Featured Collections

The Melville S. Munro Papers record the work of Melville S. Munro (1881-1945), a faculty member for more than three decades, who made his most notable contributions to Tufts through his camera's lens. Over 800 of the images captured by Munro have been digitized and are available online at the Tufts Digital Library, and thousands of physical photographs are available at the Tufts Archival Research Center. Munro’s photography records the buildings, events, and campus life at Tufts in the first half of the twentieth century. His work is invaluable visual documentation of Tufts history waiting to...

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center Records provide valuable documentation of the center’s management, activities, and impact on the Tufts community. The collection includes administrative records of the organization as well as promotional materials, historical research of the queer community at tufts, and web crawls of the LGBT center’s website. The organization promotes LGBT rights, raises awareness about issues facing this community, and provides a safe space for LGBT people at Tufts.  

We are pleased to announce that the archives of the reSentencing journal, are now available for research at the Tufts Archival Research Center.  The journal, a project of the Tufts University Prison Initiative of the Tisch College of Civic Life (TUPIT) was published in 2022, contains 150 stories, poems, essays, photographs, artworks, and letters created by people across the country impacted by the prison system. The archival collections includes nearly 700 submissions which could not be included in the published journal due to space constraints.

The Danielle Abrams Papers document the life and work of the performance artist and Tufts professor of the practice Danielle Abrams (1968-2022). Abrams was a vibrant and beloved member of the Tufts community and performance art scene. Her work focused on issues of race, religion, and sexuality, rooted in her Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ identities. This collection includes audio and video recordings, photographs, idea notebooks, and other records related to her artwork and career.

The Rubin “Hurricane” Carter Papers at Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC) document the life of middle-weight boxer and activist Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1937 — 2014) who was wrongfully imprisoned for almost 20 years and upon release became a motivational speaker and activist for other wrongfully convicted individuals. These papers tell the story of his life, imprisonment, and work as a civil rights activist.

The Latinx Center Records contain materials documenting the story of Tuft’s Latinx Center. Founded in the 1990s, the center provides emotional and structural support to the Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American students at Tufts. These archival materials include crawls of the Center’s website, photographs of people and events, scrapbooks, and video recordings. The collection also contains administrative records as well as newsletters and clippings. It is documentation of the Latinx Center’s evolution from 1992 to 2018 and contains some material from before the center’s founding. Some of the...

The Cultural Survival Records at Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC) provide a comprehensive view of the founding, expansion, and success of the global indigenous advocacy organization: Cultural Survival. Cultural Survival is non-profit organization that is dedicated to promoting the human and political rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. This organization was founded in Cambridge, MA in 1972 and has since developed a global network of advocates, scholars, and educators. The Cultural Survival collection includes many of the organization’s records from its founding in 1972 through 2012.

The decision to create the Patches for Peace quilt was made when a group of Tufts students and staff came together at Tufts Hillel on September 11, 2001 following the morning’s terrorist attacks. Their goal was to find community and support and to discuss how to respond. After a few hours, they had formulated a plan to create a Patches for Peace Quilt, seeing in it an opportunity to find a creative outlet and spread a message of community, peace and hope. With logistical and infrastructure support from Hillel, members of the Hillel student board invited many student groups on campus to...

Commencement and reunions weekend is one of the busiest, and most enjoyable, times of the year for us in the archives; we’re always busy with events and visits by graduating students, their families, and alums. Although in person visits are not possible this year, we at TARC have been reflecting on and researching the history of commencement at the University as we celebrate and congratulate Tufts 2020 graduates. We’ve created a new online exhibit titled A Step into the Unknown: Commencement at Tufts University, and have worked to digitize our collection of Tufts Commencement Programs dating...

In honor of May’s designation as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’ve chosen Voices as our current featured collection. Voices is a literary and art publication produced by the Tufts Asian American Student Coalition. Published annually and semi-annually, the first issue of Voices was a joint effort between Asian and Asian-American students from Tufts University and Harvard-Radcliffe; more recent issues were produced by Tufts students.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day on April 22nd, we are highlighting the papers of environmental activist Lois Gibbs as our current featured collection.   

Born in 1951, Lois Marie Gibbs is an environmental activist and organizer who formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association after discovering that her entire neighborhood of Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, had been built on a toxic waste dump.    

Gibbs had become increasingly concerned about her children’s health in the late 1970s. She read newspaper accounts of a landfill in Love Canal, noticed a pattern...

Gerald R. Gill was a beloved faculty member in the History Department of Tufts University from 1980 to 2007. In those twenty-seven years he had a profound and lasting impact on the lives of his students and the Tufts community as a whole. The Gerald Gill Papers at Tufts Tufts Archival Research Center include more than 50 boxes of material documenting Professor Gill’s life and work including extensive research on African Americans students at Tufts.

Zella Hurwitz Luria (1924-2018) was a beloved faculty member and mentor at Tufts University, remembered as a staunch supporter of her students, a champion of their work, and source of inspiration and encouragement. 

Professor Luria was a psychology professor at Tufts from 1959-2002, known for her work on the social construction of gender roles. She received the Jackson College Teaching Award in 1969, and the Seymour Simches Award on Teaching and Advising in 1995. She was a charter member of the Women's Studies program.

At Tufts, she was known for her feminism, strong opposition to the...

With the Africana celebrating its 50th anniversary with events and an exhibit at the Tufts University Art Galleries we are highlighting the Africana Center Records as our featured collection. This group of records document the Center's work from its founding in 1969 to its development over the several decades into a provider of academic and social resources and activities for students of African descent. Some of the larger projects represented in the records include the founding of the Tufts Black Alumni Association; the organization of the freshmen orientation Cape Cod retreat; the...

Roslyn Brogue Henning (1919 -1981) was a Tufts professor, composer, musician, and classics scholar. Henning studied at Drake University and at the University of Chicago, where she received a degree in classics at the age of 19. She continued her education at Radcliffe College earning a M.A. in 1943 and a PhD. from Harvard University in 1947. She joined the Tufts Department of Classics in 1962 as an associate professor.

The collection consists of sheet music, some printed and some handwritten in a box called "Manuscripts," and Henning's scrapbooks from 1919 to 1965, containing concert programs...