Memorializes Michael M. Sokal (1945-2025). In 1968, Sokal, an enthusiastic 22-year-old who still looked like a teenager, became the youngest participant in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Summer Institute on the History of Psychology. This institute led to the creation of Cheiron, the International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences. It also inspired Sokal's dedication to advancing research in the history of psychology within the larger framework of the history of science. In 1970, he got a position teaching the history of science and technology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI); he also continued his research in the Cattell Papers at the Library of Congress. Sokal later described a 1971 visit to the Cattell family's home, where, while touring an outbuilding, his wife, Charlene, fell through some floorboards-and uncovered another large cache of Cattell Papers. By 1972, he had completed his dissertation on James McKeen Cattell's early life and psychological career through 1904. Although Sokal would teach in Harvard's History of Science program in 1981-1982 and again in 1993-1994, WPI remained his academic home. Although heart-related medical issues would affect him for the rest of his life, Sokal's scholarship in the following decades was prolific, extensive, and diverse, with publications appearing in the most important journals of psychology, science, and history. In 1988, he became the History of Science Society's first "Executive Secretary"-a newly created position. In 1995, Sokal became the coordinator for an NEH-NSF program called "Integrating Science and Humanities in Undergraduate Education." By 1998, he had moved to the Washington, DC area to spend 2 years as director of the NSF's Science and Technology Studies Program. And in 2004, he became the president of the History of Science Society. He also worked closely with the American Psychological Association and in 1997 became the first editor of its new journal, History of Psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

In the 1930s, the Historic American Buildings Survey institutionalized the field notebook as a tool for informal “data” collection during site visits. District offices deposited notebooks as part of the Library of Congress’s permanent public records. Architects’ field notebooks initiated the recording of the nation’s cultural history which was motivated by the organization’s mission to “study, measure, and draw up the plans, elevations and details of the important antique buildings of the United States” so that “they should not pass into unrecorded oblivion.” At first glance, the HABS drawings appear to present self-evident “data” portraying existing buildings in measured outlines, profiles, surfaces, and construction details. Yet architectural drawing is a creative, iterative, and inventive process, even when applied to the recording of historical buildings. When we look at the trail of drawings left behind from the process of recording the built environment, what exactly are we looking at? This study identifies specific techniques present in the drawing process that indicate the architects’ figuration of the facts and the active transfiguration of eyewitness observations into measured images. How architects made measurements, created points, lines, and grids, calculated the congruences between building parts, and made compositional choices, omissions, fabrications, restorations, and rectifications will be discerned from the drawing phases in the Library of Congress’s permanent collection. Close comparisons of field notebook sketches by different district offices include examinations of a log house in California, a Virginia farm’s slave quarters, Spanish colonial missions in Arizona, and a fishing village in Massachusetts alongside the final drawing records of each site. Looking closely will bring into focus how the resultant images display pensive and interpretive qualities in addition to the intended “data” collected. Through the architect’s figuration of an existing building into images it becomes understood as a form of construction and conceptualized as a historical subject. This close reading of images calls attention to the intelligence inherent in architectural drawing as a unique form of visual record making that undergirds heritage recording. This study also prompts critical reflection on the wider history of heritage documentation and the images that continue to shape our understanding of the built environment.

Link to the Library of Congress: Meet Francis Hopkinson: Revolutionary Composer, Musician, and Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Research on the materiality of Spanish Colonial artistic heritage contributes to our knowledge about culture, society, and artistic practices of the Spanish Americas. This article presents the results of an interdisciplinary and multi-analytical investigation on the Manuscript Map of the Dagua River Region, a large and vibrantly colored cartographic work produced in Cali, Colombia in 1764 and held today in the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division. To date, material analysis studies have identified colorants used in Mesoamerican codices and pigments used in the creation of manuscripts, paintings, and sculpture from the Spanish colonial Andes (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru). Less analysis has been undertaken on Spanish colonial manuscript maps from South America. This article aims to address this gap in the scholarship and provides some of the first information available on pigments used in eighteenth-century manuscript maps produced in the Spanish Americas. Noninvasive techniques including multispectral imaging, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy reveal that the map was made of imported paper and regionally mined minerals.

Abstract: Musicologist and collector Gisella Selden-Goth assembled an extraordinary collection of holograph music manuscripts during her lifetime, including works by Bach, Chopin, Haydn, and Mozart. In 1963, she entered into an unusual agreement with the Library of Congress and placed her manuscripts there on deposit. They were appraised, microfilmed, and then returned to Selden-Goth, allowing her to enjoy her ‘tenderly guarded treasure’ during her lifetime. Over the ensuing years she formally donated selected manuscripts while retaining physical possession of them. When Selden-Goth died in Florence, Italy in 1975 at age ninety-one, her manuscripts were still in her possession—including those that she had given to the Library of Congress as well as several choice manuscripts she had never converted to gift. The American Consulate and the executor of Selden-Goth’s estate expressed concern over reports that parts of the collection were being sold locally. The ensuing scramble to rescue the Selden-Goth manuscripts involved the U.S. Department of State and the American Consulate in Florence in addition to the Library of Congress. The manuscripts that had been given to the Library were recovered and now comprise the Gisella Selden-Goth Collection at the Library of Congress. Several other manuscripts in her possession, however, were indeed sold. The posthumous provenance of the Selden-Goth manuscripts provides an instructive case study on the challenges of deposit agreements and the fragile nature of donor relationships. French Abstract: La musicologue et collectionneuse Gisella Selden-Goth a rassemblé au cours de sa vie une extraordinaire collection de manuscrits musicaux autographes, comprenant notamment des œuvres de Bach, Chopin, Haydn et Mozart. En 1963, elle conclut un accord inhabituel avec la Bibliothèque du Congrès et y déposa ses manuscrits. Ceux-ci furent évalués, microfilmés, puis rendus à Selden-Goth, lui permettant ainsi de profiter de son « trésor précieusement gardé » tout au long de sa vie. Au cours des années suivantes, elle fit officiellement don de certains manuscrits tout en conservant leur possession physique. Lorsque Selden-Goth mourut à Florence, en Italie, en 1975, à l’âge de 91 ans, ses manuscrits étaient toujours en sa possession, y compris ceux qu’elle avait donnés à la Bibliothèque du Congrès ainsi que plusieurs manuscrits de choix qu’elle n’avait jamais convertis en don. Le consulat américain et l’exécuteur testamentaire de Selden-Goth ont exprimé leur inquiétude face aux informations selon lesquelles une partie de la collection serait vendue localement. La course effrénée qui s’ensuivit pour sauver les manuscrits de Selden-Goth impliqua le département d’État américain et le consulat américain à Florence, en plus de la Bibliothèque du Congrès. Les manuscrits qui avaient été donnés à la Bibliothèque ont été récupérés et constituent désormais la collection Gisella Selden-Goth de la Bibliothèque du Congrès. Cependant, plusieurs autres manuscrits en sa possession ont bel et bien été vendus. La provenance posthume des manuscrits Selden-Goth constitue une étude de cas instructive sur les défis que posent les accords de dépôt et la nature fragile des relations avec les donateurs. German Abstract: Die Musikwissenschaftlerin und Sammlerin Gisella Selden-Goth trug im Laufe ihres Lebens eine außergewöhnliche Sammlung eigenhändiger Musikhandschriften zusammen, darunter Werke von Bach, Chopin, Haydn und Mozart. 1963 schloss sie eine ungewöhnliche Vereinbarung mit der Library of Congress und hinterlegte ihre Manuskripte dort. Diese wurden begutachtet, verfilmt und anschließend an Selden-Goth zurückgegeben, so dass sie sich zu Lebzeiten an ihrem “sorgsam gehüteten Schatz” erfreuen konnte. In den folgenden Jahren spendete sie ausgewählte Manuskripte formell, behielt sie aber im physischen Besitz. Als Selden-Goth 1975 im Alter von 91 Jahren in Florenz starb, befanden sich ihre Manuskripte noch immer in ihrem Besitz – darunter sowohl jene, die sie der Library of Congress gestiftet hatte, als auch einige besonders wertvolle, die sie nie verschenkt hatte. Das amerikanische Konsulat und der Nachlassverwalter von Selden-Goth äußerten Besorgnis über Berichte, die besagten, dass Teile der Sammlung vor Ort verkauft werden sollten. Die daraufhin eingeleitete Rettungsaktion für die Selden-Goth-Manuskripte involvierte neben der Library of Congress auch das US-Außenministerium und das amerikanische Konsulat in Florenz. Die der Library of Congress zugedachten Manuskripte konnten zurückerlangt werden und bilden heute die Gisella-Selden-Goth-Sammlung in der Library of Congress . Mehrere andere Manuskripte aus ihrem Besitz wurden jedoch tatsächlich verkauft. Die post-hume Provenienz der Selden-Goth-Manuskripte bietet eine aufschlussreiche Fallstudie über die Herausforderungen von Hinterlegungsvereinbarungen und die Fragilität von Stifterbeziehungen.

The document addresses the history of this relationship, highlighting milestones such as the creation of the first National Teaching-Healthcare Commission (CONDAS) in 1942, and key legislative changes, including the decree that allowed the establishment of private universities in 1981. The growth of private universities and the need to regularize the use of clinical training sites are also discussed. The Health Authority Law and its implications for the allocation of clinical training sites are analyzed, as well as the current relationship between higher education institutions and healthcare facilities. A historical-documentary review was conducted through systematic searches in electronic databases (SciELO, LILACS, National Library of Congress), academic repositories, and Ministry of Health archives. The document reflects on the need for a more cohesive and unified teaching-healthcare relationship, and proposes strategies to improve it, always considering respect for patients' dignity and rights, mutual collaboration, and transparency in information.

The aim of this article was to provide a comparative evaluation of the adaptive strategies employed in the functioning of digital archives in the United States of America and leading countries in Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina). The study was based on a qualitative comparative analysis using theoretical analysis methods, case studies, and synthesis to compare the official strategies of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Library of Congress with the strategies of the National Archives of Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. Within the framework of this research, a systemic dichotomy in the maturity of the models in the USA and Latin America was identified. It was determined that the NARA functions as a mature Trusted Digital Repository that employs active preservation and ensures authenticity through complex, resource-intensive metadata Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies, and continuous preventive format migration. In contrast, it was found that archival institutions in Latin America employ a fragmented model of the Open Archival Information System, where investments are directed towards digitising historical heritage, rather than ingesting natively digital documents. Therefore, the study identified gaps in Latin America, such as infrastructure deficits (lack of ingestion systems in Brazil), personnel shortages (the dominance of an IT approach over archival science in Mexico), and financial instability, which undermine efforts to implement trusted digital repositories. As a result, authenticity in Latin America often relies on legal provisions rather than on the technical storage chain. The results of the study allowed for the formulation of a holistic approach as a recommendation for improving the long-term authenticity of electronic archives, which combines archival education reform and the creation of joint regional repositories as adaptive strategies. The practical value of the research lies in providing specific recommendations for the strategic adaptation of international standards for countries with limited resources

Since the 1970s, negotiated settlements have become the popular method for forging agreement on water provision in the American West between Native American Tribal Nations and Federal, state and local actors. Such settlements require a negotiation process between multiple actors and led by the US Department of the Interior, followed by codification into statute by both of houses of Congress and the president. As of late 2024, 35 negotiated water settlements had been completed and implemented in this manner (Congressional Research Service, 2024. Indian Water Rights Settlements, CRS report to Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress). In this paper, I plumb the central tendencies of all 35 completed agreements to see which factors inform their usage and how such factors vary across agreements and over time. In my analysis, I find the between-agreement variability to be less pronounced than expected. The language of the 35 agreements is generally similar and covers the same topics, which happen to be those addressed in the pre-legislative stage of the process when negotiating parties coordinate with a Secretary-level working group in the Department of the Interior. While generally similar, there is some variation across settlements in size/scope of the water systems and the approach to environmental matters. Water systems vary from small to massive, with all settlement coalitions being broader and more representative than the traditional iron triangles of yesteryear (yet the larger water systems typically have an even larger swath of groups involved). Environmental topics across agreements tend toward similarity, except for settlements in which an endangered or threatened species is identified, requiring more in-depth work. While cross-settlement differences were not stark, three strong trends emerged across time. First, the amount of Federal money provided in each settlement, controlling for rising costs and water system size, increases dramatically over the time series. In addition, the typical legislative path of negotiated settlements has changed, from stand-alone bills, then to bundled packages with multiple projects, and next to attachments to massive omnibus budget bills. The third trend is the increase in the use of mandatory spending for these projects where discretionary spending has been the historical norm.

ABSTRACT This study explores the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven technologies to improve the accessibility and usability of historical audio archives through the integration of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. A dataset of 14 historical and oral history recordings, sourced from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, was used to evaluate three ASR models: Whisper larger-v3, OWSM v3.1, and MMS-1b-all. Comparative analysis based on Word Error Rate (WER) revealed that Whisper larger-v3 consistently achieved the lowest error rates, while the open-source OWSM v3.1 demonstrated competitive performance, positioning it as a viable transparent alternative. The multilingual MMS-1b-all exhibited higher WERs, highlighting the trade-off between language coverage and domain-specific optimization. Downstream Named Entity Recognition (NER) and automated text summarization were conducted on the transcribed outputs, with human evaluations confirming high levels of informativeness, fluency, and faithfulness. This integrated approach underscores the potential of AI technologies to automate metadata generation, enhance the accessibility of archival content, and support more efficient archival workflows. Furthermore, the study addresses ethical considerations and proposes strategies for future integration of AI-generated metadata into existing cataloguing systems, offering valuable insights for archivists and information professionals engaged in digital preservation and heritage management.

Introduction When starting a research project in fashion studies, you might first turn to the library’s fine arts section, specifically the Library of Congress call number ranges NK4700–4890 or NK8800– 9505.5, or the TT490–695 range covering clothing manufacture, dressmaking, and tailoring. The government documents section is likely the last place you’d consider, as fashion

As a companion to Resonance editor-in-chief Jay Needham’s conversation with Harry Shearer elsewhere in this issue, this essay reports on two September 2025 Hollywood premieres of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, ticking and tacking between real life and that business called “show.” This account also serves as a bookend to the first set of ten essays and listening memoirs published this year in the Resonance special series “Listening to Harry Shearer’s Le Show.” Across four decades and dozens of technologies for audio production, recording, and circulation, Le Show has compelled Shearer to create brilliantly produced and delivered topical sonic satire nearly every week, despite his many other creative projects—The Simpsons and Spinal Tap, just two—across a host of media and genres of performance. Resonance is keeping the file open for others who want to write about Le Show. Especially at a moment when political satire has become the target of a censorious and bellicose regime, listening to Le Show—the full archive in the Library of Congress as well as each new program—has become more vital than ever.

The ancient manuscripts, especially Indo-Aryan and Tamil texts have the complex linguistic structure in their manuscripts with historical differences. The present paper is a BERT-Li Scribe Hybrid Model of the historic Indo-Aryan and Tamil manuscript classification. The model combines the contextual embedding of BERT, which learns the semantic links in the text, and LiScribe, a specialized sequence model that learns features, and linguistic patterns of Indo-Aryan and Tamil scripts at a character level. The sample of 1,055 manuscripts of the Library of Congress and University of Hamburg is a perfect combination of Indo-Aryan and Tamil texts. The model that is offered provides the classification of two large groups, such as Indo-Aryan (Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati) and Tamil, which guarantees the level of classification on a family level and specific scripts. Training is performed using categorical cross-entropy loss and Adam optimizer with learning rate scheduling with dropout layers used to avoid overfitting with noisy historical data. The model, which was coded in Python and deployed with the help of such libraries as TensorFlow and PyTorch, demonstrated a high overall classification accuracy of 97.61%, being able to distinguish between the Indo-Aryan and Tamil texts at the same time. The attention mechanism also increases the concentration on the important features by the model even in the degraded manuscripts. This mixed methodology proves the usefulness of the combination of deep learning and linguistic feature extraction to the correct classification of historical manuscripts.

