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Klein collection images featured in Cosplay Central
Photos from the Jay Kay Klein papers in Special Collections were featured in a June 12, 2020 article and gallery by Cosplay Central writer Brian Jacks.
The story, These Photos From The 1966 World Science Fiction Convention Prove Cosplaying Is Timeless: Photographer Jay Kay Klein covered the Cleveland event filled with costumed fans, was published along with a gallery of 23 images, curated by Jacks from the Jay Kay Klein photographs and papers on Science Fiction fandom on Calisphere.
Jay Kay Klein was an avid photographer who documented Science Fiction & Fantasy fandom over the course of many years. The majority of his images were taken while attending Science Fiction & Fantasy conventions and events.
Klein first donated his photographs and papers (MS 381) to the UCR Library in 2012. There are more than 60,000 images in this collection; however, fewer than 6,000 have been digitized and made available worldwide on Calisphere. If you are interested in supporting the digitization of more photographs in the Klein papers, please contact Jernine McBride, Associate Director of Development for the UCR Library.
Klein first donated his photographs and papers (MS 381) to the UCR Library in 2012.
You can read the Cosplay Central article here.
Explore the Rich World of Fanzines for Research and Study
The UCR Library’s Special Collections & University Archives is thrilled to present a digital collection of fanzines, an exciting online resource for researchers of science fiction at UCR.
This digital archive features over 1,000 items from 12 different publications, offering a glimpse into the vibrant world of fan magazines.
This fanzine collection is a subset of the much larger collection of fanzines housed in Special Collections. Our comprehensive collection includes more than 68,000 fanzines, primarily from the 20th century, covering topics such as science fiction, fantasy, animation, and related genres. This extensive archive was created by integrating several individual fanzine collections from prominent members of the fan community, including the Bruce Pelz and Fred Patten fanzine collections.
Please note that the content on this site is for use by individual UCR-affiliated researchers only and you will need to log in with your UCR credentials for access. Specific written permission is required for public display or publication of these resources. To request reproductions of materials from the fanzine collections at UCR, please visit our SCUA Reproductions Policy.
To find out more about the fanzine collections at UCR, visit our LibGuide, Fandom Materials in the Eaton Collection: Fanzines.
Fujimoto family diaries now available online
Riverside, Calif (library.ucr.edu) – The University of California, Riverside Library is delighted to announce that we have recently completed a six-month project to digitize the Fujimoto family diaries.
On March 11, 1942, the life of one Riverside family was shattered when US government officials took local farmer Toranosuke Fujimoto into federal custody. His son, George Fujimoto, age 21, wrote in his diary that day about his father’s arrest: “Went to school as usual….Came home about 5 p.m. and was shocked to learn that Pop was taken into custody by federal officials today. 28 Riverside Japanese aliens were rounded up in today’s raid; Mr. Sanematsu & Pop included.”
Insight into the lives of this family will now be readily available since the UCR Library has completed digitizing 45 Fujimoto family diaries with more than 24,000 pages. Many of these pages are already available online through Calisphere, a UC-wide digital collections archive system. Complete access is expected within a couple of weeks.
Highlighting the voices of these two men from an immigrant family, this collection documents the daily experiences of the Fujimoto family’s life from 1913-1968, including the events surrounding the family’s forced removal from their farm and home in Riverside to their relocation to and incarceration at a camp in Poston, Arizona.
“The Fujimoto diaries are among the treasures of the UCR Special Collections and University Archives. They provide an unforgettable insight into a turbulent chapter of life in California and beyond,” said Cherry Williams, UCR Library’s Director of Distinctive Collections.
Digitizing the dairies, which were donated to the UCR Library more than 20 years ago, is a major step forward in preserving this piece of history for future generations, said Eric Milenkiewicz, Digital Initiatives Program Manager.
“Complete digital versions of the diaries are now available online, providing a worldwide audience with a glimpse into the Japanese-American experience in the US during the early to mid-twentieth century, from the personal perspectives of a father and his son,” Milenkiewicz said.
Toranosuke Fujimoto’s diaries are written in Japanese while George Fujimoto’s are in English. Milenkiewicz explained that by making the diaries available online, “We hope to further enhance this digital resource by unlocking the text contained within each diary entry through translation/transcription, which will lead to even better access and discovery.”
“We the family are happy at the work and care that UCR has given toward these diaries,” said Shanti Taka, Toranosuke Fujimoto’s granddaughter and George’s niece. “I look forward to reading them online myself.”
Library staff in Special Collections and University Archives frequently use the Fujimoto diaries in their teaching activities. UCR Library’s Primary Source Literacy Librarian Robin M. Katz believes that the ties to Riverside make the Fujimoto diaries especially poignant for members of the UCR community: “Here is a Japanese-American family that had established their life in Riverside and thought, ‘This is the American dream’ and then their lives are turned upside-down, and their property seized.”
The diaries themselves are available for use by the UCR community and the community at large, in the UCR Department of Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room.
To request additional information, please contact specialcollections@ucr.edu.
Writers Week: Meet the Authors
Learn about some of the authors featured in the UCR Library's Writers Week exhibit. View the exhibit in the Tomás Rivera Library until February 16.
This year's Writers Week is taking place February 10 and February 12 - 16. See all the events (most are hybrid) and RSVP at writersweek.ucr.edu.
Learn more about our Writers Week exhibit here and more about the authors featured below.
Prageeta Sharma is a poet born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes, Undergloom, and Grief Sequence.
