Collections

Richard L. Zurel is an archaeologist who has conducted research on Native Americans in Michigan. The Richard L. Zurel papers, 1914-2011, contain materials related to his work in the field of archaeology documenting Native American groups in Michigan, as well as materials related to his family history. The collection contains materials related to the Michigan Archaeological Society and the Aboriginal Research Club of Detroit.

The Richard L. Zurel papers, 1897-2011, contain research materials and photographs related to his archaeological work in Michigan, as well as printed materials and minutes of the Aboriginal Research Club of Detroit and of the Michigan Archaeological Society. Collection also contains Zurel family photographs depicting family members, as well as photographs and postcards depicting locations in the Upper Michigan Peninsula.

The Richard Ross collections brings together correspondence, research, reports, and proposals for the Junior Year in Africa/Africa Exchange Program and Master's programs in Black History, originated by Dr. Richard H. Ross, Sr. during his time as a student at the University of Michigan, and as Director of Research for the Center of Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), recognized as the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) in 2011. These materials document some of the early history of CAAS, including efforts to keep the center running when faced with termination in 1973.

The Richard Ross collection is a chronological set of papers documenting projects Dr. Richard H. Ross, Sr. worked on during his time at the University of Michigan, both as a student and as the Director for Research at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, now known as the Department for Afroamerican and African Studies. The bulk of the collection materials document Ross' efforts toward a Junior Year in Africa/Africa Exchange Program (JYA/AEP) including research; a report on paternalism and racism in the University of Michigan Financial Aid Office toward Black students; financial proposals; and correspondence. The JYA/AEP materials also include the mission statement, founding documents, and photographs of projects run by the African American and African Foundation on Science, Education, and Economics Development, Inc. (AAAFSEED). The rest of the materials document Master of Arts proposals, the Request for a Three-Year Evaluation for CAAS in 1973, and Ross' correspondence with CAAS and LSA regarding the donation of this collection.

Noted Michigan-based modern architect and former Professor and later Dean of the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Metcalf's work includes over 150 buildings in Michigan and Ohio. The material in this collection spans the years 1942 to 2017, and includes architectural drawings, presentation boards, client files, photographs and slides, correspondence, newspaper clippings, journals, articles, and teaching material.

The Robert C. Metcalf papers include architectural drawings, presentation boards, presentation books, client files, photographs, slides, and negatives of Metcalf's work on residential, commercial, and community projects. The collection provides comprehensive documentation on virtually all of the projects undertaken by Metcalf. Projects are documented from design to construction and often subsequent additions and renovations. The materials in the collection are organized into three series: Project Files, General Files, and Visual Materials.

The General Files series includes personal material such as an audio interview with Robert Metcalf (2010), a date book (1974), and Metcalf's undergraduate student work from the University of Michigan (1942-1950).

Robert E. Lewis served as editor-in-chief of the Middle English Dictionary at the University of Michigan from 1982 to 2001. Before coming to Michigan Lewis was a professor of English at Indiana University where he co-authored A Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience. The Robert E. Lewis papers relate primarily to research into Prick of Conscience, the most popular English poem of the Middle Ages. The papers include correspondence, articles, notes and reproductions (photocopies and microfilm) of medieval manuscripts and texts of the poem and related material

History of Prick of Conscience Studies

The Prick of Conscience, to judge from the number of known manuscripts (120), was the most popular English poem of the Middle Ages, surpassing such popular poems as Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (its nearest competitor with 64 manuscripts), Piers Plowman (with 54), and John Gower's Confessio Amantis (with 51), and was itself surpassed in English only by the two versions of the Wycliffite prose translation of the Bible and the prose Brut. The poem exists in three versions: (1) an original or main version (in 99 manuscripts), which originated in the north of England, probably Yorkshire, with a preponderance of manuscripts from that area and the north midlands, but also extending into the west midlands and East Anglia and even into the southeast and the southwest; (2) a shorter, thoroughly revised recension (in nineteen manuscripts) originating somewhere in the south, with a more restricted distribution; and (3) a heavily revised and abbreviated version of the main version entitled Speculum Huius Vite (in two manuscripts).

