July 2011 Archives

Primarily known as a Major League catcher and coach, Morris “Moe” Berg was also a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, as well as a lawyer, linguist, and Princeton graduate. As a member of the class of 1923, Berg excelled scholastically and athletically by graduating with honors in Modern Languages (he studied Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskirt), and playing first base and shortstop for the Princeton Tigers. While his batting average was low- Berg inspired a Major League scout to utter the phrase, “Good field, no hit”- he was known at Princeton for his strong arm and sound baseball instincts.[i]

There's a scene in a documentary about the French philosopher Jacques Derrida where Derrida visits UC Irvine (where he had donated his personal papers). The philosopher, going through the rows of newly-processed collections, comments that the gray archival boxes on the shelves look like little gravestones.

For someone whose best-known axiom was that "there is nothing outside the text," and who was very concerned about who has "authority" over the archive, perhaps it was somewhat distressing for Derrida to see his texts buried away in folders, boxes, shelves and behind locked doors.

It's easy to understand this concern. In some ways, archival records are by their nature "dead" -- they have been given to the archives because they're no longer used in the course of daily business. And it's true that most institutions keep these materials tucked away in closed stacks.

On the other hand, from my point of view as someone who processes new accessions as they come to Mudd, collections are constantly growing, re-interpreted by new context and new evidence, and given new life through the research and reference process. We care for collections so that they may find new life -- all of our core activities, as an institution, are to serve researcher needs in their synthesis and analysis of the past.

In May and June of this year, most of our accessions were additions to collections we already hold -- in some cases, this was an instance of a donor finding or having created additional material that rounds out our collections. In most cases, new additions to an archival collections are an opportunity to re-examine the existing collection from a new point of view.

We hope that this will be the case with our newest additions. Here is a list of what we received in May and June: 

[ML.2011.015] Photocopy of Douglas Linder Article
[ML.2011.016] Photographs and correspondence to William H. Kellenberger from John Foster Dulles
[ML.2011.017] Women's World Banking Records
[ML.2011.019] Chalmers Benedict Wood Papers
[ML.2011.021] George S. McGovern Photographs and Letters
[ML.2011.022] Marten van Heuven Writings and Correspondence
[ML.2011.023] Woodrow Wilson Letter
[ML.2011.025] Kennett Love Papers

Noted diplomatic historian Frank Costigliola of the University of Connecticut has been selected to edit the diaries of George F. Kennan, the renowned 20^th century diplomat, historian, and public intellectual. Professor Costigliola holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and is the author of the forthcoming Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton University Press, January 2012), in addition to two other books and more than two dozen articles, including an essay on Kennan that appeared in The Journal of American History. He is also a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Costigliola’s was one of nine submissions received for the project which was announced last December with ads in the New York Review of Books and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as on numerous listservs, and the Mudd Manuscript Library blog. He plans a single volume of approximately 600-700 pages and projects a completion date of December 2014. (See Costigliola’s proposal .) Notified of the selection, Costigliola commented, “I am honored by the opportunity to make available to Kennan buffs, scholars of U.S. and international history, and general readers the magnificent, 80-year-long chronicle of this most gifted diplomat, public intellectual, and writer.”