5 Microfilm reels (27 volumes on 5 microfilm reels)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Microfilm reels
Scrapbooks
Place:
Africa, French-speaking West -- Description and Travel
Date:
1922-1992
Scope and Contents:
This microfilm collection contains Lois Mailou Jones' scrapbooks documenting her career as an African American artist and educator. Scrapbooks contain correspondence (1928-1992) primarily regarding Jones' exhibitions, Howard University, and her art education in Paris, and include a letter and photograph from Emile Bernard; photographs of Jones in her Washington, D.C. and Paris studios, her work, and her extensive travels through Africa and Haiti; and printed material including exhibition announcements, catalogs, and clippings (1922-1992) of reviews, interviews, and articles on the European and African influences in her work. Also included are her resume, materials submitted for the Rosenwald Fellowship, and notes related to her coordination of the 1974 exhibition Paintings by Women Artists of the Caribbean and Afro-American Women Artists.
Biographical / Historical:
Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) was an African American painter, designer, and educator in Washington, DC. Jones studied at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and at the Academie Julian in Paris. She was professor of design and watercolor at Howard University from 1930-1977. She married Haitian graphic designer Vergniaud Pierre-Noel in 1953 and the couple frequently returned to Haiti. In 1970 she served as cultural ambassador to Africa for the United States Information Agency.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming by Lois Mailou Jones, 1990 and 1992.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
The papers of Francis P. Conant document his anthropological work and, to a lesser extent, his previous career as a journalist and photographer. Francis Paine Conant was a cultural anthropologist who pioneered the use of satellite data in anthropology. He conducted fieldwork in Nigeria and Kenya, and his research interests spanned cultural ecology, AIDS, malaria, and sex and gender studies. He was also Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hunter College, where he taught from 1962 to 1995.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Francis P. Conant document his anthropological work and, to a lesser extent, his previous career as a journalist and photographer. The bulk of the collection consists of his field work in Africa, specifically his doctoral research among the Barawa in Nigeria during the 1950s; his work among the Pokot in Kenya for Walter Goldschimdt's Culture and Ecology in East Africa Project during the 1960s; and his later research among the Pokot during the 1970s incorporating remote sensing tools. These materials include his dissertation, field notes, kinship charts, maps, correspondence, photographs, and sound recordings. The collection also contains photographs, correspondence, and writings relating to the Bernheim-Conant expedition through Africa. Among the photos are Polaroids of Mohammad Naguib, first president of Egypt. Also present in the collection are his published and unpublished academic writings, his writings and correspondence as a news correspondent in Finland, and files from courses that he taught. In addition, the collection contains some of Conant's digital files, which have not yet been examined. Overall there is little correspondence in the collection, aside from some letters scattered throughout the collection relating to his research and writings (both as an academic and a journalist).
Arrangement:
Collection is organized into 9 series: 1) Nigeria, 1956-1960, undated; 2) Kenya, 1961-1974, undated; 3) Remote Sensing, 1967, 1971, 1976-1984, 1991-1992, 2002; 4) Bernheim-Conant Expedition, 1953-1956; 5) Writings, 1960-1966, 1974-1995, 2000-2006, undated; 6) University Files, 1956-1957, 1961, 1970, 1972, 1982-1995, undated; 7) Biographical Files and Letters, circa 1940, CIRCA 1946-1947, 1951, 1955, 1979, 1989-1991, 1996-2000, 2007-2011, undated; 8) Sound Recordings, 1956-1965, 1971, 1977-1978, undated; 9) Digital Files
Biographical / Historical:
Francis Paine Conant was a cultural anthropologist who pioneered the use of satellite data in anthropology. He conducted fieldwork in Nigeria and Kenya, and his research interests spanned cultural ecology, AIDS, malaria, and sex and gender studies. He was also Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hunter College, where he taught from 1962 to 1995.
Conant was born on February 27, 1926 in New York City. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, he deferred college to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1944. He served as a field artillery observer for the 294th Field Artillery Battalion and helped liberate two concentration camps during World War II. After he was honorably discharged in 1946, he attended Cornell University, where he obtained his B.A. in 1950. While at Cornell, a Finnish student invited Conant to Finland to help relocate families, farms, and livestock further from the Russian border, a protective measure against another Russian invasion. Conant accepted his invitation and took time off from his academic studies to spend several months in Finland in 1947, as well as a summer in 1949.
After graduating from Cornell, Conant attended University of Iowa's graduate writing program for a short time. Dissatisfied with the program, he worked briefly for the Carnegie Endowment, during which time he occasionally served as a personal driver for Alger Hiss. In 1951, he returned to Finland to pursue a career in journalism. He worked for United Press International until 1953.
