Archives After Dark
For over 20 years, the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) of the University of Minnesota Libraries has run the successful First Fridays lecture series. Held over the lunch hour throughout the academic year, First Fridays offers archivists and curators the chance to connect in accessible and engaging ways with members of the public — with topics ranging from “fun with a purpose” to “matters of the heart.” But what if you work a 9 to 5 job?
This is exactly the question Aiden Bettine posed. “We normally have a great number of attendees, 80 to 100 each month,” said the Curator of the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies. “But the program wasn’t accessible to all. Having a lecture at noon on a work day certainly limited the types of people that were able to attend. What if we brought the same caliber of lectures to a different time slot?”
His fellow curators were on board, and the Archives After Dark series was born.
“With over 6,800 collections across all of Archives and Special Collections, there are so many stories to be told,” said Kate Dietrick, Archivist of the Nathan and Theresa Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives.
Dietrick, who like Betine serves on the First Fridays planning committee, is excited to welcome new audiences to the archives.
“These presentations buck the stereotype of archives as fusty, dusty, and boring. They bring alive the treasures that abound in our archival caverns,” said Dietrick. “From indigenous characters in children’s books to music in the premodern world; relationship advice from social workers to dog sledding rabbis — each presentation is unique and exciting.”
Archives After Dark will feature the same style lectures, with the same archivists and curators, but for those who could not attend during the day. That goes from members of the public who work during the day to students with classes at noon.
Dietrick encourages the audience to come early — a pizza buffet will be served at 5:30 p.m. prior to the presentations, which start at 6 p.m. — and stay late. Tours of UMN Libraries’ impressive archival caverns will take place after the presentations.
“We have a great lineup planned for this first year of Archives After Dark,” she said. “Each lecture focuses on different collections, told by the archivists and curators who know the materials best. We can’t wait to welcome everyone, after dark!”
Archives After Dark 2026-27 schedule
November 12th: "Emotional and Memory Silences in Archives"
Presented by Micah Janette, Head of Archival Processing; and Chaun Webster, poet, sound artist, and Assistant Professor of Poetry at Morgan State University.
Webster and Janette, from ASC’s Central Processing unit, will discuss emotional silences, memory, and the necessity of looking through archival descriptions.
February 11th: "Old, New, and Renewed: The Archives of Student Protest"
Presented by Anna Freyberg Oertel, Heritage Studies and Public History (’26); Ellen Holt-Werle, University of Minnesota Archives; and Yalile Suriel, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.
Even the most distant of observers can sense the cyclical nature of student protests. Inspired by the past while simultaneously grasping for a different future, college student protests inevitably evoke historical dialogue. In their own ways, archivists and historians are also interested in bringing to life a historical dialogue. This presentation will explore the ways that archives are examined, old collections are reprocessed, and new collections that bring past student protests to life are added.
April 8th: "What a woman should pack for an Amazon adventure" and "Obscenity on Trial"
“What a Woman Should Pack for an Amazon Adventure: Material Goods and Isabel Godin De Odonais’s Disastrous Journey of 1765”
Presented by Anne Good, Associate Curator, James Ford Bell Library.
Isabel Godin de Odonais’s thrilling story of survival in the Amazonian rainforest was told by her husband, Jean Godin, and first published about 10 years after the events. He was a minor member of a scientific mission to measure a meridian arc, sponsored by the French Academy of Sciences in the 1740s. While in Riobamba, Peru, Godin met and married Isabel, the young daughter of a well-to-do landowner. Circumstances separated the two for 20 years: Jean ending up in Cayenne, while Isabel remained at home on the other side of the continent. Her decision to join him, at last, was the catalyst for her journey through the Amazon with an entourage of 40 others, including Amerindians and enslaved people. The journey was disastrous, and Isabel was the sole survivor. This presentation, drawing on primary sources from the James Ford Bell Library, will tell Isabel’s story with a focus on the material culture of travel and cultural interaction in the 18th century.
“Obscenity on Trial: Directory Services Inc and Gay Male Publishing in 1960s Minneapolis”
Presented by Aiden Bettine, Curator, Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies.