Past Stories

Director Alexis Antracoli shares her thoughts on the archives, including how they show the many ways that people across Michigan history have risen to the challenges of their time.

U-M’s Lantern Night was a chance for the women of the senior class to symbolically pass the torch to younger students. Over time, it evolved to include a dance pageant, and more.

How fashion student Adam Denzler used Bentley collections to painstakingly recreate a 1904 University of Michigan football uniform—down to the drawers.

University of Michigan students Lily Fritsch and Nathan Schreck are part of a new fellowship program that helps preserve and share U-M athletics history.

Meet Michelle Light, whose training at the Bentley changed her career path. Today, she's an associate librarian for Yale's Library Special Collections & director of the Beinecke Library.

U-M's first buildings were the Professors' Houses, built in 1840. Only one stands today. Bentley collections reveal which one has endured, and what happened to the rest.

A rare and surprising cache of sixty new letters makes its way to the Bentley to supplement an existing collection.

A paid internship program gave students hands-on experience with archives that included studying the history of intolerance in Michigan and parallels between the past and today.

Elizabeth Chandler and Dr. Nathan Thomas fought for the abolition of slavery at a time when many people in Michigan opposed slavery but far fewer took a stand.

Gertrude Buck earned U-M's first rhetoric Ph.D. The archives reveal how she used writing & teaching to break barriers for women, laying groundwork for today's feminist rhetoric.