New collections feature Caribbean and Chicano cultures, dance in New Haven, and born-digital Boswell
Beinecke Library reports that, from January to March 2026, staff processed 11 new collections and added new materials to 14 existing collections. All the collections are discoverable in Archives at Yale.
These new materials and collections—including the papers of author and educator Kwame Dawes and photographer Fazal Sheikh—are now open to researchers, thanks to the efforts of staff members in the Archival Description Unit and in the Accessioning, Acquisitions, and Collections Control Unit (AACCU).
Chicano student activists ephemera
This collection contains printed material and ephemera relating to Chicano student movements in California from 1970 to 1983.
This collection contains aerial landscape photographs (from 2019 to 2022) by visual artist Fazal Sheikh. The medium-format, pigmented inkjet prints capture sites of extraction, industry, and environmental degradation in the western United States and show the geographic scale of these lasting impacts on Indigenous lands. Sites include the Mexican Hat Uranium Mill Disposal Cell, Mexican Hat, Utah, in the Four Corners Region; Ambrosia Lake Uranium Disposal Cell, Grants Region, New Mexico; El Segundo Coal Mine, McKinley County, New Mexico; and U.S. Magnesium, Great Salt Lake, Utah, among others.
Henry Kissinger and Hans Morgenthau correspondence
This collection contains correspondence between former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (from 1973 to 1977) and political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau, with related letters, printed material, and photographs.
The collection contains research and field notes related to the professional work of political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott (1936–2024). The materials include subject files related to Southeast Asia from the 1970s and 1980s, with clippings, notes, course materials, and annotated bibliographies used in Scott’s research process. Also included are 40 notebooks from Scott’s fieldwork in Kedah, Malaysia, spanning from 1978 to 1980, which resulted in one of his best-known books, “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.”
This collection contains poems, manuscripts, writings, notes, books, born-digital material, and other papers created by or related to American visual artist Jim Dine.
The papers of Ghanaian author, editor, and educator Kwame Dawes contain writings, professional papers, personal papers, printed materials, audiocassettes, and digital files. They document Dawes’s interest in and work on the topics of Caribbean and reggae music and literature, African American literature, race relations, and African literature and the literature of the African diaspora. Series 1 of the collection contains his critical writings on these and other topics, poetry, plays, and short stories; Series II contains the records of the African Poetry Book Fund, which Dawes established in 2012, and other editorial and publishing projects; and Series III contains professional papers and course materials from his faculty work at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of South Carolina.
Lois Ames collection of Sylvia Plath
In 1969, the poet Ted Hughes appointed Lois Ames the official biographer of his former wife, poet Sylvia Plath. The biography was never completed or published. This collection contains correspondence, photographs, writings, printed materials, and audiovisual materials created by or compiled by Ames while doing research for the book. The bulk of the material was created and assembled during the decade after Plath’s death in 1963. Among the materials are Plath’s progress reports on the writing of her novel, “The Bell Jar.”
Lowrider and cholo printed ephemera
The collection contains zines and other ephemera related to the Chicano lowrider and cholo subculture of the 1970s and 1980s in California and Texas. Materials include three issues of “The New Lowrider News Bulletin” (1978), an early issue of “Cholo” magazine (ca. 1979), and an issue of “Latin Life,” illustrated by David Gonzales.
Martin Schøyen collection of medieval seal matrices
This collection of historian and paleographer Martin Shøyen contains more than 400 seal matrices, dating from 1175 to 1606—made from lead, copper alloy, silver, and other materials—many with corresponding wax impressions. Also included are black-and-white photographs and a catalog containing detailed information about each seal, which depict busts of men and women, religious symbols, and lions, eagles, and other animals.
New Haven Dance Oral Histories collection
This collection includes video and audio recordings of oral histories created and collected during the New Haven Dance History Project, launched in 2021 by the Yale Dance Lab, to document the city’s diverse dance history from the 1950s to 2020s.
The collection documents the diplomatic, political, and scholarly career of former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott ’68. Materials document his government service, journalism career, and writings, particularly those related to Russia. The papers include diaries, correspondence, speeches, research materials, photographs, audiovisual recordings, computer media, and notebooks that together provide extensive insight into Talbott’s evolving views of post-Cold War diplomacy, including sanctions, missile proliferation, the Helsinki Summit, and NATO expansion.
New materials were added to these 14 library collections:
David Alan Richards Collection of Rudyard Kipling
John Boswell papers (born-digital series)
Natural Resources Defense Council records
Toba Pato Tucker photographs and papers
Thornton Wilder autograph letters
Image: Miguel A. Gandert, “Lowriders.” Miguel A. Gandert Photographs and Papers, Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
