News

Selected stories from the Beinecke Library, YaleNews, and external media outlets (the latter noted by source in parentheses after title of article).

  • Morand brings passion for New Haven to city historian role

    April 12, 2024

    Michael Morand, director of community engagement for Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has been appointed New Haven’s official city historian by Mayor Justin Elicker. A New Haven resident since 1983, Morand brings a demonstrated passion for local history and a devotion to the Elm City to the unpaid role. His initial five-year term runs through Dec. 31, 2028. “[E]very time I speak with Michael Morand, I learn something new and interesting about New Haven,” Elicker said in his announcement. “Michael has a deep love for the Elm City, and he has the knowledge, experience, and passion to help our residents and institutions better explore and understand New Haven’s history, while inspiring community engagement and action from the lessons we learn from it.

  • Windham-Campbell Prize recognizes eight distinctive writers (Yale Daily News)

    April 8, 2024

    Yale’s Windham-Campbell Prize honored eight writers in four categories this year. The winners of the Windham-Campbell Prize, a prestigious award presented annually to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, were formally announced last Tuesday. The prize, which includes monetary compensation of $175,000, intends to support writers in their creative craft. This year’s awards, led by director Michael Kelleher and administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, recognized Christina Sharpe, Christopher Chen, Deirdre Madden, Hanif Abdurraqib, Jen Hadfield, Kathryn Scanlan, NourbeSe Philip and Sonya Kelly.

  • Yale Film Archive Adds Sound to Silents (New Haven Independent)

    April 5, 2024

    As Yale Film Archive launches into the last quarter of its 2024 spring semester programming, it offered something a little different on Thursday evening: silent films that each had a special distinction. The first, presented in conjunction with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, was a selection of Solomon Sir Jones Films from 1924 to 1928 that are currently a part of the library’s holdings. The second was a showing of Within Our Gates, a 1920 film written, produced, and directed by Oscar Micheaux; it’s the oldest known surviving film with a Black director. One more bonus: both films on this evening were accompanied by live music, played by pianist Donald Sosin.

  • Eight writers awarded Yale’s Windham-Campbell Prizes

    April 2, 2024

    The recipients are, in fiction, Deirdre Madden (Ireland) and Kathryn Scanlan (United States); in nonfiction, Christina Sharpe (Canada/United States) and Hanif Abdurraqib (United States); in drama, Christopher Chen (United States) and Sonya Kelly (Ireland); and in poetry, m. nourbeSe Philip (Canada/Trinidad and Tobago) and Jen Hadfield (Canada/United Kingdom).

  • The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party (New York Times)

    March 28, 2024

    Minnie Pindar was at home in Harlem on a Saturday in 1929, and she had a party to throw. She and her sister, Lucibelle Pindar, had passed out invitations, printed on cheap, white card stock, promising a good time in their ground floor apartment at 149 West 117th Street. “Refreshments Just It” and “Music Won’t Quit,” the invitation read. Their invitation, one of dozens of similar party invitations tucked into the Langston Hughes papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library, hints at the rich but difficult lives of Black people living in New York at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance.

  • The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance (New York Times)

    March 21, 2024

    On March 21, 1924, Jessie Fauset sat inside the Civic Club in downtown Manhattan, wondering how the party for her debut novel had been commandeered. The celebration around her was originally intended to honor that book, “There Is Confusion.” But Charles S. Johnson and Alain Locke thought the dinner could serve a larger purpose. What if the two Black academic titans invited the best and brightest of the Harlem creative and political scene? What if, over a spread of fine food and drink, they brought together African American talent and white purveyors of culture? If they could marry the talent all around them with the opportunity that was so elusive, what would it mean to Black culture, both present and future?

  • New Haven, Yale, and Slavery: The Real Story (New Haven Independent)

    March 13, 2024

    Chapter 6 was written by Michael Morand, director of community engagement at the university’s Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, who is also lead curator of the New Haven Museum exhibition. It recounts an event of mob mentality, deplorable then but also prescient. Reading it today, noting the power of the politics of fear, it leaps right out of history and into the stream of denigrations of 2024. The chapter covers what might have been in New Haven: the establishment of the nation’s first college built specifically for Black men. The plan was discussed and endorsed in 1831 in Philadelphia, at a convention of Black intellectuals and abolitionists who decided on New Haven as the best option. One of the reasons: It was already a center of higher education, as Yale was then the largest college in the nation, even as it restricted its student body to white, Protestant and of European descent. The city, too, grew more prosperous from international trade and in population, the 23rd largest in the nation.

