One of the greatest movies to come out of the 1990’s was Hocus Pocus, with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy. From Binx the talking cat to the iconic “I Put A Spell on You” dance scene, the movie has become a cult classic—and although we’re far from Halloween, I thought I’d spend […]
Over the past year, the pandemic has given me plenty of time to re-watch all of my favorite movies. In revisiting Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound Of Music, I rediscovered the delightful puppet show set to a song called “The Lonely Goatherd.” Inspired by this adorable scene (and because everybody loves puppets), I thought I’d […]
Working with historic sheet music, I come across autographs almost every day. This doesn’t surprise me, as most of the books on my own bookshelf have my name written inside. Likewise, sheet music was intended to be used frequently, making the contents of any historic sheet music collection far from ‘mint condition.’ Instead, most of […]
Growing up in Arizona, my family would often travel out East to visit relatives. A highlight for me was always New York City, where I developed my childhood love of skyscrapers and fear of pigeons– whether they were coming after the soft pretzel I was eating or shoving each other in front of trains (don’t […]
As the curator of the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection, a phrase I hear often is “I didn’t know sheet music could be used to study…” Levy collected 30,000 songs over 50+ years not to perform, but to use as a lens for studying history. To make this easier, Levy organized his collection by subject, […]
The story of Homewood and slavery did not end when Harriet Carroll left Homewood in 1816, taking the Ross family with her to Philadelphia. Homewood remained in the hands of the Carroll family until 1838, during which time many of the individuals enslaved by Charles Carroll of Homewood were relocated to another Carroll estate, Doughoregan […]
Homewood Museum tells the story of three families who lived and worked in this federal-period house between 1801 and 1832. Two of these families, the Rosses and Conners, were enslaved by the white Carroll family who owned the estate.When visitors tour Homewood Museum they are confronted by the juxtaposition of beautiful eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century […]
Before the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection was donated to JHU in the 1970’s, it was already a heavily consulted resource. Levy was regularly contacted by book publishers and magazines seeking to feature the colorful covers, so he decided to organize the collection by subject matter rather than title or composer. Need a song about […]
Meat substitutes are having a bit of a moment, with popular products like the Beyond Burger introducing more and more people to plant-based meals. But “fake meat” is nothing new at all! An abundance of American 19th and early 20th century vegetarian recipes can be discovered in the historic cookbooks of Special Collections. Called “mock […]
Posts in this series were written by undergraduate students in the spring 2020 Museums & Society class Scribbling Women: Gender, Writing, and the Archive. We used rare books, archival materials, and digital primary sources in the Sheridan Libraries’ collections to prompt and guide inquiries into the creation, reception, preservation, and legacy of texts from the […]