From December 5, 1953 to May 26, 1954, Conant traveled throughout Africa as part of the Bernheim-Conant Expedition for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The expedition was led by Claude Bernheim, the father of his first wife, Miriam. They traveled 16,000 miles through Northern Central and Eastern Africa, collecting film footage and material culture for the museum. Conant served as the writer and photographer for the expedition, publishing illustrated articles in the New York Times and Natural History Magazine.
He later returned to Africa as a doctoral student at Columbia University, where he earned his PhD in Anthropology in 1960. After studying the Hausa language at the International African Institute in London, he traveled to Nigeria as a Fellow of the Ford Foundation to carry out his fieldwork in Dass Independent District, Bauchi Province. Working among the Barawa that live in the mountains of Dass, he focused on their religion and its impact on the technology, social and political organization, and structure of their society. His dissertation was titled "Dodo of Dass: A Study of a Pagan Religion of Northern Nigeria." During his fieldwork, he also collected data on rock gongs, which were first identified and written about by Bernard Fagg in 1955.
In 1961 to 1962, Conant was a research associate for Walter Goldschmidt's Culture and Ecology in East Africa Project. The purpose of the project was to conduct a controlled comparison of four different East African societies and the farmers and pastoralists within each tribe. Conant was assigned to conduct ethnographic research among the Pokot in West Pokot District in Kenya. This research would form the basis of his remote sensing work in the same area more than a decade later.
Conant was first introduced to remote sensing data in 1974 when his colleague Priscilla Reining showed him Landsat imagery of one his former fieldwork sites. He was inspired by the potential applications of satellite data to study cultural and ecological relationships. In 1975, he and Reining organized a workshop on "Satellite Potentials for Anthropological Studies of Subsistence Activities and Population Change." He incorporated remote sensing tools in his 1977 to 1980 study of the changing cultivation patterns and management of livestock in West Pokot District. His research combined traditional fieldwork (which included data he had collected in the 1960s), LANDSAT data, and geospatial data collected from the ground.
Later in his career, Conant's research interests expanded to include the spread of diseases, specifically AIDS and malaria. He, along with Priscilla Reining, John Bongaarts, and Peter Way found that uncircumcised men were 86% more likely to contract HIV than circumcised men. Their findings were published in their paper "The Relationship Between Male Circumcision and HIV Infection in African Populations" (1989). His research on malaria focused on the spread of the disease during African prehistory.
Conant taught briefly at Columbia University and was an Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts, at Amherst in 1960-1961. Most of his academic career was spent at Hunter College, where he served as Chair of the Anthropology Department several times. He also founded and headed the college's Research Institute in Aruba.
Conant was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University's Pitts Rivers Museum in 1968-1969. He was also a fellow of the American Anthropological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International African Institute, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Anthropological Institute. In addition, he was actively involved with the Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Conant died at the age of 84 on January 29, 2011.
Sources Consulted
Bates, Daniel G. 2011. Francis P. Conant: A Tribute to a Friend of Human Ecology. Human Ecology 39(2): 115.
Bates, Daniel and Oliver Conant. Francis P. Conant. Anthropology News. 52(5): 25.
Conant, Veronika. Email message to Lorain Wang, October 22, 2013.
[Curriculum Vitae], Series 7. Biographical Files and Letters, Francis Conant Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Francis P. Conant. http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/anthropology/faculty-staff/in-remembrance/francis-p.-conant [accessed August 23, 2013].
1926 -- Born February 27 in New York City, New York
1944-1946 -- Enlists in Army and serves in World War II as a flash ranger in 294th Field Artillery Battalion
1950 -- Earns B.A. from Cornell University in English and Russian, minor in Engineering
1953-1954 -- AMNH Bernheim-Conant Expedition to northern Africa
1957 -- Conducts language studies at the International African Institute
1957-1959 -- Conducts fieldwork in northern Nigeria
1960 -- Earns PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University
1960-1961 -- Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
1961-1962 -- Research Associate for Culture and Ecology in East Africa Project directed by Walter Goldschimdt
1962 -- Joins faculty at Hunter College
1968-1969 -- Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University, Pitt-Rivers Museum
1977-1980 -- Sets up remote sensing monitoring area in West Pokot district in Kenya. Studies changing cultivation patterns and management of livestock
1995 -- Retires from Hunter College; Emeritus Professor
2011 -- Dies on January 29 at the age of 84
Related Materials:
For additional materials at the National Anthropological Archives relating to Francis Conant, see the papers of Priscilla Reining and John Lawrence Angel.
