Greetings from Special Collections and University Archives: traveling the State through New Jersey postcard collections

Ephemeral materials like postcards are more than pretty pictures. Postcards can play a valuable role in understanding local histories, and shed light on the natural and built environments, cultural landscapes, historic events, and popular culture and entertainment. Postcard images and messages can also reveal attitudes about class, race, gender, labor, leisure, and more. This tour of New Jersey through postcards will include a brief history of the postcard and feature three collections that are part of the Sinclair New Jersey Collection in Special Collections and University Archives: The New Jersey Postcard Collection, which contains thousands of postcards depicting places and people representing all twenty one New Jersey counties; the Helen-Chantal Pike Collection on Asbury Park, New Jersey, which contains hundreds of postcards that illustrate the changing landscape of the resort city by the sea and other Jersey shore towns; and a small collection of postcards that advertise shows at 1960s country and western venues around northern and central New Jersey. The presentation will also include examples of the use of postcards in undergraduate instruction at Rutgers.Broadcast live via Zoom on April 28, 2022 at 4:00 PM EST