University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

From the collections in honor of Juneteenth:

Pictured is Ralph Ellison (image 1) and a 2 page excerpt (images 2 & 3) from his work titled "Juneteenth". Ellison became a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1961.

Ellison's "Juneteenth":
Originally published as a short story in 1965, it would later become the seventh chapter in Ellison’s novel by the same name, which was published posthumously in 1999, five years after his death.

The pictured excerpt is undated but notes that it is a “work in progress”. The full excerpt is 6 pages and is a part of SCRC’s collection of Allison Davis Papers, 1932-1984.

You can learn more about this work and its publication history in Benji de la Piedra’s 2021 article “Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth and Black Literary History”, published by the African American Intellectual History Society:
www.aaihs.org/ralph-ellisons-juneteenth-and-black-literary-history/

Pictured items:

Image 1:
Title: Ellison, Ralph
Photographer: Al Berger
Photograph Date, 1962
University of Chicago Photographic Archive
University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center
Image Identifier, apf1-05960

Images 2 & 3:
Ellison, Ralph, "Juneteenth," reprint, undated
Allison Davis. Papers, [Box 76, Folder 12], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Don't miss our current exhibition, History on the Edges: Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Caribbean!

The exhibition is on view in the Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery in Regenstein Library thru August 21st.

This exhibition explores the life of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haitian scholar, critic, and songwriter who served as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago from 1998 until his death in 2012. Born in 1949, Trouillot followed the wave of Haitian exiles from the Duvalier dictatorship to Brooklyn, New York in 1968. In this circle of dissidents, Trouillot penned poetry, a serialized history of the Haitian Revolution in Kreyòl, and musical compositions in the collective Tanbou Libète. His dedication to the revolutionary potential of Caribbean peasantries led him to pursue a doctorate in anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University. Trouillot is remembered for his pathbreaking writings on history and anthropology, including Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History and Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. This exhibition traces a life in Caribbean letters from Trouillot’s earliest writings through his enduring scholarly contributions and legacy at the University of Chicago.

Curators:
🟥Ryan Cecil Jobson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The University of Chicago
🟥Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard, Assistant Professor of English, The University of Chicago
🟥Rachel Chery, PhD Candidate in Music, The University of Chicago

Exhibition Gallery Hours: Weekdays, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

More information: https://events.uchicago.edu/event/265819-history-on-the-edges-michel-rolph-trouillots

From the collections:

Pictured is a folio from an illustrated Jain manuscript. The manuscript is from circa 1500 and the artist is unknown.

This folio is a part of the William and Marianne Salloch Collection of Prints and Drawings: “People with Books.” 1500-1814. The collection is digitized and includes eight prints and drawings in the library’s holdings that depict people reading or holding books in various settings. The works date from the 16th through 19th centuries.

You can view the collection here: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/collections/salloch-william-and-marianne-collection-prints-and-drawings-opeople-bookso/

Pictured:
Kalpasūtra
Bhadrabahu
Ink and color on paper
Prakrit [n.d.]
“People with Books." [Box 1], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Note: the image has been cropped slightly for social media

We’re pleased to share this upcoming public symposium from The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) ! The symposium is to celebrate 20 years of its continued work to support the documentation and archiving of Black life in Chicago.

More about the symposium:

BMRC 20th Anniversary Symposium on Black Chicago
June 17-18, 2026 at Regenstein Library, 1100 E 57th Street

Hear from urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin for the keynote address, "Second City No More: How Black Chicago Moved to the Center of History” and enjoy other panels on the Black Arts Movement, Policing and Surveillance , Black photography, Sun Ra, House Music, Black Data Stewardship, Black Librarians and MORE!

Register now to secure your place! Limited spots remain and registration closes June 12th:
https://bmrc.lib.uchicago.edu/events/bmrc-20th-anniversary-symposium-on-black-chicago-june-17-18-2026/

Happy Birthday to Chicago chef Alma Lach, who was born on this day in 1914!

In the pioneering culinary era of the mid-twentieth century, Lach was one of the primary figures who transformed traditional American cooking. As a chef, cookbook author, and food consultant, she was widely known for her bestselling book, Cooking à la Cordon Bleu (1970), later revised and published by the University of Chicago Press as Hows and Whys of French Cooking (1974). A graduate of the Cordon Bleu school in Paris (Grand Diplôme, 1956), she was also a member of the Chevalier du Tastevin and Les Dames d’Escoffier. She authored cookbooks for children, co-hosted a cooking show on public television, developed menus for travel and corporate clients, and invented kitchen tools such as the Curly Dog Cutting Board.

