May 21st, Faculty Club
12:00 noon

Led by Audrey Wu Clark

The final Bancroft Round Table of the Spring Semester will take place on Thursday, May 21st at noon in the Lewis-Latimer Room of the Faculty Club. Bancroft Study Award winner Audrey Wu Clark will give a talk entitled ""Little Postage Stamps of Native Soil": The Modernist Haiku during Japanese Exclusion."

Beyond historical concurrence, what is the correlation between the Anglo-American modernist preoccupations with the haiku and Japanese exclusion in the U.S.? By focusing mainly on turn-of-the-century Japanese American poets, their racialization within avant-garde circles and the evolution of their modernist haiku forms, Audrey Wu Clark demonstrates that the modernist assimilation of Japanese poetics, namely the haiku form, is a dialectical expression of melancholic racial particularity and manic universality.

The campus community is invited to take some time off from finals and graduations to hear Ms. Clark's reflections upon this strange cultural anomaly through which an artistic form is welcomed while the people who created the form are rebuffed. Bancroft Round Tables strive to showcase the rich resources The Bancroft Library offers scholars for myriad avenues of research.

Amazing Gate: Rescuing a Campus Icon

May 18 - December 23, 2009
Rowell Cases, Doe Library Corridor

When a close inspection revealed that Sather Gate had sustained
substantial damage from rust and corrosion, the campus launched a major
restoration effort for the century-old landmark. In an exhibition
co-sponsored by the University History Museum Project and The
University Archives, “Amazing Gate” looks at the history of Sather
Gate, gives details of the restoration process, and displays actual
pieces of the original gate showing how it had deteriorated over the
years. The exhibition also tells the story of the eight nudes featured
on the controversial bas-relief panels, from censorship to celebration.

The exhibit is open during the operating hours of the Doe Library.

April 16th, Faculty Club
12:00 noon

Led by William Wagner

The third Bancroft Round Table of the Spring Semester will take place on Thursday, April 16th, in the Lewis-Latimer Room, Faculty Club at noon. Bancroft Study Award winner William Wagner will give a talk entitled “To Grow Up with the Country: Pioneers, Personal Narrative, and Historical Memory.”

"In all societies there are off-casts," J. H. St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote in 1782, "this impure part serves as our precursors or pioneers." Like many of his contemporaries, Crèvecoeur saw the pioneer as a liminal and antisocial figure whose shiftless lifestyle illustrated the dangers of excessive geographical mobility. Over the next century, however, this American archetype would receive a cultural makeover, emerging as a symbol of perseverance, enterprise, and self-made masculinity. This talk will examine the proliferation of pioneer narratives during the antebellum period and explore how the production, circulation, and preservation of these texts contributed to changing ideas about westward movement, social mobility, and masculinity in nineteenth-century America.

Since our society celebrates mobility and reveres such highly transient men as David Crockett and Daniel Boone as national heroes, it is of vast interest to learn how ordinary Americans thought (and wrote) about their role as pioneers during this critical period of westward expansion. The campus community is invited to join us at this informal event and hear Mr. Wagner’s reflections on the topic. Bancroft Round Tables aim to highlight the varied resources our library offers to students of our world and its history.

March 19th, Faculty Club
12:00 noon

Led by R. Todd Welker

Since the early modern period, Europeans and Americans have kept diaries in order to monitor their economic obligations around the communities in which they lived. California farmers in the late-nineteenth century were no exception. Based on a systematic analysis of a few sample years of the diary of one farmer in Santa Clara County, this talk explores the everyday economic practices of ordinary farmers in the Golden State and the meanings that they attached to those practices.

Agriculture lies at the heart of California's prosperity; the culture of the vast California countryside remains a powerful element in the complex mix that has shaped the fabled and unique contemporary identity of the Golden State. We invite the campus community to join us for this informal talk. Our Round Tables aim to highlight the fruitfulness of Bancroft's collections to developing an understanding of our society and its history.

"Les Ferriss spread printer's ink on a sheet of glass and its scent filled the room. A half-dozen UC Berkeley students scrutinized his every move. Soon, they would be learning a little of his craft. 'This is the same roller I used when I took this class a quarter-century ago,' said Ferriss, who now teaches the very same course.

That's how little has changed in 'The Hand-Printed Book in its Historical Context,' one of Cal's most popular and unusual offerings. Students in the class, which takes place in the newly renovated Bancroft Library, learn to set type and to print a small book with an 1856 Albion hand press. By the end of the semester, they will produce 35 copies - all coveted, none for sale. One will become part of the Bancroft's permanent collection.

The course also gives students an introduction to the history of books, printing and graphic design over the last 500 years, and allows them to see, smell and touch the Bancroft's rare manuscripts." - Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

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