Category Archives: UMass Boston History

Special issue of New England Journal of Public Policy features selected writings by Shaun O’Connell

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CoverThe most recent issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy collects twelve essays and reviews written by UMass Boston faculty member Shaun O’Connell. Since the publication was founded in 1985, O’Connell has published articles, book reviews, and more in the New England Journal of Public Policy.

Shaun O’Connell has been a faculty member in the English Department at UMass Boston since the university opened in Boston’s Park Square in 1965. Describing the roots of his long connection to UMass Boston in a 1998 interview, O’Connell told the interviewer: “One of my former teachers at UMass Amherst told me that there was a Boston campus opening. This would have been in late 1964, and that I should call up Paul Gagnon and Al Ryan, who were the two people who were hiring at that time. They had set up shop in David Riesman’s house in Cambridge. And so, I called them and went for an interview, and shortly thereafter, I was offered a job, a one-year position. I had no idea at the time that it would last this long, but as I say, I am delighted that it did.”

Read a transcription and listen to the full interview here.

Professor_of_English_Shaun_OConnell

Professor of English Shaun O’Connell, circa 1970s

In his introduction to this Special Issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, O’Connell reflects on the process of selecting essays for inclusion: “It has been a tense task, rereading essays I wrote some decades ago, but in the end satisfying, for they remind me of the times, tempers, and cultural contexts in which they were composed and they have things to say that I had forgotten I said. My hope is that these essays, granted a second time around, will have worthy things to say to current readers.”

And in his foreword to this issue, New England Journal of Public Policy founder and editor Padraig O’Malley writes about O’Connell’s history with the journal: “Throughout the tenures of five U.S. presidencies, eight UMass presidencies, six governors, and five UMass Boston chancellors, Shaun O’Connell has regularly produced scintillating essays distilling the essence of several books, ‘bundled,’ as it were, because of common themes that run through their pages, into masterful expositions—profound, reflective, social critiques that invariably tie knots between fiction and nonfiction and a range of pertinent public policy issues.”

The New England Journal of Public Policy has been published since 1985 by the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. After folding in 2006 due to financial constraints, the New England Journal of Public Policy resumed publication in 2013 as an online, open access journal. Full issues of the entire run of the New England Journal of Public Policy are available on ScholarWorks.

Explore the Special Issue of the journal here and view all of O’Connell’s writings from the journal here.

You can also see photos and interviews with Professor O’Connell on the digital collections site for University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

ScholarWorks is the University of Massachusetts Boston’s online, open access institutional repository for scholarship and research. ScholarWorks serves as a publishing platform, a preservation service, and a showcase for the research and scholarly output of members of the UMass Boston community. ScholarWorks is a service of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

In the Archives: Women’s Studies Program Records

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Women's Studies course listing brochure, 1981-1982.

Women’s Studies course listing brochure, 1981-1982.

Women’s Studies emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s as a national curriculum and higher education institutional reform movement that addressed issues of gender bias, gender inequality, and sexism in the academic canon and society at large. One of the first Women’s Studies programs in New England was founded at UMass Boston. In the late 1960s, UMass Boston students, faculty, and staff organized a Women’s Association that addressed a variety of feminist issues.

International Women's Day reception flyer, March 1983.

International Women’s Day reception flyer, March 1983.

Faculty in the humanities and social sciences developed courses focused on women and gender. In 1972, a student-faculty committee proposed a Women’s Studies concentration, and the group gathered hundreds of signatures in support of this proposal on a petition to the University Assembly and UMass Boston administration. In 1973, the proposal was approved, and in the fall of that year, the 18-credit interdisciplinary concentration was official.

Over the years, the Women’s Studies faculty at UMass Boston grew, and a bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies was proposed in the late 1980s. Chancellor Sherry H. Penney championed the B.A. program during her first year at UMass Boston in 1988, and the program was approved by the Board of Regents in 1989. That fall, Women’s Studies offered a major and minor, but remained as a “program” in order to encourage faculty across disciplines to participate in curriculum development and teaching. The program became a department in 2006, and is now the Women’s and Gender Studies Department.

Founding program faculty members Ann Froines and Jean Humez, circa 1998.

Founding program faculty members Ann Froines and Jean Humez, undated.