The popularity of the poem is supported by other signs: eighty per cent of the counties of England can claim at least one copy of the poem, some have two or more, and three of the copies are written in the Anglo-Irish dialect; extracts circulated separately (twelve in eight manuscripts); the poem was quoted in a number of other Middle English poems ("Stimulus Consciencie Minor," "Desert of Religion," "Of the Flood of the World," "Wheel of Fortune," for example) as well as in a stained glass window at All Saints Church in York); there was a translation into Latin prose made in the 14th century (six manuscripts exist); and the poem appears in wills and book lists.

The Prick of Conscience is a long verse compilation (over 9,600 lines in rhyming couplets), divided into a prologue; seven books, which treat, in turn, the wretchedness of man's nature throughout his life, the world and the various conditions thereof, death and the fear of death, purgatory and its characteristics, the day of judgment, the pains of hell, and the joys of heaven; and a brief conclusion or epilogue. The poem has a great many sources: ultimately over twenty separate works, primarily Latin, including both well known ones like St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, Honorius of Autun's Elucidarium, Pope Innocent III"s De Miseria Humane Conditionis, and Bartholomeus Anglicus's De Proprietatibus Rerum and not so well known ones like Robert Grosseteste's De Penis Purgatorii (in its French version) and Hugh Ripelin of Strasbourg's Compendium Theologice Veritatis.

For a long time the poem was thought to have been written by the well known hermit and mystical writer Richard Rolle (died 1349), to whom it is attributed in five manuscripts, but his authorship is now considered extremely doubtful. Three manuscripts attribute the poem to Robert Grosseteste (circa 1170-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, but he lived too early to be the author. A more recent suggestion is William of Nassyngton (died 1359), chancellor of the Diocese of York and the author of the Speculum Vite, but there is as yet no proof for this. In genre the Prick of Conscience is unlike any other Middle English work in verse or prose, though it has some similarities and has been compared to the Speculum Vite. Its primary function was probably as a compendium of knowledge from which a parish priest could instruct his flock or draw material for his sermons, and its wide circulation in the 14th and 15th centuries indicates that it must have fulfilled its purpose.

The poem is worth studying for a number of reasons and from a variety of points of view, and when Lewis came to Ann Arbor in 1982 he had just completed, with Angus McIntosh A Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature), which they hoped, as they said in their Preface, would "stimulate and facilitate research into some of the important . . . questions connected with [the poem], such as its genre, the reasons for its popularity, its audience, and its influence in Britain in the later Middle Ages"; and Lewis himself was planning to spend whatever free time he had on various aspects of the poem. He had made good progress on two projects: the sources (and the manuscript tradition of the sources) of Book I and an edition of one of the short poems indebted to the Prick of Conscience, the "Stimulus Consciencie Minor." But the work of the Middle English Dictionary took precedence during his official working years, and because of other commitments he was unable to complete these projects during retirement. He deposited his Prick of Conscience materials in the Bentley Library in the hope that other researchers would consult them as a starting point either to complete the two projects he began or to study other aspects of the poem.

Scope and Content Note

The Robert E. Lewis papers relate primarily to research and study of the Prick of Conscience the most popular English poem of the Middle Ages. Prick of Conscience material includes reproductions (photocopies and microfilm) of medieval manuscripts and related Middle English texts as well as Lewis's correspondence, notes, and research files on the Prick of Conscience. Material relating to the Middle English Dictionary and his professional career is also present.

The Lewis papers are arranged in five series. The first four series relate to the poem Prick of Conscience: Prick of Conscience, Related Materials, Notes on Cards and Slips, and Microfilms of Manuscripts. The content of the first two boxes are all in standard archival folders and are arranged by subject. In box three the materials represent a variety of formats (4" x 6" cards, 5" x 8" cards and slips, and a paperback book), also arranged by subject, with a few microfilms in various kinds of containers. The final box consists of microfilms only.

Robert E. Schwartz was a mid-century modern architect working out of Midland, Michigan. The collection includes working drawings, sketches, and newspaper clippings of residential and commercial buildings designed.

