University of Pittsburgh Library System

The University of Pittsburgh’s Archive and Special Collections department recently acquired a large collection of Jonas Salk papers, dating from 1943 to 1995. This assortment of personal effects from the creator of the Polio vaccine himself, allowed for the question of “How have vaccines historically been received by the public?” to be explored. This question quickly evolved into a comparative analysis between the reception of the 1955 invention of the Polio vaccine with the more recent invention of the COVID-19 vaccine. By gathering newspaper clippings for the opinions on the Polio vaccine, and Twitter data for the opinions on the COVD-19 vaccine, comparative word maps and conclusions were made on the general public's opinion regarding the necessity of vaccines, how vaccines should be produced, and who should be getting them. Though less than 100 years separate these two major medical milestones, the public’s perception of them vary greatly. The Polio portion of this project is accompanied with an ArcGIS StoryMap, where viewers have an accessible and interactive layout of how vaccine trials were held and how the public was reacting to them. The COVID-19 portion consists of datasets from the National Library of Medicine and word maps that express public opinion. Together, the viewpoints on vaccine creation can be better understood.

Theorizing and Liberating Transgender Identities explores the magazines Transvestia and Trans/Transgender Tapestry held within the Archives and Special Collections. These publications were distributed mainly in America through the 1960’s to the 2000’s. Most of the audience of these magazines were mainly middle class or upper middle class. This project focuses on how the Transgender community (earlier referred to as the Gender community) used their platform to simultaneously try to understand their identity and organize to achieve political rights. One major theme this project explores is how the community explored terms to describe themselves and how the term transgender came out of these discussions. It aims to highlight the agency the community made for themselves in their own identity, as prior western attempts to study the community were done from outsiders. Another major theme is noting how the community organized themselves politically, going from effectively hiding to protest marches within five years. It shows the unification of a fractured groups of transgender people, and the very intentional entrance into feminist and LGBT organizations in the 1990’s.

This research exists as a continuation of an ongoing project that examines transatlantic constructions of girlhood in 19th-century periodicals. The proposed project will consist of performing a close reading of reader correspondence in St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks. Following this close reading will be an examination of the ways in which St. Nicholas conceptualized and shaped girlhood and girls’ experiences. As a result, this project will contribute to the field of childhood studies by bringing to light the presence of girlhood in content frequently associated with boys and masculinity.

This research is focused on the Latin annotations made in the 1572 edition of Euclid’s Elements. By transcribing and translating these annotations, this edition is made a more accessible archival resource and shows how contemporary readers utilized this edition. This edition of Elements was translated by Federico Commandino, a noted scholar of his time, and it was the most popular edition of its time. The annotations in this manuscript were made by Johannis Gabrielis and they include comments, corrections, and mathematical cross-references to the text. There is not much known about Gabrielis, but these annotations make it clear that he had mathematical skill and a knowledge of Euclidean geometry. This project focuses on describing what Gabrielis references in the Euclidean text as well as any external resources he may have been using. For example, through my research it has become clear that Gabrielis was referencing Franciso Flussate Candalla’s 1566 edition of Elements in his annotations. The annotations in this manuscript extend all the way through Book XI of thirteen, though most of them stop around Book VIII. All these annotations have been at least catalogued. As this project continues, it becomes easier to identify Gabrielis’ style and orthography in the annotations, and therefore translating and contextualizing them also becomes much easier. Future research possibilities for this manuscript include further translation of Gabrielis’ annotations and the creation of a scholarly apparatus keyed to the text. An apparatus such as this would put together the manuscript and the research done on it thus far into one accessible resource.