Noah Amir Arjomand is a filmmaker currently enrolled in the MFA Writing for the Performing Arts program at UCR, where he is a chancellor's distinguished fellow in screenwriting. He is the author of Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria and co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary Eat Your Catfish about my mother's life with ALS.
Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, a city in southeast Los Angeles County. With over 25 years of experience in social justice, writing, and education. Her writing is featured in the New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huizache, Nepantla, the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others.
Cati Porter is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council for 2023-24. Additionally, Cati Porter’s poetry has won or been a finalist in contests by: So To Speak, judged by Arielle Greenberg; Crab Creek Review, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; and Gravity & Light, judged by Chella Courington. Cati Porter lives in Inland Southern California where she runs her Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and directs Inlandia Institute, a 501(c)(3) literary nonprofit.
Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist. He is author of Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022), finalist for the Trio Award, Medal Provocateur, Housatonic Book Award, and Balcones Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook The Moment of Greatest Alienation (Ethel Press, 2021). His poems appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Tahoma Literary Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collections Dear Selection Committee. Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and Houston Matters, and more.
Minda Honey is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon, a newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. Her essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper’s Baazar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.
Daisy Ocampo Diaz (Caxcan, or Caz’ Ahmo, Indigenous Nation of Zacatecas, Mexico) earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Riverside in 2019. Her research in Native and Public History informs her work with museum exhibits, historical preservation projects, and community-based archives.
Elena Karina Byrne is a screenwriter, essayist, reviewer, multi-media artist, and editor. She is The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager and Literary Programs Director for the historic The Ruskin Art Club. She is the author of five poetry collections.
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, California. Her debut book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر , was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.
Lisa Teasley is a graduate of UCLA and a native of Los Angeles. Her critically acclaimed debut, Glow in the Dark, is winner of the Gold Pen Award and Pacificus Literary Foundation awards for fiction. She has also won the May Merrill Miller and the National Society of Arts & Letters Short Story awards. Teasley has a new story collection, Fluid, which was released on Cune Press, September 26, 2023.
Quincy Troupe is an awarding-winning author of 12 volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. In 2010 Troupe received the American Book Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Quincy Troupe is professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, formerly editor Code magazine and Black Renaissance Noire, a literary journal of the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University, and poetry editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online magazine.
Reza Aslan is s a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions. A recipient of the prestigious James Joyce award, Aslan is the author of three internationally best-selling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and The Yale Humanist Community.
Rigoberto González earned a degree in humanities and social sciences interdisciplinary studies from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe. González is the author of five poetry collections, including The Book of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2019); Unpeopled Eden (Four Way Books, 2013), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the 2014 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Donato Martinez teaches English Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing at Santa Ana College. His first full collection of poetry, Touch the Sky, was published in June by El Martillo Press.
Jason Magabo Perez holds an MFA in writing and consciousness from New College of California, formerly in San Francisco, and a dual PhD in ethnic studies and communication from the University of California, San Diego. Perez is the author of I ask about what falls away, forthcoming in 2024; This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017); and Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016).
Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Kimberly Blaeser, writer, photographer, and scholar, is a past Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the bi-lingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance (2020), Copper Yearning (2019), and Apprenticed to Justice.
Marsha de la O was born and raised in Southern California. She earned her MFA from Vermont College and is the author of two collections of poetry: Black Hope (1997), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize, and Antidote for Night (2015), winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize from BOA Editions.
Cindy Juyoung Ok is a poet, former high school physics teacher, and university creative writing instructor. Her collection of poems, Ward Toward, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.
University Archives
Print Materials
Special Collections holds a number of rare books, journals, pamphlets, individual leaves, and other print materials, many of which are related to and complement our archival collecting areas in Special Collections.
In addition to those print materials, Special Collection also holds strong collections of various print materials in the following areas:
Eaton Collection pieces featured in “Mundos Alternos” exhibition
Select pieces from The Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy will be included in an upcoming UCR ARTSblock exhibition.
Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas will feature the work of artists from various Latin American countries and Latino artists based in the United States, in addition to eleven pieces from the Eaton, including some acquired from noted scholars of Ciencia Ficcion Moisés Hassón, Itala Schmelz, and Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado.
“Alternative Futurisms are an important area of collecting for the Eaton,” explained JJ Jacobson, Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction. “So this opportunity to have the public encounter some of our works of Futurismo Latino so richly contextualized by the range and scope of Mundos Alternos is very exciting for us.”
“The library is delighted to be part of Mundos Alternos for many, many reasons, but we are particularly pleased that the focus on Latino American art and culture aligns so well with our campus community,” said Alison Scott, Associate University Librarian for Collections. “It’s also a great pleasure to be part of a collaboration with The Getty Foundation.”
Mundos Alternos is part of a larger endeavor entitled Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which has 70 cultural institutions across southern California participating in local exhibitions. Pacific Standard Time is funded by The Getty Foundation and sponsored by Bank of America.
The opening of Mundos Alternos will be held on the evening of Sept. 30 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. It will coincide with the debut of Myth & Mirage: Inland Southern California, Birthplace of the Spanish Colonial Revival, another exhibition that is part of the larger Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA endeavor, presented by the Riverside Art Museum.
For more information about the exhibition opening, see: artsblock.ucr.edu/Exhibition/mundos-alternos
To learn more about the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, please visit: pacificstandardtime.org
Arthur C. Harmon Papers
Located in: Special Collections & University Archives
This collection is comprised of material that documents the military career and personal life of Arthur C. Harmon, a Lieutenant Colonel of the United States Air Force who trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field during World War II. It contains items collected or created by Harmon regarding United States military history, including that of the Tuskegee Airmen, African American history, and Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.