African-American Collection of Maine

USM Library Special Collections

Glickman Family Library

Gerald Talbot Collection: ca. 1800s-1900s...The collection contains books, serials, posters, artifacts and photographs documenting African Americans in the United States, with an emphasis on Maine.

Lee Forest Figurines: ca. 1930s--50s...Kitchen canisters, in the shapes of Mammy and Tom.

Contact: Susie R. Bock, head of Special Collections, bocks@usm.maine.edu, 780-4269

Sequence: Maya Angelou’s “Mary” and Robert Bellah’s “Community, Commitment, and Individuality in Literacies/African-American Collection of Maine

Assignment 1:

How do families relate to the larger social communities around them? Consider how the Johnson and Cullinan families relate to each other and to the larger community. Would Bellah see either of these families as parts of a “community of memory”?

To sequence with a class trip to the African American Collection of Maine

Assignment 2:

Extend your earlier discussion of expected family roles in the larger social community through an analysis of an object or set of objects in the African American Collection. Choose an object or set of objects in the African American Collection. Do you think the owner or creator of the object used it to enter into a “community of memory” or to practice “modern individualism”? Could the object be used or seen in both ways? Which way do you prefer?

Other Suggested Sequences using Literacies and the African-American Collection

James Clifford’s “Incidents of Tourism in Chiapas and Yucatan”/African American Collection Before Reading Question 3, using this quotation:

“Glances into bright doorways, color coded rooms. Each a side altar, small collection, museum, Cornell box, universe, store” (142). Sequence with any class trip to the Collection. Ask students to examine and make connections between how writers organize and structure the presentation of their material and how exhibitors organize and structure their material.

David Gilmore’s “Performative Excellence-Circum-Mediterranean” /African American Collection

First assignment looks at male “performative excellence” to sequence with African American Collection. Does the model of “performative excellence” explain images of African American men? Is there an aspect of one of these images that the model cannot explain?

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”/African American Collection:

How do objects speak in Walker’s story and in this collection?

OR

Is keeping an item for “everyday use” a good thing? When is it better to keep something for use than to put it in a museum? Choose an object in the exhibit to use as an example. Explain how you think Walker or one of her characters would see this question.

OR

Choose two characters in Walker’s story and explain how they might see an object in this collection, and how they might see you as a visitor to the collection.

Shirley Brice Heath’s “Literate Traditions”/African American Collection

Use “Active Reading” question #1 to have students write about women’s literate traditions in Heath. Then ask students to describe a diary in the exhibit in terms of Heath’s idea about women’s literate traditions.