His film collection is at the Human Studies Film Archives.
Artifacts and film collected during the Bernheim-Conant Expedition, his doctoral research in Nigeria, and his fieldwork in Kenya during the 1960s and 70s are at the American Museum of Natural History. He also deposited collections at the Pitts River Museum at the University of Oxford.
Provenance:
These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Francis Conant's widow Veronika Conant in 2012.
Restrictions:
The Francis P. Conant Papers are open for research. Access to the Francis P. Conant Papers requires an appointment.
Francis P. Conant Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
The papers of Francis P. Conant were processed with the assistance of a Wenner-Gren Foundation Historical Archives Program grant awarded to Veronika Conant. Digitization and preparation of these materials for online access has been funded through generous support from the Arcadia Fund.
Ann Moore is the inventor of the Snugli baby carrier and Air Lift oxygen carrier. The collection contains original, master, and reference videos, audiocassette recordings, and transcripts documenting Moore's inventive career.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains 5.5 hours of original BetaCam SP recordings, 5.5 hours of master video copies, 5.5 hours of reference copies, 5.5 hours of audiocassette recordings, transcripts, and articles documenting the life and work of Ann Moore, inventor of the Snugli baby carrier and Air Lift oxygen carrier. The recordings include a presentation by Ann and Mike Moore for the Lemelson Center's Innovative Lives Program. Audience participants include students from Seven Locks Elementary School in Bethesda, Maryland; Burrville Elementary School in Washington, D.C.; Barrett Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia; and Jefferson Junior High School in Washington, D.C. Ann Moore's interview includes footage of her home in Colorado and discussions with users of the Air Lift oxygen carrier and Weego baby carrier.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into five series.
Series 1: Original videos, 1999
Series 2: Master videos, 1999
Series 3: Audiocassettes, 1999
Series 4: Reference videos, 1999
Series 5: Supplemental documentation, 1999
Biographical / Historical:
Ann Moore was born in 1940 in a small Ohio farming community and studied pediatric nursing at the University of Cincinnati. She joined the Peace Corps in 1962 as part of a medical team and was sent to Togo. She met her husband Mike Moore during training. While in Togo, Ann Moore noticed that most women tied their babies onto their backs with a long piece of fabric, which made the babies more content. Back in Colorado, Moore wanted to carry her newborn daughter Mandela in the same way. With the assistance of her mother, Lucy Aukerman, Moore designed the first Snugli baby carrier in 1969 (US Patent 3,481,517). She patented the Snugli in 1984 (US Patent 4,434,920). Snugli, Inc. grew from a small company where each Snugli was handmade by Aukerman and her neighbors to a large company with an international presence and a factory in Colorado. In 1985 Ann and Mike Moore sold Snugli, Inc. to Gerico, a Huffy Company. In 1986 Ann invented Air Lift, a soft mesh backpack oxygen carrier so people on oxygen could be more mobile (US Patent 4,739,913).
Ann and Mike Moore became disappointed in how Gerico had simplified the Snugli design so it could be manufactured less expensively so in 1999 the Moores launched Weego, a soft baby carrier similar to the original Snugli. The Weego has some modern improvements, including an adjustable buckle around the top of the carrier instead of pin tucks.
The Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation was founded in 1995 at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History through a generous gift from the Lemelson Foundation. The Center's mission is to document, interpret, and disseminate information about invention and innovation; to encourage inventive creativity in young people; and to foster an appreciation for the central role invention and innovation plays in the history of the United States. The Innovative Lives series brings together Museum visitors and especially school age children, and American inventors to discuss inventions and the creative process and to experiment and play with hands-on activities related to each inventor's product. This collection was recorded by the Innovative Lives Program of the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.
Provenance:
This collection was recorded by the Innovative Lives Program of the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation on October 15, 1999.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research use.
Rights:
Copyright held by the Smithsonian Institution. Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Reproduction permission from Archives Center: reproduction fees may apply.
The Islamic regime of Fuuta Tooro : an anthology of oral tradition / transcribed in Pulaar and translated into English by Moustapha Kane and David Robinson, with David Dwyer and Sonja Fagerberg
Insectes recueillis en Afrique et en Amérique dans les royaumes d'Oware et de Benin, á Saint-Dominique et dans les États-Unis, pendant les années 1786-1797 par A.-M.-F.-J. Palisot de Beauvois
Author:
Palisot de Beauvois, Ambrose-Marie-François-Joseph 1752-1820 Search this
Editor:
Audinet Serville M (Jean Guillaume),) 1775-1858 Search this