  • The ‘ubiquity of Black presence’: Alum curates exhibition about Yale, New Haven, and slavery

    March 8, 2024

    Morand, Director of Community Engagement at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, organized the show as part of the Yale and Slavery Research Project, which arose from a 2020 summons by President Peter Salovey for Yale to reckon with its historical ties to slavery. The museum exhibition coincided with the February publication of Yale and Slavery: A History by David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History and African American Studies, written and edited with research project colleagues Hope McGrath and Morand. The book was released alongside a companion website, videos, and audio walking tour, accessible from yaleandslavery.yale.edu (link is external).

  • Exhibit Shines Truth on the HBCU That Wasn’t

    February 21, 2024

    The exhibition—presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Yale University Library in partnership with the New Haven Museum—was curated by the Beinecke’s Director of Community Engagement Michael J. Morand with Charles E. Warner, Jr., and designed by David Jon Walker. It runs Feb. 16 through summer 2024 and includes findings from David W. Blight and the Yale and Slavery History Project’s new book Yale and Slavery: A History, which is available online for free. Admission to the museum is also free for the duration of the exhibition, underwritten by Yale.

  • New exhibit in Hanke Gallery features Korean master and sacred texts across faith traditions

    February 21, 2024

    The new Hanke Gallery exhibit, “Copying Sacred Texts: A Spiritual Practice,” presents an array of handwritten and elaborately illuminated works—examples of the shared ancient practice of transcribing meaningful texts from various faith traditions. At the center of this exhibit is the work of Kyeongho Kim, a living master of the art form. Master Kim, who lives in South Korea, has dedicated 50 years to the practice of hand-copying Buddhist texts, or sutras. The Korean term for the traditional art of hand-copying sutras is sagyŏng, which exhibition curators Jude Yang and Hwansoo Kim describe as a “marriage of writing and painting.” In this nearly 2,000-year-old spiritual practice, Buddha’s teachings are conveyed through both the transcribed words of the sutras and through decorative imagery.

  • Library Security team members Boyd, Schneider, and Dorantes

    February 19, 2024

    Three security officers at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library—who have served a combined total of almost 15 years—share their experiences being part of a close-knit team committed to ensuring students, visitors, and fellow staff members always feel welcome and supported.

  • Exhibit highlights slavery and resistance in Yale and New Haven (WSHU Public Radio)

    February 19, 2024

    Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery opened its doors to the public late last week, showcasing what Michael Morand and Charles Warner, Jr. have curated through accessing mountains of archival material on Black history in New Haven and throughout Yale University. The exhibit complements a new book published the same day, Yale and Slavery: A History ...

  • Boola Boola for Yale’s Beinecke Library, a Modernist Masterpiece at 60 (National Review)

    February 8, 2024

    A few days ago, I was in New Haven, the city of my birth. I’d gone back to Ye Olde North Haven, where I grew up, for a funeral of an old friend and political crony. After the funeral lunch, I visited the Yale University Art Gallery, where I’d spent many happy hours as a Yale student. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, also a haunt, is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It opened in 1963 but is still young in 2024. When it comes to birthdays, spillage is allowed. I had a lovely visit there as well.

  • Turning the Page

    February 5, 2024

    The Gutenberg Bible has been on display in a large bronze and glass case at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library since 1963. At almost 600 years old, its typeface and illustrations are still vibrant, and the pages remain flexible, in no small part, because of the consistent care the Bible receives from Yale Library conservators.

  • WWII Tuskegee Airman Enoch Woodhouse II ’52 returns to Yale

    February 1, 2024

    Michael Morand ’87, ’93 MDiv, director for community engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, who arranged a special visit of the Library for Woodhouse, including a meeting with staff members, remarked that alumni like Woodhouse are a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and experience that informs the greater narrative of Yale and, therefore, is worthy of documentation, preservation, and dissemination. “We have so much more to learn about the full story of Yale,” he said. “People like General Woodhouse bless us all when they share their stories—it’s a privilege to learn these stories and a solemn duty to make sure they are more broadly known.”