Our colleagues in the Oral History Master’s Program (OHMA) have an exciting line-up of talks and workshops for spring semester. Oral history as a research tool has been at times almost synonymous with a certain kind of interviewing: one-on-one, biographical, long-form, recorded, and intended for the archive. In this year-long series of events, are exploring […]
Lewis A. Rosenthal Memorial Room Plaque
Have you ever wondered who else lived in “your” dorm room? Some Columbia students have been visited by returning alumni (see Art Garfunkle); others could search student directories and other sources available at the University Archives. But for a select few, from around the 1930s to the 1970s, there was a plaque right in their […]
Collections highlight | Sam Higgins on the Sidney Kramer paperbacks
Sidney Kramer was a major figure in the 20th-century publishing world, a literary agent and a founder of Bantam Books, an early paperback company that flourished during WWII. Bantam Books reprinted hardbacks and out-of-print titles at cheap prices and its line of classics, including pocket editions of Shakespeare, made the firm a leader in mass-market […]
Peter Schickele (1935-2024)
The RBML notes with sadness the passing of composer, music educator, and satirist Peter Schickele (1935-2024). He was a well-regarded composer in his own right, but was best known for his comedy pieces composed by the fictional P.D.Q. Bach, the “only forgotten son” of Johann Sebastian Bach. A brilliant musical magpie, Schickele’s long-running and elaborate […]
Seth Low and The Gilded Age
The second season of Julian Fellow’s The Gilded Age on Max followed the lives of New Yorkers and Brooklynites in 1883. This season viewers learned about the fight to save the “colored schools” in New York, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and even a visit to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Connected to all […]