When the nine-year-old Susan Knell wrote to Leonard Bernstein in March 1962 from her family home in Ossining, New York, she had very little — if any — concept of ‘the archive’. Nor were posterity or history-making remotely in her mind. The second child of highly educated Jewish parents, she had been studying the piano because ‘it was something that kids were expected to [do]’. 2 Exactly how the letter came about she does not recall. Most likely, one of her parents encouraged her to write to him: ‘They were very impressed by […] famous people who were accomplished’, she reflected. ‘And we were Jewish. And so I think there was that connection with Bernstein.’ Armed with a sheet of lined paper, torn from the pad in such a way that one of the five pre-punched holes was left ripped, she penned her missive. The careful formatting reflected her awareness of ‘good etiquette’, but was also at odds with the childish scrawl, an incongruity suggestive of children’s tendency to do things ‘correctly’, up to a point. Once posted, the letter was sooner or later forgotten by Susan — and likewise was the photograph reportedly sent by return, which she has no memory of ever receiving. 3

This paper explores the ideological underpinnings of the Library of Congress subject heading “Conduct of Life” in catalog records where it is used as a subdivision in relation to queerness. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, we examine this subdivision and its collocation in the context of historical evolutions of “Gay people” as a “Classes of persons,” revealing moralistic judgments regarding queerness in the use of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). We argue that this subdivision work identifies queer embodiment as morally divergent and discuss how ideologically bound concepts trouble notions of ‘ofness’ and ‘aboutness’ while reinforcing issues of essentialism with Library of Congress subject headings. The paper concludes with theoretical implications and practical approaches to redress marginalizing subjectivity in description.

In December of 2018, the short film Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898), featuring the first known on-screen kiss between two Black actors (Saint Shuttle and Gertie Brown), directed by Black film director and Selig Polyscope Company owner William Selig, was recovered, restored, and added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Before its discovery, Something Good’s legacy remained threatened by what Claudy Op Den Kamp thus encapsulates in their book The Greatest Films Never Seen: “if [films] cannot be seen, it will become increasingly hard to remember them” (12). Two years after Something Good’s restoration and exhibition, the Library of Congress scholar-in-residence Maya Cade launched the revolutionary Black Film Archive, a living register of national and international Black films made from 1915 to 1979 (now 1898 to 1989) that exhibit and celebrate “the rich, abundant history of Black cinema”. The site itself promises in its mission statement to uplift and make known “historically and culturally significant films [...] about Black people accessible through a streaming guide with cultural context”. This paper examines the placement and impact of Maya Cade’s Black Film Archive within the larger discourse of film history and film historiography.

Funded by the Archie Green Fellowship through the Library of Congress (LOC), the authors collected oral history interviews from Wisconsin Library Workers. The purpose of this project was to share everyday stories about information work from library workers themselves. The use of the term “library worker” rather than “librarian” was deliberate, to include those who may not have an MLIS degree. The authors interviewed 20 library workers across the State of Wisconsin. Trying to gain a broad view of library work, they included workers from academic, public, school, and special libraries. The interview recordings, interview transcripts, and photographs are being added to the LOC’s Occupational Folklife Project, which is part of the American Folklife Center. These oral histories contribute to the larger story of work in America. The authors carefully prepared their materials for additional to the American Folklife Centers’s archive, including creating metadata according to the LOC’s specifications. The authors applied ethical practices such as communicating considerately, fully informing participants about the details of the project, and providing the interview questions to participants in advance. Participants were informed that they could withdraw at any time. Once this project is complete, the authors will use these archived interviews for future research. As the archives are public and digitally available, other researchers may access and use this data as well.

