Projects Directory

In 1794, some two hundred years after the death of William Shakespeare it was announced by Samuel Ireland that his son William had made a discovery of a collection of unpublished works by the old playwright, along with a deed of gift from Shakespear...

James Taylor

In 1651, during the British Civil War there was chaos and turmoil, which lead to many deaths. Both parties looking to establish their idea of what the government should be responsible for, some in support of a monarchy, others looking to establish a...

Lance Jackson

In 1832, nearly sixty years after the birth of American independence, a small book quietly challenged societal norms in a way few had dared before. Charles Knowlton, a physician and freethinker, published Fruits of Philosophy, a controversial treatis...

Chloe Johnson

In 1994, Jean-Michel Bragard and Robert Kayser built La Première Machine à Lire les Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes: un véritable jackpot littéraire! to make Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes easier to use. Queneau’s book, published in ...

Rolando Jorge

Beginning in the 1920s, Otto Ege, a respected book historian and collector, began dismantling incomplete or damaged medieval texts. Attempting to preserve the knowledge of medieval lettering and writing, and spread the limited resources around, Ege s...

Cade Jorgensen

Wanted posters were a popular resource used by law enforcement agencies in the late 19th and early 20th century. This scrapbook features a collection of posters for felons (e.g., escaped prisoners, murderers, etc.) from 1901-1909. It includes descrip...

Collin Kessens

Published in 1868 by L'Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, Clinique Photographique is a medical text documenting dermatological diseases through photography. It was one of the earliest attempts to visually catalog skin conditions for scientific study. Whil...

Krishna Agarwal

Babbage's Calculating Engines revolutionized the history of computing. These early mechanical devices laid the groundwork for modern computing. My ePortfolio looks at Babbage's ideas of the development of engines and the impact he had on technology.

Malak Al-Shamary

The cultural and moral impacts of Kyurumusu Kaitaifu (Johann Adam Kulmus, Kyoto, 1826), one of the first western anatomical texts translated into Japanese, are analyzed in Anatomy Across Cultures. This exhibit explores how medical knowledge crossed c...

Saud Almetwali

From the 1930s to the 1970s, the FBI conducted surveillance of American citizens via wiretapping, bugging and more to detect and stop crime. In 1934, Congress passed the Communications Act which banned all wiretapping, but some states passed laws to ...

Alex Arvin

I chose to work with Scrapbook of Mid-Western Wanted Posters and Law Enforcement Ephemera. This was made by law enforcement and is full of wanted and missing people posters. Midwestern law enforcement compiled a scrapbook of wanted posters and relate...

Toby Bachman

The way you prepare yourself for an inevitable death as a believer in Christ can give you the result of eternal life. With the uncertainty of death and a possible life full of guilt, it can be a moral struggle for a person to become judgemental or se...

Brandon Bay

The Electropoise was a fraudulent 19th century medical device that was said to heal any kind of ailment. The device consisted of a metal cylinder connected to a cord that attached to any part of the body for healing. Although advertised to heal any s...

Cade Carver

Oppression Through Art explores the fierce anti-religious propaganda of the Soviet Union through the lens of two powerful posters: "Religion is the Opiate of the People" and "Religion is the Enemy of Industrialization". These artworks depict faith as...

Jaren Castro

In 1917, American quack doctor John R. Brinkley gained fame by performing and promoting his controversial goat testicle transplant procedure, claiming it could cure male impotence. By 1923, he founded his own radio broadcast and expanded his influenc...

Vanessa Cecillia

Goat Gland Doctor: In the early 1900s, during the Great Depression, John Brinkley claimed to be a doctor despite having no education or degree. Through marketing and campaigns, he gained widespread attention and later published Dr. Brinkley's Doctor ...

Brooke Crane

Between 1939 and 1942, World War II saw an overwhelming surge of propaganda, particularly in Germany. While propaganda often carries a negative connotation, it can also serve a just cause. In the following leaflets, nations like France, Holland, Denm...

Hannah Crim

During the Vietnam War, countless lives were burned away by the devastating force of napalm, a weapon that sparked outrage and ethical debate. In Thou Shalt Not Kill: Or the Civil Liberties of Napalm, Howard Zinn confronts the moral failures behind i...

Jake Davidson

Throughout history, knowledge has been seen as both a superpower, but also a threat. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, created by the Catholic Church in the 17th century, sought to control the literature being produced to shield people from ideas that...

Darcy Davis

In 1543 a book was published that would revolutionize the anatomy of the human body. It changed the way the world understood how the body worked because of how detailed some of the drawings and inquiries were. Most of if not all of the sketches were ...

Bobby Dylla

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of photography became an integral tool in the medical field as it provided doctors with new ways to study diseases. In 1868, the Clinique Photographique de l'Hôpital Saint-Louis documented dermatolo...

Kate Espejo

Prosecuted for obscenity three times between 1832 and 1834, Charles Knowlton published the first edition of birth control written by a physician in 1832. In an era where reproduction was solely for procreation, sexuality was sinful, and abstinence wa...

Linda Fu

This is The Forbidden Word, an ePortfolio about an index of banned books by the Spanish Inquisition, or "Index librorvm prohibitorvm et expvrgandorvm novissimvs". The Spanish Catholic Church in the mid-17th century, under King Phillip IV, banned a la...

