Shelf Life

Shelf Life is a podcast from the Newberry Library about the humanities and the humans behind them. Each episode features a new conversation with librarians, curators, and researchers about anything from the history of the Chicago city grid to the secret lives of famous American authors.

Michelangelo's Handwriting 08/01/2019

Michelangelo's Handwriting In this episode, we’re joined by scholars Bill Wallace and Isabella Magni to dissect a letter written by Michelangelo in 1545. But we’re less interested in what the letter says than in the way it was written. What does Michelangelo’s style of handwriting reveal about who he was as an artist and how he saw himself in Renaissance Italian society? /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/10732376

The Meaning of "Fa-La-La" 05/28/2019

The Meaning of "Fa-La-La" Non-lexical vocables—your fa-la-la’s and hey-nonny-no’s—didn’t originate as nonsense filler-syllables for brightening up a song. In Renaissance England, they were used to advance a song’s satirical critique of society or as a lyrical surrogate for something that couldn’t be expressed explicitly. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/9951155

The Quest for Gutenberg Fragments 05/01/2019

The Quest for Gutenberg Fragments Eric White, Curator of Rare Books at the Princeton University Library (and author of "Editio Princeps: A History of the Gutenberg Bible"), tells us about his quest to find the existing fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, two of which are right here at the Newberry. Eric speaks with Jill Gage, the Newberry’s curator of printing history. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/9606368

The War on Bugs 04/03/2019

The War on Bugs Newberry conservators systematically intercept spiders, ants, book lice, and other bugs before they can reach the treasures in our collection. We speak with conservation staff about this important (and kind of gross) work, and then we join them as they patrol the deepest recesses of the library for pests. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/9259253

To Meme or Not To Meme 03/11/2019

To Meme or Not To Meme Book historian (and esteemed Twitter user) Sarah Werner discusses memes, reaction GIFs, and the promise and peril of being a library on social media. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8965916

Mourning Glory 01/28/2019

Mourning Glory “Not only does the wearing of black protect the mourner from unnecessary levity; but it reminds everyone else that they’ll eventually be in that position, too, and it stirs empathy.” Debra Mancoff, a scholar of art, culture, and fashion, walks us through the conventions and sartorial semiotics of mourning in Victorian England and America, and tells us how attitudes toward death and dying have changed over the years. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615252

The City Logical 01/03/2019

The City Logical Daniel Burnham may have made Chicago beautiful. But Edward Brennan made it logical. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615255

The 1862 Int'l Exhibition Revisited 11/29/2018

The 1862 Int'l Exhibition Revisited The 1862 International Exhibition, held in London, is an oft-overlooked event within the pantheon of 19th-century world’s fairs—and for good reason. Occurring just 11 years after the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the 1862 rendition came off as derivative, and a cloud hung over it due to Prince Albert’s recent death, Queen Victoria’s prolonged period of mourning, and the American Civil War. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615258

Don't Bring a Bow and Arrow to a Laser Gun Fight 11/01/2018

Don't Bring a Bow and Arrow to a Laser Gun Fight Educator, poet, and comic-book creator Lee Francis IV (Laguna Pueblo) discusses how comics can fill a gap in Indigenous-created literature, while at the same time serving as a vehicle for presenting Native stories and identities in modern, dynamic settings rather than the ahistorical past in which pop culture often portrays Native characters. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615261

African American Genealogy 09/12/2018

African American Genealogy Genealogist Tony Burroughs breaks down the procedures for finding African American ancestors and discusses why a unique set of research tools is necessary for doing African American genealogy. According to Tony, the same institutional forces that marginalized black Americans in the past also buried traces of their lives in the historical records that genealogists count on to fill out their family trees. Navigating the legacies of slavery, segregation, and discrimination is part of the process of finding one /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615267

15th-Century Paperbacks 07/25/2018

15th-Century Paperbacks So-called “limp parchment” bindings were essentially the paperbacks of their day. In the early modern era, binding books in parchment was a cheaper alternative to binding them in wooden boards covered by leather (it was also a practical way to manage the explosion of books occasioned by the printing press in the 15th century). /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615270

Telling the Story of Public Housing 06/28/2018

Telling the Story of Public Housing Two experts on the history of public housing discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in telling this long and complex story. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615279

Splendiferous but Garish 05/29/2018

Splendiferous but Garish “The fair is gorgeous, splendiferous...but garish.” That’s how 12-year-old Claire Lieber, writing in her diary, described the Century of Progress World’s Fair held in Chicago in 1933. When she was alive, Claire was the go-to source of family history for her grandson, Sam Crews. But she rarely told Sam stories about her own life. After finding Claire’s diary in the Newberry’s collection recently, Sam discovered a whole new side of his grandmother. He discusses the emotional impact the find has ha /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615282

America's Erstwhile Coral Obsession 04/25/2018

America's Erstwhile Coral Obsession During the antebellum period, Americans went crazy for coral, using it in jewelry and medicine, referencing it in art and literature, and adopting it as a metaphor for understanding the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural world. We speak with scholar Michele Navakas about America's erstwhile fascination with coral and coral reefs. Along the way, Michelle shares a discovery she recently made in our collection: a song by "Mary Had a Little Lamb" author Sarah Josepha Hale that holds coral up as a /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615285

Let's Talk about Plant Sex 04/02/2018

Let's Talk about Plant Sex In the 18th century, botany was a contested space: on the one hand, an acceptable discipline for women to engage with; on the other, a treacherous field of study beset by (gasp!) the perils of intellectual rigor and plants' sexual reproduction. We speak with Katie Sagal, a research fellow at the Newberry, about how women authors and scientists navigated the botanical terms of engagement to expand their roles in scientific and literary communities. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615288

