Martin B. Duberman papers

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Description: Martin B. Duberman, b.1930, is a historian and playwright who taught history in universities for over fifty years. He is the author of the play In White America, biographies of Charles Francis Adams, James Russell Lowell, Paul Robeson, and Lincoln Kirstein; histories of Black Mountain College and the Stonewall Rebellion; as well as numerous other books, plays, essays, and reviews. The collection contains personal and professional correspondence (1930s-2006) documenting Duberman's academic career and theatrical activities; organizational files from REDRESS, the Gay Academic Union, the National Gay Task Force, and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS); syllabi and lecture notes for courses taught at Yale, Princeton, and Lehman College; manuscripts, typescripts and published copies of his books, plays, and essays, as well as press clippings and personal, family and theatrical memorabilia, sound recordings of interviews, personal and family photographs, and films.
Names: Duberman, Martin B. (Creator); Bernays, Edward L., 1891-1995 (Interviewee); Brodie, Fawn McKay, 1915-1981 (Correspondent); Butterfield, L. H. (Lyman Henry), 1909-1982 (Correspondent); Challener, Richard D. (Correspondent); Davis, David Brion (Correspondent); Donald, David Herbert, 1920-2009 (Correspondent); Edel, Leon, 1907-1997 (Correspondent); Gara, Larry (Correspondent); Gatell, Frank Otto (Correspondent); Genovese, Eugene D., 1930-2012 (Correspondent); Handlin, Oscar, 1915-2011 (Correspondent); Herlihy, James Leo (Correspondent); Hofstadter, Richard, 1916-1970 (Correspondent); Holt, John Caldwell, 1923-1985 (Correspondent); Janney, Peter (Author); Lasch, Christopher (Correspondent); Lemisch, Jesse, 1936- (Correspondent); Lynd, Staughton (Correspondent); McPherson, James M. (Correspondent); Middlekauff, Robert (Correspondent); Murray, Pauli, 1910-1985 (Correspondent); Palmer, R. R. (Robert Roswell), 1909-2002 (Correspondent); Potter, David Morris (Correspondent); Rose, Willie Lee, 1927-2018 (Correspondent); Ruchames, Louis, 1917- (Correspondent); Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier), 1917-2007 (Correspondent); Stone, Lawrence (Correspondent); Sullivan, Edward (Correspondent); Ward, John William, 1922-1985 (Correspondent); Young, Alfred F., 1925-2012 (Correspondent); Zinn, Howard, 1922-2010 (Correspondent); Janney, Peter (Interviewee)
Dates / Origin: Date Created: 1917 - 2010
Library locations: Manuscripts and Archives Division; Shelf locator: MssCol 848
Topics: Adams, Charles Francis, 1807-1886; Duberman, Martin B.; Kirstein, Lincoln, 1907-1996; Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891; Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976; City University of New York. Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies; American drama; American literature -- 20th century; Civil rights movements; Gay activists; Gay college teachers; History -- Study and teaching; Homosexuality -- History; Race relations; Slavery -- United States; College teachers; Dramatists; Historians; United States -- History -- Study and teaching (Higher); Black Mountain College (Black Mountain, N.C.) -- History; Harvard University -- Students; Princeton University -- Faculty; Yale University -- Faculty
Genres: Motion pictures; Photographs; Scrapbooks; Interviews
Notes: Biographical/historical: Historian and playwright Martin Bauml Duberman was born in 1930 in New York City and grew up in the suburb of Mount Vernon. He graduated from the Horace Mann School in 1948, received a B.A. from Yale in 1952 and Ph.D from Harvard in 1957. He taught American history at Yale from 1957 until 1962 when he joined the department of history at Princeton University. Duberman remained at Princeton for nine years before accepting an appointment as Distinguished Professor of History at Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York, in 1971. Among his historical works are the biographies Charles Francis Adams (1961), James Russell Lowell (1966), Paul Robeson (1989), and The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (2007); and Black Mountain (1972), a history of the experimental Black Mountain College. He is also the author of numerous essays and book reviews, many of which were collected in The Uncompleted Past (1969) and The Martin Duberman Reader (2013). Duberman became renowned outside of academic circles as well. His documentary play, In White America (1963) about the black struggle for freedom and civil rights, brought him critical acclaim and established his reputation as a playwright. Among his other plays are The Memory Bank, Metaphors, Payments, and Visions of Kerouac. Since 1972 he has been active in the gay rights movement and a pioneer researcher in the area of gay and lesbian history. His works in this area include About Time (1986), Hidden from History (1989) [with Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr.], Stonewall (1993), and the autobiographies, Cures (1991), Midlife Queer(1996), and Waiting To Land (2009). He was a founding member of the Gay Academic Union and served on the board of the National Gay Task Force in the early 1970s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Duberman combined his academic, historical, and gay activist interests in planning and developing the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). Officially founded in 1991 at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate School, CLAGS was the first university-based research center in the United States to focus solely upon the study of historical, cultural and political issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and communities. Duberman served as CLAGS’ first executive director from 1991 to 1996. CLAGS helped establish the new academic field of LGBT studies and its support for this area of scholarship is ongoing.; Content: The Martin B. Duberman Papers contain personal and professional correspondence, organizational and topical files, manuscripts, typescripts, and drafts of his writings, teaching files, recorded interviews, photographs, films and memorabilia documenting his personal and professional life from 1917 through 2010. The materials most heavily reflect his career as an academic historian. There is correspondence with students, colleagues, publishers, journals and libraries, as well as syllabi and lecture notes, and materials documenting his experimental seminars on American radicalism included in the collection. Much of the material reflects the intellectual and social ferment at universities during the 1960s. Because Duberman frequently wrote for general circulation magazines and newspapers, his writings reached larger audiences than those of a typical academic, and provoked discussions of campus radicals, Black Power, educational reform, and the relevance of historical study. Beginning in 1973 with the publication of his book, Black Mountain, in which Duberman came out publicly as gay, the papers reflect Duberman's position as a spokesman for the LGBT rights movement and his research interest in the history of human sexuality. Duberman's planning, development, founding and initial leadership of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies is also documented. The collection contains copies of many of his writings, including those done as a teenager and in college, through the 2000s in either published form or as manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, or proofs. Research materials, reviews, promotional materials, and correspondence relating to specific published titles are also included in the collection. Duberman's career in the theater is documented through correspondence, production notes, audio tapes, memorabilia, press clippings, and scripts. Most theatrical material concerns the various productions of In White America for which there is business correspondence and financial records supplementing the other materials. Playscripts include The Martyr, In White America, Roy, and others. There are sound recordings of performances or readings of Dudes, Elagabalus, Groups, Kerouac, and Payments. The collection also has photographs and memorabilia from high school and college plays and summer theater camp. Personal materials include an abundance of family photographs, home movies and memorabilia documenting his youth as well as correspondence with friends and additional photographs covering his adult life.
Physical Description: Extent: 69.44 linear feet 164 boxes 726.94 kb (434 computer files) 165 audio files, 109 cassettes
Type of Resource: Text; Sound recording; Moving image; Still image
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b12040046; MSS Unit ID: 848; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 87f55720-8a8f-0135-0a20-5f4a4f40dae0

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Martin B. Duberman papers

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