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Earlier this month, our Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America welcomed Petrina D. Jackson as its next Lia Gelin Poorvu Executive Director. She brings a deep subject-area expertise and a record of transformative leadership in many facets of special collections work. Jackson has also curated physical and virtual exhibitions on a variety of subjects in American history and offered undergraduate and graduate courses on subjects related to her library work, including ethics and diversity in special collections and museums.    In addition to her work connecting special collections to new campus constituencies through innovative collaborations, Jackson has assumed numerous positions of leadership in the world of archives and libraries more broadly. Her depth of insight, her commitment to access, and her passion for elevating and developing staff excellence will be an asset to the Library and Institute at large. “As a strong believer in an intellectually engaged library that is central to the life and learning of a university, I embrace the mission and work of the Schlesinger Library and Harvard Radcliffe Institute,” she says.   Born in Ohio, Jackson completed her undergraduate studies in English at the University of Toledo and received an MA in English from Iowa State, where she studied Black women writers in the 19th century. She earned her MLIS from the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.  

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, Harvard Radcliffe Institute celebrates the perseverance, art, and culture of our Indigenous communities. In the spring of 2016, Radcliffe hosted an exhibition by Matika Wilbur, titled Seeds of Culture: The Portraits and Stories of Native American Women, that featured photography centering the lived reality of Indigenous American women across generations. As of now, Wilbur is the only Indigenous photographer who has been granted access to all Native American territories in the United States. Seeds of Culture was a collaboration with the Harvard University Native American Program. Here, some installation views. 📷 Kevin Grady/Harvard Radcliffe Institute Image #1: Matika Wilbur, a Native American photographer, standing in exhibit Image #2: Four images from Seeds of Culture exhibit on wall featuring Indigenous American women across generations Image #3: Collage of Matika Wilbur’s photographs organized in staircase form Image #4: Indigenous woman smiling in traditional clothing with hands outstretched at her sides Image #5: Pregnant Indigenous woman holding young child

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Eileen Southern’s The Music of Black Americans: A History (W. W. Norton, 1971), a now legendary text that reveals an open-minded attitude that was exceptional for its day, placing Black concert traditions alongside popular music, ragtime, jazz, and, in its third edition, hip hop. More than that, The Music of Black Americans inspired Black music studies, a field of research that has continued to expand in the 21st century. In 1976, Southern (1920–2002) became the first African American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She played an important institutional role at Harvard, where she was central in developing the Department of Afro-American Studies (now African and African American Studies), serving as an early chair, and was on the faculty of the Department of Music, where she taught courses on Black music and Renaissance musical notation. This image shows the front page of the Spring 1976 issue of the Afro-American Studies at Harvard newsletter, which announced Southern’s chair appointment. On 11/15, we’ll explore Southern’s legacy in the first of two one-hour webinars. Link to event in bio.