Photography credits: Reed Hutchinson PhotoGraphics Table of Contents Sarah Bischoff, Doctors Hate Him! A Glimpse into Early Modern Health Culture, as shown in a 1541 “correction” of Thomas Elyot’s The Castell of Helth [Clark Library Rare Book Stacks ; Chrzanowski 1550e] Erin Severson, A Truly ‘Greate’ Herball: An exquisite…
Read MoreCore Program I–The Forgotten Canopy: Ecology, Ephemeral Architecture, and Imperialism in the Caribbean, South American, and Transatlantic Worlds Conference 1: Ecology; Discussing Ecology in the Gardens
Published: November 10, 2022
After many months of work behind the scenes from faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and staff, on November 4th and 5th the first conference of the three-part series that constitutes the 2022–2023 Center for 17th– & 18th-Century Studies core program was held at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the Mildred. E. Mathias Botanical…
Read More“Gulliver” Visits the Clark
Published: November 9, 2022
At the end of October, the Center & Clark were thrilled to host award-winning theater company Box Tale Soup for a week-long residency. The quirky name comes from their signature style, packing whole handmade worlds into a vintage trunk with a delicious mix of puppetry, movement, theater, and music. Antonia Christophers, Noel Byrne, and Adam Boyle delighted…
Read MoreBox Tale Soup Artists Teach Students
Published: November 9, 2022
Box Tale Soup’s theatrical performance at the Clark Library of its original adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels included a week of workshops at the library to share their creative process with visiting classes. As part of these workshops, Erin Severson, Ikumi Crocoll, and Anna Chen collaborated with Box Tale Soup and with instructors Helen Deutsch, and Leigh-Michil…
Read MoreThe Anatomy of a Pygmie, 1699
Published: November 9, 2022
In the annexes of the Clark Library, UCLA, safely catalogued and shelved, sits the one of the most important books in history of medicine, Orang-outang sive Homo Sylvestris: or the Anatomy of a Pygmie. It tells the story of a young doctor and his foray into what we now refer to as comparative anatomy. This…
Read MoreBruman Summer Music Festival
Published: November 9, 2022
The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival is dedicated to introducing chamber music to new audiences by offering performances free of charge. Powell Library’s magnificent rotunda offers live and warm acoustics that inspire performers, and provides an intimate connection between the public and the musicians. This unique stage-less setting is reminiscent of chamber music’s…
Read MorePaintings and Engravings are of Little Use to Me
Published: November 8, 2022
Throughout my Karmiole Fellowship at the Clark Library, my project looked at recent scholarship’s great strides in fusing theoretical and historical works in the realm of disability from an early modern archival point of view. Such work focuses on the various systematic implications of authors, characters, dialogic, devices, illustrations, concerning diminishment, the or loss of…
Read MoreMarguerite Hicks Collection Collaboration
Published: November 8, 2022
At the recent conference “Archive and Theory: The Future of Anglo-American Early Modern Disability Studies,” Dr. Megan Peiser and Emily D. Spunaugle (Oakland Univesity, Rochester, MI) presented their collaborative research on the Marguerite Hicks Collection, which consists of books and pamphlets by and about British women writers from the 17–19th centuries. Their presentation, “The Marguerite Hicks Collection:…
Read MoreFriends and Donors Special Thanks
Published: November 3, 2022
The Center and Clark thank the following for their generous support during 2022–2023: Major Supporters Dr. Paul Chrzanowski Colburn Foundation Dr. Patricia Bates Simun and Mr. Richard V. Simun Memorial Fund Professor Emeritus Nathaniel Grossman J. Paul Getty Trust Penny and Ed Kanner* Stephen A. Kanter, M.D.* Kenneth Karmiole Virginia F. and Dr. Lawrence Kruger…
Read MoreCenter/Clark Fellowship Applications Open
Published: October 7, 2022
The Center offers a broad range of graduate and post-doctoral fellowships to support research within the Clark Library’s collections and beyond. Applications for research fellowships during the 2023–24 academic year are now open and submissions will be accepted until this year’s deadline of February 1, 2023. Fellowships offered this year include our annual Ahmanson-Getty postdoctoral…
Read MoreThe Virgen de los Ángeles
Published: July 14, 2022
Little is known about the Virgen de los Ángeles sculptural group other than its early manufacture decades before the other sculptures and the altarpiece of which they are a part. A polychromed wood sculpture group—the Virgen de los Ángeles—fills the bottom left niche of the retablo mayor (main altarpiece) in the church at the Convento…
Read MoreEvergreen Empire: The Horticultural Politics of British Painting, 1848–1910
Published: July 14, 2022
Flowers are a common feature of nineteenth-century caricatures of Oscar Wilde and his circle. As part of her postdoctoral fellowship with the Clark’s core program “Victorian Apocalypse: The siècle at its fin,” Dr. Lindsay Wells examines the floral imagery of the British aesthetic movement from a horticultural perspective. At first glance, the sheet music cover…
Read MoreWhat the Dickens!
