the controversy in 1968 over banning sale of the Mother of Voices in the UMass Student Union, the Noffsinger collection includes a folder of newspaper clippings relating to underground press publications at UMass and other colleges in the Commonwealth, along with a run of the offending periodical retained by the office of the Dean of Students’ office. Additional copies of the periodical are located in the Social Change Periodicals Collection.

Stephen Baery Oates was born on January 5, 1936, in Pampa Texas, and earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He was a member of the UMass Amherst History Department from 1968 to 1997, when he retired. He authored consequential, award-winning biographies of major 19^th and 20^th century figures among his seventeen books on American history. As Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography, Dr. Oates held one of the first academic chairs in biography in the country. His many awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellow, Christopher Award, Barondess/Lincoln Award, and a Distinguished Teaching Award from UMass among many others. Dr. Oates was a popular guest lecturer at colleges, universities, societies, and associations throughout the country, and made numerous appearances on radio and television, most notable in Ken Burns’ epic PBS documentary The Civil War. He consulted on projects for various commercial and university presses, as well as for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Oates was a member of the Society of American Historians, American Antiquarian Society, and Phi Beta Kappa. He died on August 20, 2021.

The papers of Stephen B. Oates document his career as a biographer and faculty member at UMass Amherst. Materials include research notes, correspondence, articles, drafts and proofs of publications, lectures and address, fellowship and grant applications, book reviews, teaching and course notes, awards and photographs.

Ranked amongst the great violinists of his generation, Julian Olevsky served as Professor of Violin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1967-1985. The collection consists of annotated scores belonging to Julian Olevsky, the bulk of which contain parts for the violin and piano.

A prominent member of the Massachusetts Agricultural College Class of 1876, George A. Parker (1853-1926) began a career in landscape gardening and the development of parks shortly after graduation. Shortly after the turn of the century, he was appointed Superintendent of Parks in Hartford, Conn., helping to develop Colt Park and a number of smaller properties that turned the city into one of the models for New England. He resigned from his post in January 1926 and died later that year from heart disease.

The Parker Album is a more extensive version of the standard class album for 1876, featuring not only albumen portraits mounted on thick stock of the faculty and students, but almost fifty views of campus. Among these are uncommon images of the major academic buildings, the chapel, and hash house, but also interior and exterior shots of buildings on campus, such as the Botanic Museum and the Durfee greenhouses, and images of the students in military drill. All photographs were taken by John L. Lovell of Amherst.

Daphne Patai joined the faculty of UMass Amherst in 1978, as assistant professor of Brazilian literature, and retired in 2017. She has published more than a dozen books, in a number of separate fields. These books reflect the range of her research interests, in Brazilian literature and culture; feminism and women’s studies;  utopian literature and thought; literary and cultural theory; higher education; and the “culture wars.”  In each of these areas she has produced substantive articles and books.  She has received several major national grants – from the NEH, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Humanities Center, in support of her scholarly work. In each area, the books she has produced have been considered significant contributions (and some have aroused considerable controversy) and have been widely reviewed.

The Daphne Patai Papers features an extensive collection of her research materials and notes, drafts of published works, book reviews, and professional correspondence. Also included is a vast family archive of correspondence with letters from Daphne Patai and family members: Naomi Nir, mother, Raphael Patai, father, and Jennifer Schneider, sister.

For many years, Charles H. Patterson served as head of the Department of Language and Literature at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Born in Smithsonville, Ont., in 1863, Patterson received both a BA (1887) and MA (1893) from Tufts University before launching his teaching career. He joined the faculty at MAC as an assistant professor of English, in 1916, after 13 years at West Virginia University. A former professional actor, he taught courses in modern literature, with a particular interest in drama, and served as department chair for nearly a decade before his sudden death in 1933.

The Patterson Papers contain a small selection of correspondence and notes on English composition and literature as taught at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is a draft of Patterson’s unpublished book, The Amazing Boucicault.