The Robert E. Schwartz papers reflect the mid-century modern architectural design movement of the mid-20th century in the United States, especially that part of the movement that was employed in residential structures, although the collection contains drawings of his commercial structures as well. His residential structures exhibit fundamental characteristics of the Modern Movement including their simple geometric forms, lack of applied ornamentation, use of large expanses of glass to bring nature and sunlight into the structure, and their open, free-flowing floor plans. The collection has been maintained in the order received and is divided into four series: Architectural Drawings, Newspaper Clippings, Professional Papers, and Visual Material.

African American civil rights activist and Black militant leader in Monroe County North Carolina who came to advocate armed self-defense in response to violence, left the United States in 1961 and lived in Cuba and China until 1969 when he settled in Baldwin Michigan. Papers include correspondence, newspaper clippings, audio-visual material, manuscripts, petitions, and government documents documenting the civil rights movement, black nationalism, radical politics in the United States and Williams's experiences in Cuba and China.

The Robert Williams papers, dating from 1951, include correspondence, notes, newspaper clippings, audio-visual material, manuscripts, petitions, and government documents. The collection documents a wide variety of subjects: the American civil rights movement, Black Nationalism, cold war politics, Castro's Cuba, Mao's China, and the radical left in the United States.

As Robert Williams continued to add to his collection following his initial donation in 1976, it was necessary to arrange and describe the materials based on groupings of dates of accessioning. Thus the bulk of the collection is divided into two subgroups: 1976-1979 Accessions and 1983-1997 Accessions with much overlapping of material. In addition, the collection contains a small series of papers collected by his son John C. Williams and a separate series of Audio-Visual Materials.

Architect, urban planner, professor and dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, 1987-1997. Records include teaching files, urban design projects in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Bellevue, Washington; and Lake Oswego, Oregon; work with the Genesee Institute and County Land Bank in Michigan; articles; technical and preparatory drawings.

The papers of Robert M. Beckley measure 4.0 linear feet and date from 1958 to 2012. The bulk of materials are from 1978 to 2011. The collection is comprised of articles, drawings and reports, but little correspondence. It includes theoretical and applied material relating to urban design, created as a student in the University of Cincinnati and in the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, as dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and as private consultant. The papers contain five series: Biographical, Articles, Lectures and Writings, Applied Works, University of Michigan and Genesee Institute and Genesee County Land Bank.

Detroit-area radio journalist, film producer, musician, and author of "The Orbit Magazine Anthology", a book exploring Detroit alternative magazine culture in the 1990s. Personal writing, scripts, notes, video recordings, sound recordings, and clippings.

The Rob St. Mary papers (3 linear feet) are divided into two series:

The Personal Materials series contains personal writing by St. Mary and his collection of "Motorbooty", an alternative magazine published in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Professional Work series contains awards, notes, video recordings, audio recordings, and clippings from St. Mary's work in media production. It highlights his film and radio career and his work on "The Orbit Magazine Anthology."

Mineralogist and materials scientist whose research focuses on the properties of nuclear materials. Ewing is Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and a Co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He is the University of Michigan Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences, Professor Emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences. Ewing is a Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. He served as president of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS) in 1997–1998. The collection includes IUMRS correspondence, by-laws, statutes, meetings minutes, agenda, programs, lists of members, etc. Also, Ewing's grant applications, teaching and research materials, and video recordings of lectures.

The collection includes materials related to Ewing's activities as the IUMRS president and contain correspondence, by-laws, statutes, meetings minutes, agenda, programs, lists of members, etc. A small amount of records relate to Ewing's teaching and research at the University of Mexico and the University of Michigan and include two video recordings of lectures and grant applications and reports.

The Ronald R. Stockton collection consists of various writings, most on topics relating to his research and teaching interests. These topics include Arab American relations, religion, historical and genealogical subjects, and articles about Kenya.

In 2000, Ronald Stockton began a journal which was intended to be read by his descendents. In it, he wrote of his daily activities interspersed with reflections on current events. In his journal, Stockton wrote of his daily activities interspersed with reflections on current events. This journal dates from 2000 to 2005 and continues with 2010. This journal is currently closed to research until 2025.