N.B.: The Burke Archives had the good fortune of inviting Olivia Rutigliano to be our Intern in Primary Sources for the 2016-2017 year. During this time, she has processed the papers of Henry Pitney Van Dusen, one of Union’s most well-known presidents. Read below to learn about Olivia’s first experience processing a large archival collection, Union’s […]
Category: History
Left of the Middle – the Donald Laverne Benedict Papers
Don Benedict was many things — a Union alumnus, a founder of the East Harlem Protestant Parish, a WWII conscientious objector-cum-Air Force sergeant (retroactively pardoned by Truman in 1947), a staunch criminal justice reform advocate/prison abolition activist, a minister in the United Church of Christ, an ally and advocate to people of color targeted by […]
The U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School at Riverside Church in WWII
Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Union Theological Seminary graduate and professor as well as the founding pastor of Riverside Church, was a pioneer of liberal theology, an outspoken opponent of racism and injustice, and a fierce pacifist. The Burke Library is very fortunate to have been the archival recipient of Rev. Fosdick’s personal papers, some […]
All Roads Lead Back to Brooklyn
Matthew and I had the pleasure this summer to work with Dr. Henry Goldschmidt in having a library and archives session with the Religious Worlds of New York Summer Institute 2016 fellows. In addition to giving an overview of the resources at the Burke Library and elsewhere, we also had them look through the Department of […]
#LoveInAction: Voices in Social Justice
The Burke Library is excited about the start of it’s newest outreach project, #LoveInAction: Voices in Social Justice. This project will train two Union Theological Seminary students in the theory and practice of oral history and archival research. The students will be doing extensive research in the Union archives in order to prepare and conduct […]
Cartoonists, Dramaturgs and Old Testament Feminists: An Archivist’s First Months at the Burke
Hello Burke world! I joined Union’s library staff this February, filling a vacant Project Archivist position whose previous occupant guided the successful processing of the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library Archives, the Missionary Research Library collection, and more with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation and other grant-funding organizations and individuals. I’m originally from New Mexico (a […]
Letters between a Prisoner and a Soldier: The Houser-Shinn Correspondence from the Roger L. Shinn Collection
“I’ve never had the experience of writing to anyone in the army before. I suppose you’ve never written to anyone in jail before, so I guess we’re even.” George Houser, July 17, 1941 George Houser and Roger Shinn first met as students at Union Theological Seminary, living across the hall from each other on […]
#LoveInAction: A reflective essay
That sounds familiar! As I sifted through the materials in the Burke archives, reading student publications and looking at pictures that were over forty years old, I kept recognizing my classmates in these relics from our predecessors. My project was tracking a series of student-driven movements in the 1960s and 1970s that radically transformed the academic […]
My Own “Final Blog Post” Has Arrived
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. ~Walt Disney As I look back on the last four years and four months that I’ve spent as the project archivist at the Burke Library, I am so thankful to have had this opportunity. […]
Light in the Darkness
“Every book is a little light in that darkness”- Scott Landon My job at the library resembles the craft of archaeology. On any day, I may come home from work with several centuries of dirt on my hands. This can be from crosschecking in world cat whether we have Der Kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers […]