Greetings from the Center for Campus History! Hope you all are having a good start to 2024 and are getting settled in for the new semester. For our first newsletter of the year we have events to share, Center research to highlight and new books to recommend, so read on!

The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center For Campus History is an ongoing university effort to uncover and give voice to those who experienced, challenged, and overcame prejudice on campus. As always, if you have a story to share, an event you think should be researched, or a person you think has been overlooked, please email us at centerforcampushistory@wisc.edu.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day — marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Prison Camp — is January 27, 2024. To honor the day, we’re sharing Center research into the life of Adela Kalvary Owen, a UW–Madison alumna and Holocaust survivor, who resisted, survived, and ultimately, seized the day.

When Kalvary Owen arrived at UW–Madison in 1950, she had seen and experienced more than many of her peers could imagine. She had been a freedom fighter, a slave laborer, a displaced person — all by the age of 25. But once Adela reached the Groves Housing Cooperative, in her own words, she “had come home.”

Read more of her story here. 

Mark your calendars! Writer and actress Anna Deavere Smith will give the keynote talk for the UW–Madison’s 2024 MLK Symposium. Smith is credited with having created a new form of theater. Her plays, sometimes called “docudramas,” focus on contemporary issues from multiple points of view and are composed from excerpts of hundreds of interviews. Her work as an actress on television includes “Inventing Anna,” “The West Wing,” “Nurse Jackie,” and “Black-ish.” Films include “Philadelphia,” “The American President,” “Rachel Getting Married,” and “Here Today.”

Wisconsin Union Theater's Shannon Hall at Memorial Union.

Snow has finally started falling in Madison and the temps have dropped. The historic Winter Carnival is just around the corner, promising to bring its annual assortment of wacky activities to the ice of Mendota (inflatable Statue of Liberty head or Taylor Swift skate night anyone?) But frankly it’s not the wildest thing students have used the frozen lake for. How about flying down a five-story ramp at the top of Bascom Hill down to the ice below?

Check out these archival photos of the Muir Knoll Ski Jump. Named for the knobbly outcropping on the side of Bascom, there were multiple ramps built between the 1910s and 1950s, the tallest of which was more than 50 feet tall.

Usually we use this space to share one of the many (many… many… ) books that have helped the Center’s research or piqued our interest. But this month we want to make sure you know about an opportunity to pick out as many (or if we’re being honest, more) books than you could ever need. 

The Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries Spring Book Sale is coming up in April! The semiannual used book extravaganza has great deals and raises money to support UW Libraries programming. (And if you need to make room before stocking up, the Friends accept ongoing used book donations on a rolling basis.) 

Memorial Library Room 116

Usually, Center Director Kacie Lucchini Butcher uses this space to share a book, podcast, movie, quote, or something else that’s been adding to the CCH. This month we still have a recommendation, but Assistant Director Taylor L. Bailey is pinch hitting.

So, this month From The Desk of KLB TLB: Black and Queer on Campus by Michael P. Jeffries. Drawing on interviews with students from over a dozen colleges, Jeffries offers an inside look at what life is like for Black LGBTQ college students on campuses across the United States, the specific challenges they face and the ways they overcome them.