Sam Mohite's blog

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn was born in 1949 in Manila, Philippines. Since moving to the States in 1963, she is often referred to in scholarship as an American playwright, writer, and poet. My take: by commanding language and blurring the boundaries of national and artistic categorizations in her work, Hagedorn weaves together investigations of life and culture through exploratory multimedia performance art.

This essay serves as an expansion on the fall 2024 installation in the Rotunda that displays materials from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The objects on view provide a glimpse into the intersecting worlds of astrology, politics, and abolition during the Civil War years in America.

While searching the Morgan collections for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI)-related materials, I came across PML 185005. I was initially puzzled that a publication credited to American writer William Faulkner appeared in my “Philippines” keyword catalog search.

This Black History Month at the Morgan Library & Museum, I introduce my fellowship project as a Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow. The project goal is a daunting one: to find and organize a comprehensive checklist of creators with Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized identities represented within the Morgan’s Printed Book collections.