All posts tagged: archives

Monsters in the Archives – My Year of Fear with Stephen King

Monsters in the Archives – My Year of Fear with Stephen King

Published by José Betancourt

Caroline Bicks did not set out to be the first scholar granted extended access to Stephen King’s private archives. She was hired in 2017 as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine on the strength of her Shakespeare research. The King Chair carried his name, not his involvement. Four years later, the phone rang at her kitchen counter, and “Steve” was on the line. The yearlong archival project that grew out of that call became Monsters in the Archives by Caroline Bicks, a book that is somehow a literary master class, a King biography in miniature, and a personal memoir about a small, anxious child, all at once. Her thesis is precise and worth stating up front. King’s lasting horror does not hinge on what he shows you. It hinges on the sound of a stutter, the shape of a toddler’s misspoken word, the difference between clatter and clittered. She reads his drafts the way a scholar reads a Shakespeare quarto, and she does it across five focused chapters …

A rural college uses ancient Islamic archives to reconnect students to African legacy

A rural college uses ancient Islamic archives to reconnect students to African legacy

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In a former segregated school in rural Virginia, an Islamic college has been reconnecting its mostly African American Muslim students with a legacy of faith and scholarship largely erased from mainstream history.  IQOU Theological College, in the town of Charlotte Court House, for the past two years has housed a small, borrowed collection of ancient manuscripts from the West African city of Timbuktu in Mali, a center of Islamic learning that thrived between the 13th and 17th centuries. It’s also a region where many Africans were kidnapped during the transatlantic slave trade.  Hafiz Hassan Ali Qadri, a Quran teacher at the college, said the 17 manuscripts can offer African American Muslims a concrete link to a part of their ancestors’ history. Seeing handwritten works on law, theology, astronomy and other subjects challenges an enduring narrative that enslaved Africans arrived in the United States with little education or scholarly traditions, he said. “It goes full circle, showing that this is where we came from — we came from knowledge,” Qadri said. “And what we’re …

The Internet’s Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril

The Internet’s Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril

Published by skeptic

This month, USA Today published an excellent report that revealed how US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement delayed disclosing key information about the impacts of its detainment policies. The authors used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to compile and analyze detention statistics from ICE and track how the agency had changed under the Trump administration. The story is one of countless examples of how the Wayback Machine, which crawls and preserves web pages, has helped preserve information for the public good. It was also, Wayback Machine director Mark Graham says, “a little ironic.” USA Today Co., the publishing conglomerate formerly known as Gannet that runs both its namesake paper and over 200 additional media outlets, bars the Wayback Machine from archiving its work. “They’re able to pull together their story research because the Wayback Machine exists. At the same time, they’re blocking access,” Graham says. A number of other major journalism organizations have also recently moved to restrict the Wayback Machine from archiving their stories, including The New York Times. According to analysis by the artificial-intelligence-detection …

archives reveal hardship faced by the families of those killed in 1916

archives reveal hardship faced by the families of those killed in 1916

Published by Sam Flores

On November 26, 1923, a woman named Anne McCormack applied for a military dependent’s pension on the grounds of her husband, James McCormack’s death. He had been a soldier in the Irish citizen army, under the socialist and revolutionary leader, James Connolly. This group was committed to the establishment of a workers’ republic. Its members participated in the week-long armed insurrection of 1916 known as the Easter Rising. James McCormack was shot in the head on the second day of the rising, April 26, 1916. Records held in the Military Service Pensions Archive show he died where he fell on Moore Lane, close to the General Post Office, the epicentre of the rising. For many years following the establishment of the Irish state (today’s Republic of Ireland) in 1922, the focus of Irish historians, not to mention the general public, was on those, like James McCormack, who died for Ireland. Annual commemorations of the 1916 rising were focused on those executed by the British or killed in the fighting. But little attention was paid to …

‘The Sopranos’ Photos and Archives Part of Show at New York Museum

‘The Sopranos’ Photos and Archives Part of Show at New York Museum

Published by Jenni Sidey

The wildly popular TV series “The Sopranos” aired its much-hyped season finale almost 20 years ago. The critically acclaimed show, starring the late James Gandolfini as troubled mob boss/family man Tony Soprano, premiered on HBO in 1999 and ran for six seasons. “The Sopranos,” often credited with initiating a golden age of prestige television, is now the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image. “Stories and Set Designs for The Sopranos” is on view at the Queens, New York, museum through May 31. It includes script notes and newspaper clippings from “Soprano’s” showrunner David Chase’s personal archive, plus ground plans and production photos from MoMI’s collection. The show focuses on the set design for the show’s four main locations: Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist Dr. Melfi’s office, the Soprano family home in New Jersey, the Bada Bing Strip Club, and the Satriale’s Pork Store. Examples include a detailed drawing of Tony and Carmela’s bedroom along with a photo of the ornately decorated space, complete with a Renaissance-style painting in a gilded frame hung …