From the 25th anniversary commemorative booklet, Women’s Studies at UMass Boston Celebrates 25 Years, 1973-1998, a note from Program Director Jean Humez:

The program has grown and evolved in many ways in this quarter century. We grew to five full-time faculty lines; we evolved from a concentration into a full-fledged academic major (with a minor); and we have continued to develop our curriculum in response to new student and faculty interests (always constrained by resource realities, of course!). Through all the changes, we have remained dedicated to the best goals of feminist education, still enunciated in our handbook:
• To bring the history and critical perspectives of women of different cultures, races, and social classes into the university curriculum;
• To stimulate and support new, nonsexist research and writing on women and gender by students and faculty;
• To help promote a nonsexist university environment.

Women's Studies newsletter, 1981.

Women’s Studies newsletter, 1981.

University Archives & Special Collections holds the records of the Women’s Studies Program from 1972-2006. The records document the program’s governance and growth, including faculty appointments and student enrollment; curriculum development; and special projects and associated organizational work. Formats include proposals, by-laws, meeting minutes, budget information, correspondence, curricular materials, and publications.

View the finding aid for the Women’s Studies Program records here. Browse publications by the Women’s and Gender Studies Department here.

For questions about this collection or to schedule a research appointment, please contact library.archives@umb.edu or 617-287-5469.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Interested in the history of Columbia Point?

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See page 21 of the presentation by historian Nancy Seasholes and find out how the pictured configuration of land became the Columbia Point of today. (Image courtesy University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston)

See page 21 of the presentation by Nancy Seasholes and find out how this pictured configuration of land became the Columbia Point of today. (Image courtesy University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston)

Columbia Point has been the home of the University of Massachusetts Boston since 1974 (you can learn more about that move and about the site selection process in our archival collections), but this peninsula in Dorchester Bay has a documented history of use that goes back for centuries.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston recently posted a presentation by historian Nancy S. Seasholes to our digital collections site about the history of Columbia Point. The presentation, which explains and shows Columbia Point in its many configurations over the years, is based on a lecture given at UMass Boston by Nancy Seasholes as part of Geography Awareness Week. The lecture was sponsored by the Earth and Geographic Sciences Club, which was advised by Professor Richard Gelpke. The lecture and presentation draw from Dr. Seasholes’s highly regarded book Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (MIT Press, 2003).

Click here to view the presentation and to learn about the surprisingly long and varied history of Columbia Point.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

University of Massachusetts Boston: Human Rights Working Group Records – Now open for research

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Guest post by Kristen Weischedel

human rights

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston is pleased to announce that the records of the Human Rights Working Group at the University of Massachusetts Boston are now open to researchers.

This relatively small collection, one linear foot, chronicles the evolution of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Human Rights Working Group, which was created in March 2001 with the goal of establishing a human rights minor and center at the university. The group also worked to collaborate with communities outside UMass Boston, bringing activism to the campus and campus activism to the greater community.

This collection reveals daily activities of the organization from 2001 to 2006. Included among these materials are research, petitions, correspondence, mission statements, and meeting documents, which provide unique insight into the workings of this important student and faculty collaboration.

View the finding aid for this collection.

For questions about this collection or to schedule a research appointment, please contact library.archives@umb.edu or 617-287-5469.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

UMass Boston archivists give presentation at ACRL/NEC annual conference

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Photo 2

Meghan Bailey, Processing Archivist in the Healey Library at UMass Boston (left), and a conference attendee discuss the department’s poster.

Last week, archivists from University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston headed to the ACRL/NEC Annual Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. At this year’s conference, called Spacing Out with the Library: An Exploration of Collaboration Across the Physical, Virtual and those Places in Between, Meghan Bailey and Andrew Elder presented as part of the poster session on the department’s efforts, sparked by the 50th anniversary of the founding of the University of Massachusetts Boston, to carry out a wide range of initiatives, all focused on locating, accessioning, preserving, and sharing the physical evidence of the university’s history.

Meghan and Andrew represented the department at the conference, but the poster was developed and designed collaboratively by the full staff of University Archives & Special Collections.

acrl posterOur poster, titled “‘Save Our History!’ Collaborating to Preserve the Past at UMass Boston,” outlines the various collecting activities, outreach methods, digitization projects, and dogged detective work that resulted in the addition of more than 2,500 linear feet of unique historic materials to the University Archives, as well as a number of well-received public events and exhibitions. We highlight our planning processes, marketing efforts, outreach and collecting endeavors, and our work to share the history of UMass Boston with members of the university community and beyond. We also highlight a number of our successes and identify ways other institutions and archives can work collaboratively to launch similar initiatives.

View the poster and handout here.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.