Ephemera 36 Conference and Fair 

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Mark your calendar for the Ephemera Society of America’s thirty-sixth annual conference, “Politics, Patriotism & Protest.” The conference examines the use of ephemera in promoting political, patriotic, and protest movements, emphasizing such issues as race, gender, and war.

Schedule of Events:

THURSDAY:

4:30 p.m. Conde’s Room
Special Collections Alchemy
Richard J. Ring
In response to the creation of undergraduate “Creative Fellowships” in 2011, Professor Ring began teaching courses based on special collections. His students discovered that encounters with ephemera engaged them with aspects of human creative and intellectual endeavor otherwise inaccessible. 

Richard J. Ring, M.L.S. from Indiana University, was Reference & Acquisitions Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and Special Collections Librarian at the Providence Public Library before his 2010 appointment as Head Curator & Librarian of the Watkinson Library at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m. — Board reception for early arrivals. Join old and new friends, and be fresh for the conference that begins Friday morning. 

FRIDAY:
Four morning conference sessions: Roundhill Room

8:45 a.m. 
Welcome and Introduction
Barbara Loe, Chairman and Bruce Shyer, ESA President

9:00 a.m. 
Patriotism, Protest and Propaganda: The Vacillating Lives of America’s Icons 
Kit Hinrichs
Graphic designers examine symbols for their visual strength and graphic form, together with their intrinsic cultural and emotional value. The American flag is unique in holding all these properties. The Hinrichs Collection of stars and stripes memorabilia began in the 1960s with a tattered 36-star flag hand-sewn by his great-great Aunt – and grew to 5,000 items, including the other ubiquitous symbols of America’s visual presence: Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, The American Eagle and Shield. The history, myths and legends of these icons have influenced our collective identity.

Kit Hinrichs studied at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Before the 2009 opening of his own San Francisco firm, Studio Hinrichs, he was a partner in Pentagram for 23 years. He received the AIGA medal for exceptional achievements in the field of graphic design and visual communication, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress. He is co-author of five books, including Typewise, Long May She Wave and The Pentagram Papers.

10:00 a.m. — 10:15 a.m. Break

10:15 a.m.
Political Protest Posters
B. Martin Pedersen
Mr. Pedersen’s recent book, Graphis Social & Political Protest Posters, organized posters around themes such as: Environmental, Anti-Violence, Political, Human Rights and Anti-War, as well as the great international designers, such as Milton Glaser, and narratives of conflicts from Cain murdering Abel to World War II. 

B. Martin Pedersen grew up under the 1941 German occupation of Norway and emigrated to America in 1946. In 1969 he started Pedersen Design Inc.; in 1975 co-founded Johnson, Pedersen, Hinrichs & Shakery; and in1985 purchased Graphis Inc. Among his many honors: Columbia University National Magazine award for his 1973 creation of Nautical Quarterly, and in 2003 the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Gold Medal for lifetime achievement in Graphic Design. 

11:00 a.m.
Ephemera and Image Making in 19^th Century 
American Politics
Thomas A. Horrocks
Today’s successful candidates for political office make effective use of digital communications and social media; those of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries mastered the medium of print. The close relationship between the worlds of politics and print influenced the publishing industry, generating a variety of publications, many of which were ephemeral in nature, such as broadsides, sheet music, songsters, posters, ballots, and pamphlets, that motivated citizens to vote for a particular candidate or party.

Thomas A. Horrocks is a historian, former library administrator, and a collector of presidential campaign biographies.  Currently a consultant with Heritage Auctions, he is the author, editor, and co-editor of seven books, including Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies (2014) and The Annotated Lincoln (2015). He has served on the Board of the Ephemera Society of America since 2011.

11:45 a.m.
Women - Unofficial Soldiers of the Great War
Margaret Vining
Tens of thousands of American women contributed to the World War I effort as part of the armed forces – nurses, members of women’s auxiliaries, and those hired under contract - but also as members of civilian war relief and support organizations, both secular and religious. The range of military and non-military style uniforms the women wore defined their roles and helped provide a moral claim to suffrage, which was achieved after war’s end. 

Margaret Vining, a graduate of George Washington University’s program in American and Museum Studies, has for over three decades worked in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where she currently serves as Curator of Armed Forces History. She founded and now supervises the Smithsonian Archive of Women’s Military History, soon to become digitally available. 

12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.  
Lunch Break

Five afternoon conference sessions: Roundhill Room

2:00 p.m.
Politics, Patriotism, Protest and Culture in 20th Century African American Ephemera
Elvin Montgomery Jr., Ph.D. 
Throughout the 20^th century books and film were difficult and expensive to produce and distribute while ephemeral content was more practical and affordable in reaching a mass audience. Various forms of ephemera, at various periods, were aimed specifically at African American audiences, appealing to their sense of identity or self-interest, or attempting to influence their thinking and behavior. 

Elvin Montgomery Jr., Ph.D., M.Phil., M.S. (all in Psychology) from Columbia University, has worked as a manager or consultant in both the private and non-profit sectors since 1970 and is a member of several professional groups including the Appraisers Association of America. He teaches Psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the New York City College of Technology, both campuses of the City University of New York

2:45 p.m. 
Greeting Cards Go to War  
Anne Stewart O’Donnell
“Brave thoughts are bayonets. Words of cheer are trains of powder,” declared a 1918 ad, part of a nationwide blitz aimed at selling greetings as an essential part of the war effort – a campaign that saved the fledgling card industry from an untimely end and gave greeting cards a more prominent role in American life. A generation later, the same manufacturers took preemptive action in the run-up to World War II, ensuring the government saw greetings as another weapon in its arsenal rather than a waste of resources. 

