The collection of African American literature created by Drew alumnus Glen Sergeon C‘72 is clearly a labor of love. Eclectic and serendipitous, it was shaped by his personal literary interests, rather than with the intention of amassing a checklist of high spots. While at Drew, Sergeon met Professor of English Joan Steiner, who had been tasked with developing curricula that focused on African American literature. As he gratefully recalled, together they became students of that field, which remained a passionate interest. Sergeon also stayed in touch with former Drew professor Calvin Skaggs, and it was in the course of their conversations that he decided to donate his collection to Drew.

Under the guidance of New York book dealer Glen Horowitz, Sergeon learned to narrow his focus and sharpen his collector’s eye. The collection’s 75 volumes include a number of works by towering figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Richard Wright. Novelists and poets James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Paule Marshall, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, Derek Walcott and Al Young are represented, often with signed copies of their works. There are memoirs, biographies, anthologies of black writers, and studies of black culture.

The collection also includes nearly 30 works of fiction and non-fiction (with uncorrected proofs for four novels) by John Alfred Williams, who became a personal friend of Sergeon. Another friend and correspondent was the poet Lucille Clifton, whom Sergeon, as president of Drew’s black student association, invited to give a reading at Drew following the publication of her acclaimed volume, Good Times. She remained one of his favorite writers.

Three works in the collection are not by African American authors: Helen Bannerman’s children’s book, The Story of Little Black Mingo; George Bernard Shaw’s short story, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God; and Rackham Holt’s George Washington Carver: An American Biography. The first was meant to entertain, the second to persuade and provoke, and the third to instruct and inspire.

The personal interests and private experiences that led to the formation of Glen Sergeon’s collection lend an air of intimacy to the whole. His deeply felt pleasure in these books, as well as his admiration for and empathetic understanding of the authors, seem almost palpable. In the words of Langston Hughes: “Dream singers,/Story tellers,/Dancers,/Loudlaughers in the hands of Fate—/My people.”

Contents include:

• A Study of Religion and Medicine: Perspectives from Physicians
  Katelyn Cusmano
  (CLA 2014)
• What Led to the Boom in Private Prisons?
  Nicole Kuruszko (CLA 2013)
• Nation and Devotion: English as Social Control
  Eliza Mauhs-Pugh (CLA 2014)
• MTLS in Vibrio cholerae Regulates Mannitol Transporter Protein Production through the MTLA 5’ UTR
   Ronak Mistry (CLA 2013)
• Baudrillard’s Hyperreality: America’s Sensationalized Sports through a Postmodern Lens

Homosexuality and Science:  a Guide to the Debates.

From nineteenth-century documents on cross-dressing, to the impact of the Cold War on perceptions of gays and lesbians, and how millennials identify.
Credo Reference: http://www.credoreference.com/book/abcbiohome

Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide

Trace the conditions and issues of LGBTQ people country by country, from Andorra to Zimbabwe.
Reference HQ 76.G724 2010

 LGBTQ America today:  an encyclopedia

What came before Stonewall?  How has the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay and lesbian political organization in the US, affected both local and national legislation and regulation?  Does the experience of LGBTQ people vary by the region of the country they’re in?
Reference HQ 73.3.U6 L43 2009

Supreme Court Watch

PBS’s coverage of the Defense of Marriage Act now before the Supreme Court.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june13/domadebate_03-27.html

Campus Pride

One of the largest LGBTQ organizations devoted to helping student leaders improve and enhance campus environments.
http://www.campuspride.org

Encyclopedia of Contemporary LBGTQ literature of the US

What makes literature “gay” or “lesbian”?   Can straight authors write queer literature?  Is everything written by an LBGTQ novelist automatically considered  LBGTQ literature?
Reference  PS 153 .S39 2009

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Religious Archives Network

Explore the history of LGBT movements around the world, listen to in-depth interviews of religious leaders, and perhaps contribute information about individuals you know!
http://www.lgbtran.org/

* Warning: browsing library resources can be mind-bending!

The Second of Three Events on the Theme
Scholarly Openings

Monday, March 25, 2013

4 p.m. Refreshments

4:30 p.m. Guest Speaker and Conversation

Founders Room, Mead Hall

Topic

Amherst College Press:

An Open Access Model* for Scholarly Publishing

Guest Speaker

Bryn Geffert, Librarian of Amherst College
Director, Amherst College Press

Panel:

Martin Foys, Associate Professor of English

Harry Keyishian, Director, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Andrew D. Scrimgeour, Dean of Libraries

*The New Amherst Model

The Amherst College Press will solicit and publish compelling literature for everyone, without regard to location, affluence or affiliation. We will distribute scholarship, without charge, not just to those connected with academic libraries. Our publications will be available to all persons with Internet connections, everywhere and all the time.

• We will produce publications rivaling those at top academic presses—created from manuscripts solicited from scholars worldwide and subject to rigorous peer-review by recognized experts.
• Content and copy editing will be thorough, and good prose will be a hallmark of the press.
• All publications will bear Creative Commons licenses.

