As an army captain teaching constitutional law at the U.S. Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland during the late 1960s, Christopher Pyle learned about the army’s domestic spying operation that targeted antiwar and civil rights protesters. Disclosing his knowledge about that surveillance in 1970 in two award-winning articles, Pyle led the fight to end the military’s domestic spying program by testifying before three Congressional committees. Currently a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, Pyle continues to write about civil liberties and rights to privacy focusing his attention now on the Patriot Act and the detention of aliens and citizens without trial.

Documenting Pyle’s investigation into the military domestic spying operation, the collection consists of court transcripts, telephone logs, surveillance binders, correspondence, research notes, and news clippings.

A wealthy merchant from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Includes details of his ventures in ship owning and his investments in manufacturing companies and real estate. Also contains total assets of his “property in possession” as of January 1845, and lists of debtors, including men, women, businesses, religious groups, and political groups.

The distinguished cellular biologist Chris Woodcock came to UMass Amherst in 1972 after receiving a doctorate at the University College London (1966) and appointments at the University of Chicago and Harvard. During a long and highly productive career, Woodcock became widely known for work on the structure and functions of the cell nucleus and its components, applying a variety of advanced techniques to investigate the architecture and dynamics and chromatin folding at the nucleosome level and the larger scale architecture of chromosomes. A prolific grant writer and recipient, he helped build the Central Microscopy Facility at UMass, serving as its Director, and was appointed Gilbert Woodside Chair in Zoology in 1994.

The Woodcock collection consists of a series of laboratory notebooks kept during his early research on the green alga Acetabularia, accompanied by hundreds of electron micrographic photographs of cellular structures.

Founded in 1977, the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) is an international organization dedicated to furthering the study and preservation of gravestones. Based in Greenfield, Mass., the Association promotes the study of gravestones from historical and artistic perspectives. To raise public awareness about the significance of historic gravemarkers and the issues surrounding their preservation, the AGS sponsors conferences and workshops, publishes both a quarterly newsletter and annual journal, Markers, and has built an archive of collections documenting gravestones and the memorial industry.

The AGS Books Collection contains scarce, out of print, and rare printed works on cemeteries and graveyards, epitaphs and inscriptions, and gravemarkers, with an emphasis on North America. The collection is divided into two series: Series 1 (Monographs and Offprints) and Series 2 (Theses and Dissertations).

Composer and professor of music, University of Iowa and University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Correspondence, scores and parts for instrumental and vocal compositions, sound recordings, programs and posters for performances of Bezanson’s works (1951-1980), sound recordings and other papers relating to development, performance, and publication of Bezanson’s compositions. Includes papers related to the development of the opera Golden Child, broadcast on national television and written in collaboration with Paul Engle; and score of the opera Stranger in Eden, with libretto by William R. Reardon.

Sadie Campbell and sons Harold and Robert Leslie

A housewife, mother and active community member, Sadie Campbell was born in 1881 and lived at 1 Depot Street in Cheshire, Massachusetts for most of her life until she died in 1971. Sadie was closely tied to the Cheshire community where she had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and was active in a a number of organizations, such as: the Cheshire Ladies Reading Club, the Merry Wives of Cheshire Shakespeare Club, and the Cheshire Cash Tearoom.

The collection documents three generations of a western Massachusetts family. The variety and nature of the materials in this collection offer a good view into the local and social history of western Massachusetts through the lives of Sadie Campbell and her family.

A druggist by training, William Denslow became interested in botany as a means of combating tuberculosis through outdoor exercise. As his interests developed, Denslow amassed an herbarium that included between 11,000 and 15,000 specimens, including both American and European species.

The Denslow collection consists of a single volume of manuscripts, chiefly letters, collected from significant botanists and other individuals, including William Henry Brewer, Mordecai Cubitt Cooke, Asa Gray, Isaac Hollister Hall, Thomas P. James, Horace Mann, Edward Sylvester Morse, Charles Horton Peck, George Edward Post, Frederick Ward Putnam, George Thurber, and John Torrey.

2013

First prize: Ken Lefebvre (2013)

“‘A Wise Conservator’: The Life and Times of Henry Hill Goodell.”

