Special Collections Blog

June 03, 2008

Professor Gillan Donates Papers, Books to the Libraries

By Bern Mulligan

Professor Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Director of the Creative Writing Program, recently donated her papers to the Binghamton University Libraries. Professor Gillan, a renowned poet, short story writer, and essayist, has been a member of the Binghamton University faculty since Fall 2001. Prior to that, she was the Director of the Poetry Center and the Cultural Affairs Department at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey for twenty years.

Professor Gillan has written eleven books of poetry and co-edited four poetry and fiction anthologies with her daughter, Jennifer. She has both written poems in Italian and translated poems into Italian. Her poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in dozens of anthologies and numerous magazines and journals. Her papers include her personal journals from 1954 to 2007; nearly all of her published work; drafts of poems and stories from 1957 to the present; DVDs, CDs, and audio tapes of programs on which she was featured; forty years of correspondence with well-known poets, fiction writers, editors, and scholars; feature articles on her and reviews of her work; photographs of her with many of the most prominent poets of the last thirty years; and the Poetry Center and Cultural Affairs Department archives.

Much of Professor Gillan’s work deals with her Italian-American heritage. Her poetry collection, Italian Women in Black Dresses, has appeared in three editions. She has also been heavily involved in promoting multicultural writing in her classes and publishing multicultural writers in her anthologies.

Since 2002, Professor Gillan and the Creative Writing Department have held two annual contests, the Milton Kessler Poetry Book Award and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. From the submitted entries to these contests, she has donated more than 100 poetry and fiction titles each year to the Libraries’ literature collection. She has also donated titles to the Broome County Public Library and the Elmira Correctional Facility Library.

Posted by jgreen at 12:54 PM

April 30, 2008

Gifts of Professor Luciano Pizziconi

Professor Luciano Pizziconi, who in the month of October 2007 visited Binghamton University and was conferred an Honorary Citizenship both by the city of binghamton and the Town of Vestal, has recently gifted Binghamton University with several historical and modern items explaining in a letter to John M. Meador, Jr., Director of Libraries, that this was done in order to "further deepen aspects of Italian culture and increase friendship between Binghamton University and the 'Athanor'" Project of which he is President.

One of the gifts is an original, intact, brand-new collection, in eight volumes, of Italian popular music and songs from the 1920's to modern times. Titled La Canzone Italiana (The Italian Song), the collection offers songs and music of the 1920's and 1930's covering the radio, the theatre, Italian jazz, and American songs in theatre, flims and musicals as assimilated in Italy.

Each decade from the 1920's to modern times is represented by ten albums of songs for a total of 80 albums contituting a vertiable patrinomy of popular music. Some of the albums deal, for instance, with Neopolitan songs, the salons and Cabaret songs of the 1920's to the 1950's, the San Remo song festivals, the film songs of the 1930's, and post-World War II songs. The eight-volume collection is accompanied by the four-volume critical analysis by experts on song, theatre, cinema, operetta, television, richly illustrated with beautiful iconographic commentary together with sections on practically every divo or diva of the theatrical, musical, cinematic and popular songs world.

In addition, Professor Pizziconi sent four reproductions of original archaeological artifacts in the Region of Abruzzon now kept in the Museum of the city of Boiano:

1) A pointed lance of Samnite origin dating from the VII century B.C.

2) A matrimonial fibula originating especially from Central Italy and assigned to the IX-X centuries B.C.

3) A votive image, a funerary fragment, dated as of the III century B.C.

4) A small fictile head of woman of the Etruscan origin, dated as of the VI century B.C.

5) A bronze reproduction in two tablets of the Tavola Osca (Ocacan Tablet), now kept in the London British Museum, a document which provides information on the language and religion of the Samnites. The alphabet, dating as of the III century B.C., has 21 letters, one more than the Etruscan, with the writing reading from left to right. The text offers an idea of the agricultural life of the times and of its religious cult and deities.

Also donated were a catalogue of Samnite artifacts with photos and description of each item, and a volume by Enrico Guidoni, titled I Tre Arcangeli: Leonardo, Michelangelo e Reaffaello. This volume offers a critical discussion of the portrayal by these three Italian artists of the three archangels: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

These latest gifts by Professor Luciano Pizziconi are a most welcome and important addition to the artistic and literary treasures with which he has generously endowed Binghamton University's Library and Special Collections in recent years.

- Dr. Sandro Sticca, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Binghamton University

Posted by jgreen at 12:02 PM

Molly Peacock Collection

Binghamton University Libraries recently announced the acquisition of the Molly Peacock Collection.

Molly Peacock is an internationally acclaimed poet and is the author of several poetry collections, including Optic Nerve (2005), Cornucopia (2002), Original Love (1995), Take Heart (1989), Raw Heaven (1984) and Live Apart (1980). In 2006, Peacock wrote and performed the critically praised one-woman play, The Shimmering Verge.

Peacock has conducted readings and workshops at the Library of Congress, the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and at universities and libraries in the United States, Canada and England. She has received awards from the Danforth Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation , the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts Fellowships. Peacock has been the Poet-in-Residence at the American Poets' Corner and has served as president of the Poetry Society of America.

She is also an alumna of Harper College, who has chosen Special Collections as the depository for her papers. The Molly Peacock Collection contains over 100 linear feet of manuscripts, correspondence, poetry notebooks, literary journals, art work, audio-visual recordings, photographs, publicity materials and ephemera.

Posted by jgreen at 11:50 AM

December 12, 2007

Libraries acquire Dickinson letter

Special Collections of the BU Libraries recently acquired a letter written by Daniel Dickinson in July 1860 regarding the establishment of the Inebriate Asylum in Binghamton. See Dickinson Collection.

Posted by Melody at 10:57 AM