UCI Libraries honors the memory of three remarkable UCI educators who passed away in 2020, all of whom have their papers preserved in the UCI Libraries’ Department of Special Collections & Archives.
Former UCI lecturer, artistic director, photographer, dancer, designer and choreographer Donald Dale Bradburn donated his expansive collection of photography to the Libraries over many years. Bradburn studied ballet under Eugene Loring at UCLA, later becoming a teacher of choreography and dance at UCI and Cal Arts. His papers include programs, manuscripts, clippings, notebooks, scrapbooks, research files, teaching materials, videotapes and photographs that reveal an intimate understanding and appreciation for the inner world of dance and choreography. His images include such artists as Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Margot Fonteyn.
Professor Emeritus of anthropology and documentary photographer Frank Cancian began donating his papers to the Libraries in 2010. Among the field notes, diaries, interviews, background research files and notes are thousands of photographs from Cancian’s research projects. The photographs include his earliest work on the rural Italian community of Lacedonia in the 1950s, the people and places in and around Zinacantan, Mexico in 1971, the working lives of house cleaning staff in Orange County, California between 1971 - 2002, and everyday life on the UCI campus from 2009 - 2011 for a project he called “Main Street UCI”. Main Street UCI, consists of more than 3,000 images taken over seventy-five sessions, documents the people, events and spaces on Ring Mall on the UCI campus. Main Street UCI illustrates campus life at UCI, featuring images of protests and demonstrations, vendor activities, religious activities, food sales, dance and other performances, campus scenes and organizations.
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English J. Hillis Miller was an internationally recognized scholar in the field of nineteenth and twentieth century English and American literature as well as literary theory. During his years as a professor and chair at Yale University, Miller became associated with a group of critics and theorists including Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and Harold Bloom. Members of this group were sometimes referred to as the “Yale School of Deconstruction.” After fourteen years at Yale, Miller left New Haven in 1986 to become Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. At UCI, Miller served on the Advisory Committee of the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California, many graduate student examination and dissertation committees, and was an active member of the School of Humanities' Critical Theory Institute, for which he delivered the Wellek Library Lectures, “The Ethics of Reading,” in 1985. Over the course of his career, Miller authored twenty-nine books, published more than two hundred articles, and served on the editorial boards for twenty-three literary journals. Miller was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1986, he served as president of the Modern Language Association, and received the organization’s lifetime achievement award in 2005. He received the UCI Medal in 2002.
To request access to the Donald Bradburn Papers, the Frank Cancian Papers, or the Main Street UCI Collection, please click here to contact the Department of Special Collections & Archives. Many of the images in these collections are available digitally.
Processing and preservation of The J. Hillis Miller Papers was made possible by a generous philanthropic gift from UCI Libraries benefactor Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati in support of Special Collections & Archives.
To help preserve Bradburn’s legacy, please direct gifts In Memory of Donald Bradburn to the UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives at http://bit.ly/BradburnMemorial. Questions about your gift to the UCI Libraries may be directed to Angelica Simmons at (949) 824-3080 or acsimmo1@uci.edu.