Honorable mention: Daniel Stein (2013)

“David versus the State: Refusal to Serve in the Israeli Defense Forces during the Lebanon War and the First Intifada: 1982-1993.”

2012

First prize: Justine DeCamillis (2012)

“Liminal Space and Identities: The Transitional and Juxtaposition of Opposites within the Prologue, Bisclavret and Lanval of Marie de France’s Lais.”

Honorable mention: Peter Arsenault (2012)

“Poetic Liminality in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve.”

2011

First prize: Christopher Russell (2010)

“A Tale of Two Cities: How the Government Caused and Maintained Racial Inequality in Oakland, ca. 1945-1970.”

Honorable mention: Marjorie Connolly (2011)

“Anarchy to Activism: Italian Immigrant Politics During Boston’s Great Molasses Flood.”

Honorable mention: Sarah Goldstein (2012)

“Cambodian Immigration and the Cambodian Crisis Committee”

2010

First prize: Paul Kinsman

“Platonic and Pythagorean Ratios in the Formal Analysis of 15th Century Music”

Honorable mention: Vanessa De Santis

“The Emergence of a Class of Informed, Working Italian Immigrant Women in the Early Twentieth Century“

Honorable mention: Austin Powell

“Woman-As-Witch
An Analysis of Gender in Pre to Early Modern Society

2009

First prize: Name removed upon request

Honorable mention: Amy Couto

“Treaty of Canandaigua: The political necessity of peace

Honorable mention: Phil Jensen

“We are history, we are legend: Perspectives of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

Nancy E. Foster

For the better part of four decades, Nancy E. Foster was active in the struggle for social justice, peace, and political reform. From early work in civil rights through her engagement in political reform in Amherst, Mass., Foster was recognized for her work in the movements opposing war, nuclear power, and the assault on civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Locally, she worked with her fellow members of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst and with interfaith coalitions to address problems of hunger and homelessness.

Centered in western Massachusetts and concentrated in the last decade of her life (2000-2010), the Nancy Foster Papers includes a record of one woman’s grassroots activism for peace, civil liberties, and social justice. The issues reflected in the collection range from the assault on civil liberties after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to immigration, hunger and poverty, the Iraq Wars, and the conflict in Central America during the 1980s, and much of the material documents Nancy’s involvement with local organizations such as the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. The collection also contains a valuable record of Nancy’s participation in local politics in Amherst, beginning with the records of the 1972 committee which was charged with reviewing the Town Meeting.

Mike Haley

An actor and motion picture assistant director and producer, Michael Haley was born in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1942. While an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, Haley became involved in theater, joining the avant garde Buffalo Meat Company that performed original works in Massachusetts and New York City. Following a chance call from a producer looking for local help in 1969, Haley worked on his first film, the low-budget crime drama, Honeymoon Killers. After work on several other film and television productions, Haley was among ten people selected for the Directors Guild of America’s Assistant Directors Training Program. During his forty year career, Haley’s credits have included work with a number of noted directors, including Sidney Lumet, Barry Levinson, and Penny Marshall, and he has enjoyed a particularly long and productive association with Mike Nichols. His films have included The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Stepford Wives, Biloxi Blues, True Colors, A League of Their Own, Groundhog Day, Primary Colors, and Closer. He was the recipient of two Humanitas Prizes (for Wit and Angels in America), and among others awards, the Christopher Award (for Wit), the Directors Guild of America award, Producers Guild of America award, and an Emmy (for Angels in America), a Directors Guild of America plaque (Working Girl), and the Berkshire International Film Festival Life-Time Achievement Award. He was named Artist of the Year at UMass and has been selected for a Bateman Fellowship.

Reflecting a diverse career in film, the Haley collection consists of scripts, photographs, memorabilia, and diaries, with a small quantity of notes and correspondence. The scripts, approximately 110 of them, are from films ranging from the Godfather II to Charlie Wilson’s War and Angels in America, may include several drafts. The photographs are both numerous and particularly rich, including some particularly interesting candid shots taken on film sets, as well as official shots taken by photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark.