Tag: Burling Library

Isaac Newton at Grinnell

On September 8, 2025

In 2025-26

In 2019, Grinnell acquired the impressive collection of rare books and documents that had been assembled by Carl Weeks and housed at his residence, Salisbury House, in Des Moines. Visitors to special collections, in Burling Library, can now peruse the more than 5000 items in the collection–a virtual treasure trove of historic texts, ranging from medieval manuscripts to a limited edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses (illustrated by Henri Matisse).

One of these gems is a first edition of Isaac Newton’s Opticks, a work that was filled with experimental reports and musings about a wide range of topics surrounding the nature of light, its transmission and absorption, the nature of color, and the hidden structure of matter. While contemporaries praised Newton’s Principia, few people could understand its complicated mathematics, whereas the Opticks was a widely popular book that inspired many people to take up experimental science. And, in fact, Grinnell’s copy of the Opticks contains a number of annotations and comments (i.e. marginalia) that were inscribed by one its enthusiastic readers.

This book would have been particularly appreciated by one of Grinnell’s former History professors–Richard S. Westfall–who was a world renowned scholar of Newton and the scientific revolution. Prof. Westfall taught at Grinnell in the 1950s and 1960s, winning a National Science Foundation grant in 1961 that allowed him to spend a year or archival work in Cambridge, among Newton’s papers. One of the last pieces he published at Grinnell, before leaving to head the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Indiana, in 1963, was a scholarly article, “The Development of Newton’s Theory of Color” that put forward a new interpretation of the Opticks. In 1980, Westfall would publish what is still considered the definitive biography of Newton: Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton, that he started while teaching at Grinnell College. Eventually, Westfall was awarded the George Sarton Medal, the highest honor in this field, in recognition of his lifetime contributions to the history of science.

Remembering Andrew Hsieh (1941-2024)

By admin

On May 30, 2025

In 2024-25

This winter, we learned that Andrew Hsieh, Professor Emeritus in the History department, passed away at his home in California. There will be a special memorial gathering at reunion, this weekend, for his friends, colleagues, and former students.

Andrew Hsieh began teaching at Grinnell in the Fall of 1978, having completed a Ph.D in history at Yale University, where he wrote a dissertation about the intellectual world of Tseng Kuo-fan, an important figure who struggled to reconcile Confucianism and the demands of officialdom in the wake of the Taiping Rebellion. Over the years, Prof. Hsieh taught a series of survey courses on Chinese and Japanese History, and played a key role in developing East Asian Studies at the college. In 1985, Prof. Hsieh helped secure a Cowles-Kruidenier grant that financed new coursework, programming, and educational opportunities centered around Chinese Studies. Hsieh organized a five-day conference in 1987, for example, that helped launch this new programming. The conference revolved around questions of reunification between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Hsieh invited speakers from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, alongside academics and policy-makers from the U.S., creating a “list of participants that reads like a Who’s Who in the world of Chinese Studies” (according to the S&B coverage at the time). In addition to a long list of speakers and conferences, Hsieh used the grant to fund embedded course travel to China, such as the study tour in 1993:

study tour with Hsieh

Hsieh’s management of the grant also led to more sustained curricular changes, such as the hiring of faculty to teach east Asian languages, the creation of a new department of Classical and East Asian Languages (housing these new faculty and courses in the Classics department), and above all, the creation of an exchange program and partnership between Grinnell and Nanjing University, that began in 1987. That program facilitated not only the exchange of faculty members, but also supported Grinnell students teaching English in the high schools in Nanjing (which would become one element of the “GrinnellCorps” program). Hseih would frequently point to Grinnell’s deep historic ties to China, encouraging students and others to do historical work on the earlier “Grinnell-in-China” program of the 1920s and 1930s.

Prof. Hsieh also made a lasting contribution to the college through the Feng Memorial Collection–which contained over a 1,000 carefully chosen Chinese books that Hsieh acquired from collectors throughout China and Hong Kong to serve as a foundation for students studying Chinese language, history, culture and literature. The collection was named after Hsieh’s mother, Yu-Kuei Feng, who came from a long line of scholars going back to the 18th century, and loved books.

Hsieh’s own love of books came through in one of his last major projects, helping to develop a Faulconer Gallery exhibit–“From the Book Forest”–on Chinese print culture that drew from the collections of Nanjing University, the Yangzhou Block Printing Museum, and the C.V. Starr East Asian Library (at UC Berkeley) in 2011.

In his retirement, Prof. Hsieh finished a book The Lius of Shanghai, that explores how this influential family navigated the challenges of war and upheaval over the course of the twentieth century to establish a business dynasty. The book was co-authored with fellow historian Sherman Cochran (of Cornell University) and was published by Harvard University Press.