This collaborative project between the Cherkasy Regional University Library, and the San Jose State University School of Information (iSchool) aimed to amplify the wartime experiences of Ukrainian children. This initiative involved the digitization of 450 artworks and collecting 70 poems created by these children, culminating in the bilingual zine, “Mom, I See War,” which features ten poems and fifteen artworks centered on themes of hope, resistance, and Ukrainian solidarity. Zines serve as critical and empowering tools for marginalized voices, offering a platform for independent expression and social change (Scheper, 2023). Zines, defined by the Library of Congress as self-published and low-cost media, provide a safe space for children in this case to share their war experiences through poetry and artwork. Existing research highlights that this function positions zines as influential instruments for education and social change by challenging dominant narratives, strengthening critical thinking, and asserting agency. The creation of “Mom, I See War” was directly inspired by the artwork and poetry emerging from art therapy programs for Ukrainian children in the Cherkasy region during 2022 and 2024. These creative expressions offered a US audience powerful narratives of hope amidst the devastation of war. The curation process involved a deliberate selection of ten poems from seventy submissions. This selection aimed to carefully construct a narrative arc that progressed from depictions of devastation to expressions of resilience. Subsequently, each poem was paired with corresponding artwork to highlight thematic connections, foster a sense of community, validate individual experiences, and showcase artistic practice as a form of resistance through the incorporation of national symbols. “Mom, I See War” holds value as a curated collection of cultural records, a testament to wartime experiences, and an educational resource for amplifying marginalized voices. As a product of curation, it demonstrates information professionals acting as cultural stewards and activists, actively preserving and making accessible the cultural expressions of a marginalized community. As a record of wartime experiences, it documents the realities of Ukrainian life and the impact of conflict on children. Furthermore, as an educational tool, the zine provides a powerful means for historically marginalized voices, specifically children, to be heard (Desyllas & Sinclair, 2014). The process of creating and disseminating “Mom, I See War” offers a replicable model for information professionals to engage in cultural stewardship, ethical curation, and the amplification of marginalized narratives through accessible digital media. By digitizing and curating the children’s works, the project team ensured the preservation of these vital cultural artifacts and facilitated their reach to a global audience, fostering understanding and empathy (Mageary, 2020). This model utilizes accessible digital tools like Canva, FlipBooks, LinkTree, and QR codes. It enhances skills in multilingual publishing, ethical curation, and accessibility-centered design, which is crucial for representing diverse voices and establishing zines as effective educational tools. These tools empower marginalized youth to transform private experiences into public narratives, develop multiliteracy skills, and foster critical thinking and social change across diverse communities facing systemic injustice.

This article presents two archival case studies of feminist media scholars working speculatively, but also situatedly with digital collections. The first case study by Tanya Clement examines the author Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic films from the Maragaret Mead Collection at the Library of Congress. The second case study by Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth discusses a collaborative digital exhibit, Annotating Adler, made by her students at the University of Texas with method acting luminary Stella Adler’s pedagogical videos from the Harry Ransom Center. Together, the authors propose strategies—in research and teaching—for simultaneously contextualizing and speculating in dialogue these recently digitized artifacts.

This comparative study locates Frederick Douglass’s (1818–95) religiosity within his published autobiographies as well as his 1886–7 unpublished travel diary – taken as part of the Library of Congress’s Frederick Douglass Papers (1841–64). R-scripted text analysis of Douglass’s expressed faith is foregrounded through the generation of clean digital transcriptions using handwritten text recognition (HTR), the process of converting non-consistent images into computer-readable text. In training a HTR model to 90.60 per cent character accuracy and manually correcting its outputs, this article forms a practical study in foregrounding automated transcription to benefit archival research and leverages multiple technologies to uncover lexical patterns across disparate autobiographical works. In showing that the abolitionist’s introduction of humanistic themes holds little dependence to instances of religious expression, we challenge scholarly interpretations that Douglass committed to a hard pivot away from religious language and placed God ‘off-the-stage’ in his later works. In doing so, our approach demonstrates the range of techniques available to researchers auditing differences between private handwritten archives and public published accounts. This article therefore holds significance in documenting a scalable text extraction method on handwritten materials, digitized from smaller analogue library collections, while also advancing historical knowledge of Douglass’s use of religious language.

This paper explores several representations of pink kryptonite. In Doug Murphy’s animated short film True Colors (2017), Superman (Jason J. Lewis) transforms into a woman when he’s exposed to this substance. This short, as we have shown elsewhere (2025), offers a useful lens for examining the perpetuation and the critique of gender stereotypes in superhero media: Superman may be equally capable regardless of his sex, but the film pokes fun at, rather than celebrates, his transformation. Pink kryptonite rarely appears in the canon. A single panel in Supergirl (2003) has received perhaps the most sustained attention. Tom Ue’s archival work at the Library of Congress has revealed but one more instance in comics, in an issue of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen (2019). In both cases, exposure to the substance makes Superman attracted to Jimmy, and they leave us with more questions than answers: That Jimmy does not reciprocate the superhero’s attentions makes all the more apparent the power imbalance in this sexualized relationship. In this paper, we argue that pink kryptonite can be a useful catalyst for initiating all kinds of critical discussions regarding gender norms and that this conversation has been continued by fans. Through close analysis of canonical and fan treatments of pink kryptonite, this paper weighs in on both the potentials and the limitations of canonical texts; and it argues for the value of investigations in libraries and information repositories.