Benjamin Henderson

The Spirit Photographs collection features eerie images that allegedly capture ghosts alongside the living. Taken between 1868 and 1907, these photographs were popular within the growing Spiritualist movement, which sought to prove communication with...

Sanjana Khajuria

In the early 15th century, Bruges artisans crafted Books of Hours, personalized prayer books reflecting their owners' spiritual and artistic preferences. One surviving manuscript reveals evidence of modular construction, where pre-made miniatures and...

Maddie Knecht

In 1981, Herbert Vander Lugt published the book A Matter of Life & Death, which applied the teachings of the Bible to issues like abortion, genetic engineering, capital punishment, euthanasia, and suicide. The purpose of this book is to provide scrip...

Chris Martin

The Fruits of Philosophy also known as The private companion of young married people, is a miniature book written by Charles Knowlton in 1832, that discreetly provided patients with information on contraception, infertility, and impotence. At a time ...

Samantha McCrea

In the fifthteenth century, english was a known a vulgar language. This Book of Hours, in english, was considered disrespectful to God and soically provacative to use these sacred words in such a language. This small book holds different prayers for ...

Kyle McGinnis

Where do the lines of independent privacy and government protection blur? The book titled "How to Avoid Electronic Eavesdropping and Privacy Invasions" explores this concept to alert the reader of the variety of methods information is being collected...

Delaney Mullin

One of the most influential political works of all time, Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" asks what justifies political authority and who has the right to rule. According to Hobbes, humans are, by nature, unsuited for political life, and the only way they ...

Mason Newlin

According to the Lilly Library, in 1425 the English language was considered a vulgar language and this prayer book was considered disrespectful to God. This book, Psalter and Book of Hours, is considered one of the first prayer books ever written in ...

Owen Ott

The fascinating collection of Spirit Photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries features works by photographers like William Mumler, Frederick Hudson, and Édouard Isidore Buguet, who claimed to capture images of spirits among the living....

Mueyae Pae

Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) changed how we understand control, feedback, and communication in both humans and machines. This ePortfolio explores how the book influenced modern comput...

Sehoon Park

In 2021, Aum golly¹ became the first known poetry collection authored by AI. It was curated by Jukka Aalho to explore the depths of human emotion. Two years later, Aum golly² followed, pushing the boundaries further with AI-generated illustrations. C...

Sreenija Paruchuri

The Des Moines Sunday Register’s Hollywood (Uncensored) offers a glimpse into the battle between creativity and control during the Hays Code era. This artifact exposes the ways in which Hollywood filmmakers pushed boundaries while navigating strict c...

Jacob Pascover

Howard Zinn's Thou Shalt Not Kill is a forceful condemnation of violence, war, and institutionalized oppression. This book challenges the ethical justification of state violence and explores the ethical nuances of war and justice. Grounded in pacifis...

Gus Pelis

In this booth, I will be diving into the idea of Medicine vs. Man, and how the topics explored in De Humani Corporis fabrica relate to the Ethical Theory of Utilitarianism. Author Andreas Vesalius committed heinous acts in order to produce this text,...

Alex Rosen

Starting in 1901 through to 1909, The wanted posters from around the Midwest were collected and put together in a Scrapbook. The scrapbook consisted of everything from stolen horses and carriages, escaped prisoners, murders, or other crimes all displ...

Matthew Schmidt

Aum golly¹ and Aum golly² challenge traditional ideas of authorship by questioning whether AI-generated works should be seen as truly original creations. These books, developed with AI assistance, raise ethical concerns about whether AI, trained on h...

Emily Sears

Around the 1930’s, the Soviet Union was drafting new legislation that would get rid of religious activities and education to try to persuade people away from religion. Most of the people apart of the Russian Orthodox Church were either shot or sent t...

Josh Smith

The Mercator's Atlas is a set of maps created by Gerhard Mercator and eventually completed, and published, by his son Rumold Mercator following his death. It was the first time in history a set of maps were referenced as an atlas. Jodocus Hondius lat...

Josh Song

Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger (1641) by John Wilkins is the first English-language book on cryptography. This ePortfolio explores its historical significance, highlighting how it revolutionized secure communication. It serves as a bridge...

Niraj Sudhakar

In 1868, French physician Alfred Hardy published the book Clinique photographique de l'hopital Saint-Louis, providing an overview of dermatological conditions using images of patients photographed by Arthur de Montméja. The text and accompanying imag...

Jay Thilking

In 1936, Alan Turing’s revolutionary paper, On Computable Numbers, addressed David Hilbert’s 1928 question, 'Is mathematics decidable?' Turing’s work introduced the concept of a 'universal machine,' which laid the foundation for what we now recognize...

Nicholas Thompson

In 1543, Flemish author Andreas Vesalius published 7 books that revolutionized medicine’s understanding of human anatomy, which had long been dominated by Galen’s works. His works that continue to guide medicine today are known as "De Humani Corporis...

Tom Tieu

Welcome to Poems of Code, an ePortfolio featuring Aum Golly 1 and Aum Golly 2, two collections of AI-generated poetry. These works explore the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence, while also posing ethical questions about authorship, or...

Reid Trammel