On her birthday, we wanted to share some images from the Alma S. Lach Papers and the Alma Lach Culinary Library, which were donated to the library by Sandra Lach Arlinghaus and William C. Arlinghaus. You can learn more Lach via the library's collection of her papers and our web exhibit, Alma Lach's Kitchen: Transforming Taste.

Web Exhibit: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/almalach/

Images in Post Order:

1) Promotional Photograph for A Child’s First Cook Book

2) Alma Lach with group of children - Promotional Photograph for A Child’s First Cook Book

3) Chicago Sun-Times Delivery Truck, 1958 - The delivery truck features a promotion of Alma Lach's food column

4) Alma Lach Receiving Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Award, 1964. In 1964 Lach also became a member of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, the world’s oldest international gastronomic society, founded in Paris in 1248.

5) Back cover for Hows and Whys of French Cooking
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974

6) Lach’s La Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Award

7) A Child’s First Cook Book
New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1950

8) Hows and Whys of French Cooking
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974

Congratulations to the graduating class of 2026!

Students and alumni may spot some familiar landmarks in these photos of UChicago convocations from the University of Chicago Photographic Archive. You can view these photos and many others that document the history of the University of Chicago and the development of its campus, academic programs, and community life in the photographic archive here: https://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/

View convocation images in the Photographic Archive: https://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?show=browse3.xml|23

Images in Post Order:

Image Identifier: apf3-00511
Date: Undated
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00435
Date: Ca. 1910
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00440
Date: 6/10/1913
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00446
Date: 6/10/1913
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00449
Date: 6/10/1913
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00498
Date: Undated
Photographer: Unidentified

Image Identifier: apf3-00505
Date: Undated
Photographer: James Vincent Nash

Due to a staffing shortage, we will be closed for lunch from 12:00-1:00, starting Monday, June 8th. We will resume regular hours when the fall quarter begins on Monday, September 28th.

Curious what new archives, manuscripts, rare books, and digitized items are available at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center?

You can see a list of everything that became available this May here: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/news/new-at-scrc-may-2026/

Pictured:
Illustration of an 18th-century German book bindery

Album amicorum of Gottlob Ehrenfried Knothe
Codex Ms. 1744

Happy Pride!

To kick off pride month, we wanted to share about “Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles: A History of LGBTQ Life at the University of Chicago”, a research project of UChicago’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) from 2012 to 2015. The project’s mission was to document the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities at UChicago from the early twentieth century to the present. The following is excerpted from our web exhibition by the same name, which presents some of the significant results of the research.

You can view the full web exhibit here: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/closetedout-quadrangles-history-lgbtq-life-university-chicago/

Excerpt from the exhibit:
Professional women at the turn of the twentieth century often found it easier to achieve their goals outside of heterosexual marriage. Many chose to pursue close emotional, financial, and sometimes sexual partnerships with other women in what was then called a "Boston marriage." Attitudes toward female homosexuality were also changing rapidly in this period, such that the relationships documented in this case may have been more acceptable to the outside world when they started than when they ended. By the late 1920s and 1930s, close relationships between women were increasingly taken to imply a "disordered" homosexual identity. A 1929 case study by a Sociology student shows that Marion Talbot (Dean of Women from 1895 to 1925) was known for having "such affairs."

Pictured is Marion Talbot (left in image 1) and Sophonisba Breckinridge (right in image 1). Talbot encouraged Breckinridge to pursue graduate study at the University of Chicago. Breckinridge became the first woman to earn a Political Science PhD (1901) and a JD (1904) at the University. Talbot later secured Breckinridge a position as an instructor and as her assistant. The two were inseparable. One student remembered "Little Miss Breckinridge trudging along over a few blocks to see Miss Talbot. She went every night to see her." Talbot's parents gave the family home to both women in 1912.

Image 1:
Marion Talbot and Sophonisba Breckinridge
Photograph, 1909
University of Chicago Photographic Archive
Image ID: apf1-02248

Image 2:
Sophonisba Breckinridge and Marion Talbot
Photograph, 1930s
University of Chicago Photographic Archive
Image ID: apf1-00008

From the collection:

Pictured is an exquisite eighteenth-century codice of an Indo-Persian Faras-nama, or treatise on horses. South Asian manuscript culture is one of the richest and most diverse in the world, and Mughal manuscripts are famous for their lavish illustrations and illumination.

This work is featured in our web exhibition " Envisioning South Asia: Texts, Scholarship, Legacies".

You can view this item and many more in the exhibit from anywhere here: www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/envisioning-south-asia-texts-scholarship-legacies/

Pictured Item:

Farasnāma-i hindī
Abdullah Khan Bahadur Firuz Jang (fl. 17th c.)
Opaque watercolor on paper
Persian [18th c.]

Codex Manuscript Collection