In July 2020, Wesleyan Library formed five staff teams to examine how we could fight systemic racism and promote social justice in our organization and daily work, and contribute to a more equitable and just Wesleyan campus and global community. Below are highlights from the initiatives we’ve undertaken this past year and the next steps … Read more
The gankogui is a metal percussion instrument from the Ewe people in Ghana. It is made of two metal bells – one large and one small – fused together at the neck where a long thin handle is attached. Like many other metal tools in Ghanaian society, it is crafted by a blacksmith, who sources the material from scrap metal from cars, broken farm tools such as hoes and machetes, and even from other broken gankoguis.
The Library wishes to express profound sadness and anger about recent acts of violence against Asian and Asian-American people.
What comes to your mind when you think of Communist propaganda posters? Uplifting words colored in red? Inspiring stories trumpeting the party’s leadership? Or strategic rhetorics aimed at brainwashing people?
Some of the most visually decadent art comes from the Rococo period in Western Europe. I am fascinated by this unapologetically self-indulgent period of European art, made right before the birth of the French Revolution.
No one who is alive today knew Ruth Peck Fisk (1795-1885), the wife of Wesleyan’s founding president, Willbur Fisk (1792-1839). Her portrait resides in the Middlesex County Historical Society. Her grave is in Wesleyan’s campus cemetery on Foss Hill.
The suling is an end-blown flute from Indonesia, made from bamboo. Like the other instruments in the Javanese gamelan, sulings are tuned to one of two scales, sléndro or pélog.
Enlightenment ideas about science and philosophy take center stage in this small book of lectures presented to children by a boy called Tom Telescope, the “little philosopher.” The pseudonymous Tom explains complex concepts through conversation and demonstration with “familiar objects, in an entertaining manner, for the use of young ladies and gentlemen,” as made clear in the publication’s subtitle.
In Japanese taiko drumming, wooden sticks called bachi are used to hit the head of the drum. Taiko drums come in various sizes from the small, high-pitched shime-daiko, to the mid-sized chu-daiko, to the large, lower-pitched o-daiko, and each of these requires a different size of bachi.
It was two years ago, April of 2019, that I first came to the Special Collections and Archives. I was a pre-frosh at WesFest, awkwardly wandering across campus with a wrinkled assortment of info sheets and campus maps. The disorienting stream of events and people left me with a nagging sense of worry: maybe Wesleyan wasn’t the place for me, maybe it was all too much.