Anne Stewart O’Donnell is a freelance writer and researcher based in College Park, Maryland. Former Editor in Chief of Style 1900 magazine, she has written two books and innumerable articles on turn-of-the-century design. Her 2002 thesis for a Masters in the History of Decorative Arts is now a book manuscript nearing completion, From Friend to Friend: Greeting Cards and the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

3:30 p.m. - 3:40 p.m. Break

3:40 p.m.
Roosevelt’s Blue Eagle: The NRA and Mass Culture 
Charles Epting
The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and National Recovery Administration (NRA) were keystones during the early months of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal – and an unprecedented government initiative. The NRA’s “Blue Eagle” logo quickly became ubiquitous: in store windows and on the packaging of compliant products that consumers were encouraged to buy in the name of fair competition and patriotism. 

Charles Epting is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California. His published books include The New Deal in Orange County and Victorian Los Angeles, and he is writing a biography of silent film actress Bebe Daniels. He is currently a Young Philatelic Leader Fellow through the American Philatelic Society, a research associate for UC Berkeley’s Living New Deal program, and serves on the board of the US Philatelic Classics Society and the Historic Resources Board for the city of Huntington Beach. 

4:25 p.m.
Railroad Patriotism: Teaching with Ephemera 
Carlos A. Schwantes, Ph.D.
When Professor Schwantes converted class presentations to an online format he discovered how important visual culture is to the success of this method. For a graduate-level class “The Great 20th Century War:  1914 to 1989” he chose a variety of patriotic illustrations from his collection of transportation ephemera.  For presentations on the Vietnam War he relied on anti-war buttons and other protest ephemera collected in the late 1960s.  A trip to Cuba earlier this year yielded a wealth of Communist billboard images to use when teaching the Cold War.

Carlos A. Schwantes, a Ph.D. in American history from The University of Michigan, has authored or edited twenty books about various facets of the American West and about transportation – his most recent: Just One Restless Rider:  Reflections on Trains and Travel (2009).  Before coming to the University of Missouri-St Louis in 2001 he taught American history for nineteen years at the University of Idaho.  

5:10 p.m.
Almanacs and the American Revolution
Rick Stattler
While almanacs are not thought of as a radical genre, some of the hundreds of American almanacs produced during the Revolution made contributions to the cause.

Rick Stattler is Director of the Books Department at Swann Auction Galleries, and since 2007 has organized the auction house’s Printed & Manuscript Americana sales. Rick previously spent 15 years in the library world, first as manuscript curator and library director at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and then as an archivist at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

6:00 p.m.
Meet the Authors!
Book signings of notable books from our speakers and members will immediately follow the conference outside of Roundhill.  

Also Friday:
• 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. — Dealer Set-up
• 7–8 p.m. — Silent Auction Preview in Roundhill.

SATURDAY — Ephemera Fair Opens today!
• 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. — Silent Bid Auction in Roundhill. Many Lots. Bid early and often!
• 8:15 a.m. — Memberships will be sold at the Ephemera Society desk at the entrance to the fair in the Grand Ballroom.
• 9 a.m. — Members-only fair preview ($10 Admission paid at the door) for the Society’s 36th Annual Ephemera Fair in Grand Ballroom. Membership cards will be available at registration desk.
• 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. — Exhibits open in Winthrop.
• 10 a.m. — General public entry. Admission is $14 paid at the door. 
• 5 p.m. — Fair closes; reopens 11 a.m. Sunday.
• 5:30 p.m. — Silent Auction final bids close in Roundhill Room.
• 5:30 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. — Cash Bar outside Mead ABC. 
• 6 p.m. — Live Auction outside Mead ABC — Auctioneer: George Fox

• 7:00 p.m. — Ephemera 36 Banquet and Presentation — Mead ABC. Reservations required. 
After Dinner Presentation
The US Marine Band, Playing America’s Music Since 1798 
Kira Wharton, Ph.D.
The United States Marine Band traces its roots back to an Act of Congress from 1798 and has played for every President since John Adams. Their mission to provide music for the President of the United States and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, as well as to promote patriotism in times of peace and war, is documented in the Marine Band Library and Archives. 

Assistant Chief Librarian /Historian, Gunnery Sergeant Kira Wharton, a Ph.D. in musical arts from the University of Iowa, joined the US Marine Band in 2003. As a Marine Band Librarian (since 2008), she prepares music for performances by the Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra, and assists with maintaining the music library. As Historian (since 2013), she researches and preserves the band’s history, maintains the archives and conducts oral history interviews with former members. 

SUNDAY
9:00 a.m.
Members annual meeting, Mead AB
All members are urged to attend.

9:45 a.m.
Exhibitor Roundtable
Exhibitors who prepared an exhibit will have the opportunity to describe the theme of their exhibit, why they selected the particular pieces, and what the significance of those pieces are. 

• 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. — Ephemera Fair in the Grand Ballroom.
• 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. — Exhibits open in Winthrop.
• 4 p.m. — Ephemera 36 closes.

Register Now!