Volunteer Group Archives Smithsonian Wall Text

Volunteer Group Archives Smithsonian Wall Text

Published by José Betancourt

A group of historians and volunteers has been documenting wall labels across the Smithsonian Institution as the Trump administration pushes for changes to how American history is presented in federal museums, according to The Washington Post. The effort, organized under the name Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, began after administration officials called for reviews of content at several museums and urged the removal of what they described as “divisive narratives.” The Smithsonian, which comprises 21 museums and the National Zoo, has increasingly become a focal point in debates over historical interpretation. Related Articles The group was co-founded by James Millward, a Georgetown University historian, and Chandra Manning, a US history professor at Georgetown. Over seven weeks in late summer and early fall, they recruited hundreds of volunteers to photograph and archive publicly accessible wall text throughout the Smithsonian system, compiling more than 50,000 images, the Post reported. The documentation effort drew attention after the National Portrait Gallery replaced wall text accompanying President Donald Trump’s portrait. According to the Post, the previous label stated that Trump …

Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Acquires Images by Warhol Assistant

Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Acquires Images by Warhol Assistant

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art has added more than 400 rarely seen images of famous figures who passed through Andy Warhol’s Factory, from David Hockney and Debbie Harry, to Georgia O’Keeffe and Paloma Picasso. According to the institution, the images were captured by the artist Ronald “Ronnie” Cutrone as stereoscopic slides, pairing two photographs to create the illusion of three-dimensional depth. Cutrone, a performer (with the Velvet Underground, notably), painter, and nightclub impresario, worked as Warhol’s studio assistant from 1972 to 1982, documenting during that decade the creative constellation that comprised his orbit. He worked closely with Warhol throughout his career—reportedly calling the Pop artist a “second father” following his death—and went on to exhibit his own paintings and illustrations of canonical cartoon imagery alongside downtown titans such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Building on Pop Art’s appropriative ethos, Cutrone’s work was dubbed “Post-Pop.” A boon for the Smithsonian, Cutrone’s images feature Al Green, Bruce Nauman, Mick Jagger, and Dennis Hopper. Most striking is O’Keeffe gazing at her portrait by Warhol—the sort of creative crossover that, for a moment, makes myths feel human. Image Credit: …

Fred Armisen to Host CNN Series on UMG Archives (Exclusive)

Fred Armisen to Host CNN Series on UMG Archives (Exclusive)

Published by Daniella Wilson

Fred Armisen has been tapped for a new series collaboration between CNN and Universal Music Group, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively reveal, with the comedian set to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at UMG’s extensive archives. UMG is the world’s largest music company, and the record company’s catalog includes some of the most iconic songs and albums of all time, from older classics like the catalogs of Blue Note and A&M Records, to the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The series, which doesn’t have a title, will give a rare look at UMG’s archives housed at the famed Iron Mountain facility in Pennsylvania. A press release for the upcoming show promises to “unearth priceless artifacts, encompassing original recordings, master tapes, rare photos and performances, alternative album art and music videos, many of which have not been seen or heard publicly before.” The series, produced by UMG’s Polygram Entertainment, TIME Studios and Known Originals, is set to premiere later this year through CNN Originals’ programming slate, CNN and UMG said. “This series opens the doors to one of the …

In the Despot Archives | Helen Epstein, Lauren Kane

In the Despot Archives | Helen Epstein, Lauren Kane

Published by Jenni Sidey

After Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin was ousted from power in 1979, his regime left behind mountains of paperwork generated by the state bureaucracy. Years later, the historian Derek Peterson painstakingly assembled it into an archive. As Helen Epstein writes in our January 15, 2026, issue, “crucial documents were buried under layers of old bicycles, junked photocopiers, and ancient dot matrix printouts. An intern found an unexploded bomb amid files stored at a police station, and valuable court records in another storeroom were being used as toilet paper by prisoners awaiting trial.” From this material, Peterson composed A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda, which, Epstein writes, tries to address the questions “What must it have been like to live under such a regime? And how do societies in general behave under such pressure?” Epstein has been writing about Uganda for nearly thirty years, after working there in the early 1990s on a project to develop an AIDS vaccine. That involvement broadened into an abiding interest in Africa: for the Review, since 1998 she has written about …

9 new butterflies discovered in old museum archives

9 new butterflies discovered in old museum archives

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When you think of butterflies, chances are you imagine unmistakable insects with bright, bold wings. But it turns out that individual butterfly species are sometimes shockingly difficult to tell apart. Cue museum collections and genetic analysis—a biological dream team.  “Thanks to the genetic revolution and the collaboration of researchers and museums in various countries led by London’s Natural History Museum, century-old butterflies are now speaking to us,” Christophe Faynel, an entomologist at the Société entomologique Antilles Guyane, said in a statement. “By comparing modern DNA with ancient DNA from historical specimens, we can resolve long confused and unnoticed species and uncover greater biodiversity than previously known.” An international team of scientists in AMISTAD, a new research project led by London’s Natural History Museum, are sorting through the members of a group of blue South American butterflies. Using  more than 1,000 samples from collections around the globe, they discovered  nine previously unidentified butterfly species in the Thereus genus. This genus gossamer-winged butterfly …