Special Collections
Research Center
NOTICE: We will also be closed Monday, May 26, 2008 for Memorial Day.
The Special Collections Research Center maintains and provides access to distinguished collections of rare books, manuscripts, and other archival materials. Syracuse University students, faculty, and other scholars have available to them more than 100,000 printed works and 2000 archival collections, including important editions, manuscripts, documents, letters, diaries, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia. The Special Collections Research Center regularly presents exhibitions from its varied collections in its gallery space. It also offers such services as photocopies and reproductions of material in the collection for publication, as well as class visits and group tours.
April 29 - September 5, 2008
E.S. Bird Library, 6th floor
Viewing Hours: Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Phobia: Collecting in the History of Fear, an illustrated lecture by Sean M. Quimby, Director, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University.
Click on the link to experience the lecture in Windows Media (WMV).
In this lecture, Sean Quimby considers the role of fear in American life. In the post 9/11 world, we have grown accustomed to periodic “terror” alerts, but how did fear figure into the printed discourses of generations past? What, specifically, are Americans really afraid of? Quimby details the Special Collections Research Center’s ongoing project to build research collections that may help us answer these questions. Burgeoning recent scholarship has equipped us with the tools required to examine this elusive topic and, available historical resources—religious tracts, popular psychology texts, eugenics manifestos, self-help, child-rearing and comportment manuals—can help us begin to trace the lineage of fear in America.
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