Published: July 14, 2022A slideshow from the Clark’s Instagram account
Read MoreIberian Romances
Published: July 14, 2022
The popularity of Iberian romances allowed them to cross political, religious, and linguistic borders. Early modern English translations employ paratextual strategies to cloak, adapt, or elevate these controversial foreign texts. “Away with your Amadis of Gaule, your Palmerins, your Mirrour of Knighthood, […] all of them such trash as is scarce worth the inke of…
Read MoreWilliam Andrews Clark Lecture on Oscar Wilde
Published: July 14, 2022On April 28, 2022, we gathered at the Clark Library for a very special William Andrews Clark Lecture on Oscar Wilde. That lecture, “Confounding the Critics, Surviving the Scandal: The Remarkable Reputation of Oscar Wilde”, was given by Merlin Holland, Wilde scholar and Oscar Wilde’s grandson.
Read MoreAnimation, Materials, Transcultural Ecologies: Performing Worlds at the Baroque Savoy Court of Christine of France
Published: July 14, 2022
In 2018–19 I had the pleasure of working at the Clark Library as an Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellow for the Core Program “Making Worlds: Art, Materiality, and Early Modern Globalization,” organized by Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson. I moved from the University of Venice–Ca’ Foscari, where I completed my PhD, to UCLA to explore the integration…
Read MoreFriends and Donors Special Thanks
Published: July 14, 2022
The Center and Clark thank the following for their generous support during 2021–2022: Major Supporters Dr. Paul Chrzanowski Colburn Foundation Dr. Patricia Bates Simun and Mr. Richard V. Simun Memorial Fund Professor Emeritus Nathaniel Grossman J. Paul Getty Trust Penny and Ed Kanner* Stephen A. Kanter, M.D.* Kenneth Karmiole Virginia F. and Dr. Lawrence Kruger…
Read MoreUCLA’s Clark Library receives centuries-old rare books from longtime donor
Published: June 28, 2022
Margaret MacDonald | June 27, 2022 A new donation of 40 historical texts from Paul Chrzanowski further bolsters an already remarkable collection of early English texts at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The newly added items—including a 17th-century parchment with the seal of Queen Elizabeth I and a handwritten manuscript describing precious metals and gems—have…
Read MoreHenry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival, 2022
Published: June 7, 2022
This annual festival was founded in 1988 by Professor Henry J. Bruman (1913–2005), who sought to introduce new audiences to chamber music at informal concerts on the UCLA campus. This summer we present 5 free lunchtime concerts featuring acclaimed local musicians in the elegant Powell Library Rotunda. The festival is directed by UCLA graduate, violinist …
Read MoreCenter Announces 2022–23 Fellowships
Published: May 20, 2022As we emerge from the pandemic lockdown we are very happy to announce a full raft of fellowships to support research at the Clark Library during the 2022–23 academic year. The Center offers fellowships each year to graduate and post-doctoral researchers as well as support for senior researchers and independent scholars. Applications for fellowships are…
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