A Brief History of Chocolate 02/12/2018

A Brief History of Chocolate Do we have a treat for you: Scholar Sarah Kernan breaks down the history of chocolate, from its origins in the Americas and popularity among European monarchs (apparently Charles II of England was a bona fide chocoholic) to its mass production and eventual association with Valentine’s Day. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615291

Not a Mascot 02/02/2018

Not a Mascot The recent announcement that Cleveland’s professional baseball team would remove the controversial Chief Wahoo logo from its uniforms has, for now, renewed the national debate over American Indian mascots in sports. In this episode, we speak with Julie Pelletier, Acting Director of the McNickle Center for American Indian Studies at the Newberry and a member of the Maliseet and Mi'kmaq tribes, about how American Indian mascots both reflect and promote deep-seated cultural ideas and why pro-Chief Wahoo twee /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615297

Gigging the Film 01/15/2018

Gigging the Film Silent-film organists could "gig the film" or "Mickey Mouse" it (play in ironic contrast with the images on screen or in ham-handed correspondence with them, respectively). But the most successful found the harmonious middle between the two. We talk with musicologist Kendra Preston Leonard about these musicians and why women, in particular, were so central to the art, culture, and values surrounding silent film. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615300

Star Wars: A New Trope 12/20/2017

Star Wars: A New Trope In this spoiler-free episode, Newberry seminars instructor Harrison Sherrod discusses how Star Wars helps us understand history, religion, and humanity's place in the world. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615306

Early Modern Earworms 12/04/2017

Early Modern Earworms Performing early music today is a feat of historical reconstruction as much as musical adaptation. Adding to the musical-historical challenge is the fact that some songs (by Bach, for example) were tailored to the strengths of particular choirs and weren’t intended to outlive their creators. In this episode, we speak with Matt Dean, managing director of Schola Antiqua early music ensemble, and Ikumi Crocoll, Newberry reference librarian, about what goes into reviving early music, why it’s worth the effo /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615309

The Rise and Fall of a Typeface 11/13/2017

The Rise and Fall of a Typeface According to Peter Stallybrass, an obscure typeface called civilité offers us a way of thinking about both the history of printing and the development of the bureaucratic nation-state in Western Europe. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615312

The British Were the Underdogs? 10/16/2017

The British Were the Underdogs? Historian Woody Holton has a novel way of looking at the American Revolution: it was the British—not the Americans—who were the underdogs on the battlefield. In this episode, Woody argues his case. And, while he’s at it, he discusses how race, class, and gender factored into the war and its aftermath. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615315

Let There Be Page Numbers 09/24/2017

Let There Be Page Numbers Print helped fuel the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which in turn fueled major developments in the printing industry. As people were exhorted to read the Bible, new tools emerged to help them navigate its pages: page numbers, indexes, annotations--basically, all the features of the "apparatus of the book" that we take for granted today. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615318

Being a Curator on Instagram 08/28/2017

Being a Curator on Instagram If Instagram encourages us all to be the curators of our accounts, does that make actual library and museum curators ideal Instagrammers? In this episode, we speak with Lauren Hewes, the American Antiquarian Society's curator of graphic arts and Instagrammer extraordinaire, about the parallels between designing an exhibition and posting to Instagram, what it means for individuals to "curate" their social media presence, and how she's cultivated the persona of (in her words) a 205-year-old grandma as the voi /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615321

The Road in American Culture 08/07/2017

The Road in American Culture Curator of Maps, Jim Akerman, discusses the rhetoric of driving, how road maps have portrayed car travel differently over time, and whether or not Google Maps is making us lose our way in the world. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615324

Chicago Urbanology 07/17/2017

Chicago Urbanology We shadowed Max Grinnell, aka the Urbanologist, as he researched Chicago's Dill Pickle Club in our Special Collections Reading Room. Leafing through photos, handbills, and brochures, Max discusses the "unsanctioned space" that the bohemian group carved out for itself, and how the fate of the Dill Pickle and other urban vestiges speaks to a complicated cycle of rebirth and renewal in Chicago. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615327

Activist-Artists in the Archives 06/26/2017

Activist-Artists in the Archives According to Monica Trinidad, co-founder of For the People Artists Collective, "Art is not an afterthought, it is essential and integral to organizing." Artists don't just translate activism into a visual language; they can actually create an environment in which activism is possible. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615333

Brooks Cooks 06/07/2017

Brooks Cooks In honor of the 100th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks's birth, Liesl Olson, Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry, recreated the poet's signature frozen fruit salad. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615336

The 95 Theses: You Won't Believe What #32 Is! 05/22/2017

The 95 Theses: You Won't Believe What #32 Is! In this episode, we ponder one of the most important listicles of all time. Chris Fletcher, the Newberry's major projects fellow, discusses what Martin Luther originally hoped to accomplish with the 95 Theses, how he marketed religion to a larger audience, and why he had some regrets after empowering people to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615339

Violent Femmes 05/01/2017

Violent Femmes As part of her study of feminine crime in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Newberry Graduate Scholar in Residence Rachel Boyle scoured more than 200 boxes of 100-year-old court records, collecting information on every homicide involving a female suspect she could find. Faced with a bounty of data about arrests and convictions, she plotted these crimes onto historical maps of the city to make sense of her findings. In this episode of "Shelf Life," we talk with Rachel about her research and the larger conclusions /episode/index/show/shelflife/id/8615342

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