1972 Protests and the Creation of a Black Library

By admin

On September 16, 2024

In 2024-25

For a larger, pdf. version of this page, use the link here: 1972 protest in 20th century room

1972 Protests and the Creation of a Black Library

Last week’s post focused on the Twentieth Century Room in Burling Library, that existed from 1958 to 1982. This week’s items offer a glimpse into how and why that particular space became central to students protests over racism and inclusivity at the College. Frustrated by the lack of institutional change that had followed an earlier round of protests in 1970—in which black students had negotiated with the administration over a series of reforms, including the creation of black cultural center, a black library, a black studies major, a new admissions board, and target goals of dramatically increasing the size of Grinnell’s black student body—a group of students and faculty “commandeered” the Twentieth Century room in order to transform it into the promised black library, that had yet to materialize. This page, from the S&B, offers some images and context surrounding the event, including an interview with Virginius Thornton III, a professor of History and American Studies at Grinnell, who participated in the protests, and who was an important figure in the activism of the 1960s (he was a co-founder, for example, of SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). The Twentieth Century Room did, in fact, become the home of the college’s black library, until 1982, when Burling was remodeled, and the black library collection was moved to its current location.

Burling Library’s Twentieth Century Room (1958-1982)

By admin

On September 11, 2024

In 2024-25

Burling Library’s Twentieth Century Room

This summer, Burling Library underwent some remodeling and renovations, part of a longer history in which that space has been continually adapted to the changing needs and culture of the college. This week’s images focus on one of the original spaces in Burling—the “Twentieth Century Room”—that was a key part of the initial design in 1958. These two photographs, from 1962, offer a glimpse of the Twentieth Century Room, and the editorial from James Kissane (then Professor of English at the college) in the S&B in 1981 expresses his views about why the room was important and why he regretted its passing.

25 years in the life of a college

The climates of Grinnell

by James Kissane

It’s a shocking reminder of how long I’ve been at Grinnell to realize that Burling Library, which didn’t exist when I started teaching here, is now in need of an overhaul. I’d rather not dwell on the parallels between the present condition of Burling and my own possible need of repair; it’s more interesting to reflect on the changes in store for the library as they symbolize the differences one feels between what the College was like in the late 1950’s and how it is today.

Burling was an important expression of a new era at Grinnell. The College had been visited by a new academic climate, one I should label a climate of standards. I don’t mean excellence had not been a goal at the .College all along, but in the late ’50’s and early ’60’s we embraced the word “Excellence” did not provoke cynicism from the faculty nor fiscal conservatism from the trustees.

The feature of Burling that best reflected that climate was the study lounge in the mezzanine called “The Twentieth Century Room.” The idea was to fill the handsome shelves lining its walls with the greatest books written in our own century. The furniture chosen for this room was a collection of pieces representing the most distinguished styles of the twentieth century. The effect was a rather museum-like but nonetheless pleasing and altogether impressive “anthology” of modern design: work by Eames, Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, and other masters of the art.

To create a space containing the most important modern books and appoint it with the most elegant modern furniture must figure to many today as a curious and pretentious extravagance; at the time it seemed to the College an appropriate way of putting the best in front of its students. The room was certainly comfortable, but its utility was not the point so much as its class. The aim was inspiration and perhaps a bit of earnest flattery.

This spring, by contrast, as plans for Burling’s renovation advance, carpenters have created a mock-up of portions of a “study tower” that will consist of a complex of carrels perfectly suited to the study habits of Grinnell’s students. They have been urged to try out these mock-ups, and student reactions and suggestions will be reflected in the final designs of the furnishings and spaces of this study tower. Such canvassing of student preferences would not have occurred to the architects and planners of the Twentieth Century Rooni; to do so would have contradicted the assumption that those preferences were more to be influenced by the College environment then vice versa. The study tower, however, will (assuming the students’ “input” has been effective) reflect their tastes and should of course be enormously popular, at least so long as those tastes remain in force.

I take the study tower to be symptomatic of the institutional climate we have been passing through, a climate not of standards but of services. As I see it, the institutional authority the administration and the faculty relinquished during the mid-’60’s and early 70’s has been reasserted, but in different ways and on a different basis. The. College is now modest in its profession of insight and conviction regarding what constitutes liberal learning; instead it professes practical expertise and promises to purvey services that will stand its students in good stead. Given the current competition among private colleges for qualified students and also the relatively grim prospects facing many liberal arts graduates, it is hardly surprising that a college less prestigious and less favorably situated than, say, Harvard should make its appeal to students through an increasing array of services.

I presume I needn’t particularize Grinnell’s considerable involvement in providing services to its students in such diverse, areas as career and personal counseling, academic advising, off-campus apprenticeships, and remedial writing and reading. We do not merely aim to please; we are now experts at what pleases. This spring our preoccupation with services reached its acme with the initiation of a shuttle to the liquor store.

No doubt it’s an attractive quality in a college to be gracious and obliging to its students. But making provision for students is not the same as educating them. A climate of services leads students to think of themselves as clients or customers. They will expect, therefore, to have their tastes and values catered to rather than challenged, enriched, or refined. To encourage students in the habits of wary customers, whose only measure of educational value is what they are sure they can use, may stifle their intellectual curiosity and impede their maturity.

The renovations planned for Burling Library will, I’m sure, be a welcome improvement; nor do I object strongly to study spaces designed by consensus. But I persist in thinking that the notion behind the original Twentieth Century Room remains truer to the essential idea of a college like ours. We all need to live in the presence of ideas and forms and other human creations considerably grander than what we could have imagined for ourselves; we need to be confronted by purposes larger and finer than our own. It’s acknowledging this need that makes us educable; and it’s stimulating and answering this need that gives a college, however its climate changes, a task to perform.