Guns in American Society

 The ‘Sporting Purposes Test,’ Beecher’s Bibles, Samuel Colt, Waco, ‘Gun Culture,’ Columbine, the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, Thomas Jefferson, Uniform Crime Reports: this “Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture and the Law” explains people, terms, incidents, and laws central to our national discussion of firearms.
Reference HV 7436 .G8783 or online http://www.credoreference.com/book/abcguns

Gun Control: A Reference Handbook

This 1995 resource is still a solid guide to the older aspects of the 2^nd Amendment/Gun Control issue.
Reference HV 7436 .K78

The Gun Control Debate: A Documentary History

Looking for original 18^th-century discussions of the meaning of the “militia” clause? Find them here, along with the famous “jackbooted thugs” NRA fundraising letter, and much back and forth on the 1994 gun control act.
Reference HV 7436 .G865

Violence in America

Take a pre-Columbine look at “Mass Murders- Individual Perpetrators” and “Gun Control” in this 1999 reference.
Reference HN90 .V5 V5474

Encyclopedia  of Gun Control and Gun Rights

Did you know that in 1876, the Supreme Court held that the 2^nd Amendment only restricted Federal limitations on bearing arms? United States v. Cruikshank (1876) What were the provisions of the “Dick Act” (1903) vs. the Militia Act (1792)?
Reference HN90 .V5 V5474

Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments

Find a short overview of the law history of the 2^nd Amendment and interpretations here. Few have attempted to change it: apparently “most proponents and opponents of gun control have preferred to battle over the meaning of the existing constitutional provision rather than to introduce a new one.”
KF 4557 .V555

Uniform Crime Reports

This FBI report profiles reported crimes by weapon type, among other factors:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr

* Warning: browsing reference books can be explosive!

The Perspective of an Editor

A conversation with
Rebecca Barry

Wednesday, February 20
4:00 p.m.

Pilling Room
on the second floor of the Library

Light Refreshments. All are Welcome. For more information, call 973.408.3471.

November 14
“The History o f the Byron Society of America Library Collection”
Marsha Manns

The president of the Byron Society of America talks about the evolution of this important collection
and highlights some of its treasures.

February 20
“The Perspective of an Editor”
Rebecca Barry

The editor of Fine Books and Collections shares her experiences of working with collectors and
delving into special collections across the country.

March 27
“DJs, Some Sophisticated, That I Have Known”
David Porter
The former president of Skidmore College talks about how he got into book collecting and about the unexpected, interesting, and sometimes scary places it has led him, including new fields for teaching and research.

Hosted by the Friends of the Library, 4-5 p.m., Pilling Room, Rose Library

Friends of Drew Library Gala

Saturday, January 1 9, 2013
Historian David S. Reynolds
Featured Author

The Friends of the Library will host their tenth biennial Benefit Dinner on January 19, 2013, with Honorary Dinner Chairs, Robert and Vivian Bull.
The evening begins at Kirby Theatre with a program featuring awardwinning historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds, who will speak on “Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America”—the title of his most recent book (2011).

Reynolds, a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City of New York, is the author or editor of 15 books including Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson (2008), Walt Whitman (2005), and John Brown: Abolitionist (2005), and is the editor of what is considered the definitive reproduction of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2011).

He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Reynolds is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Following the 6 p.m. program, guests will gather in Mead Hall for the Gala reception and dinner, including presentation of the Béla Kornitzer book prizes. The Gala benefits the Friends of the Library Book Endowment Fund For more information, please call the Library at 973.408.3471.

New York Times Historical

The NY Times helped break the story on July 26, 1972. Find it here under “Syphilis Victims in U.S. Study Went Untreated for 40 Years:”
http://www.drew.edu/library/er/new-york-times-historical
Or go right to the article: http://bit.ly/P5pwxN

Medicine, health, and bioethics: Essential Primary Sources

A personal view: 1972 newspaper article: “Survivor of ’32 Syphilis Study Recalls a Diagnosis” as well as the Nuremberg Code on Informed Consent.
Reference R724 .M313 2006 or http://bit.ly/S4infV

Source Book in Bioethics: A Documentary History

Read the “Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel.” 
Reference R 724 .S599

Encyclopedia of bioethics

For a bigger picture, check under “Minorities as Research Subjects,” “Research, Unethical,” “Informed Consent,” and “Bioethics: African-American Perspectives.”
Reference: QH332 .E52 or http://bit.ly/QDT3Np

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History

For an African-American perspective, look here under “Tuskegee” and under “Race and Science.”
http://bit.ly/NkTrnw

Black Studies Center

Find more readings in this expansive collection– search on “Tuskegee syphilis.”
http://www.drew.edu/library/er/black-studies-center

Encyclopedia of Epidemiology

Horrifyingly, articles with preliminary findings of the Tuskegee study were being published in medical journals all along. The Modern medical perspective:
http://bit.ly/PjkLCx

Encyclopedia  of Public Health

The legacy of the Tuskegee ‘experiment’ and long-term institutional racism has a lasting effect in public health and the “African-Americans” community:
http://bit.ly/QyMpNU

* Warning: browsing reference books can be appalling!

For additional information about the project please contact Chris Anderson at cjanders@drew.edu.