Anecdotes and other notes from the U-M Special Collections Research Center.
Beyond the Reading Room
Posts in Beyond the Reading Room
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We are pleased to announce a new exhibition created to coincide with the American Semiquincentennial, on view from May 8 to September 20, 2026 in the Hatcher Gallery Exhibit Room. On display is a selection of historical materials and artifacts from the Joseph A. Labadie Collection documenting the Peoples Bicentennial Commission (PBC).
Keeping with last month's theme of cornbread, this month’s recipe is also corn bread, but from the 20th century. Ella Hall was a Black landlord and cook who lived in Ann Arbor from the early 1920s until she passed away in 1962. Her manuscript cookbook resides in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive and a facsimile edition will be released by the University of Michigan Press in June 2026.
Join us this Thursday, April 16th, between 4-6p for our final Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester featuring the Lawrence Kasdan Papers!
Join us this week for a conversation and collection visit with artists specializing in Ottoman classical book arts!
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been canceled, but we plan to reschedule for Fall 2026.
Join us on Friday, April 17th from 2:00-300pm in the Hatcher Gallery Event Space for the first Longone Lecture, a biennial lecture series exploring the history of food and drink in the United States. We are delighted to welcome our first speaker, Rebecca Sharpless, Professor of History at Texas Christian University. Dr. Sharpless writes on the intersections of food, women, and work in the American South. This event is hybrid and a zoom link is also available.
Join us on Friday, April 17th from 2:00-300pm in the Hatcher Gallery Event Space for the first Longone Lecture, a biennial lecture series exploring the history of food and drink in the United States. We are delighted to welcome our first speaker, Rebecca Sharpless, Professor of History at Texas Christian University. Dr. Sharpless writes on the intersections of food, women, and work in the American South. This event is hybrid and a zoom link is also available.
Malinda Russell’s A Domestic Cook Book, published in Paw Paw, MI in 1866 is the oldest known cookbook by an African American woman. A free woman of color from Tennessee who had moved to Michigan to escape violence during the Civil War, Malinda Russell wrote her cookbook in hopes of raising money to return to Tennessee and reclaim her property. This blog post highlights her recipe for cornbread
Join us this Thursday, March 19th, between 4-6p for our next Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester featuring conservation work!
Please join the Special Collections Research Center and the Sustainable Food Systems Initiative at 5:00pm on Thursday, March 12th for a screening of episode 4 of the documentary series The Price of Milk: The Kids Are Not Alright, followed by a panel discussion with Oatly Global VP of Sustainability Erin Augustine and Food Studies scholar Margot Finn.
In 1978, Anna Thomas published a sequel to her first book entitled The Vegetarian Epicure. Book Two. This book went through numerous printings (JBLCA holds the 8th printing, issued in 1981). For this month’s recipe of the month, I decided to try Thomas' “baba ghanouj,” which she describes to those unfamiliar with it as “a salad of eggplant and sesame paste.”
The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive holds more than 2,400 community cookbooks from across the United States, ranging in date from 1871 to 2021. This month’s blog post features two gingerbread cake recipes from The Cook Book of the Woman’s Club in Franklin, New Hampshire, published in 1922.