Alpha Xi Delta 1958 - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

Sometimes my writing of these featured image musings is accompanied by an internal soundtrack. As I type these words, the Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me” is playing on a loop in my head. It’s a fitting song, both thematically and temporally, having topped the charts at the tail end of the period covered by this digital collection. Although the dance card tradition of that era is bygone—in the social circles in which I travel, anyhow—traces linger: the expression “Sorry, my dance card’s full” is still used and understood as a metaphorical declining of an invitation.

Spanning three decades (1931-1960), the dance cards in this collection come from 80 seasonal formals and social events sponsored by more than a dozen Greek fraternities, sororities, honor societies, and student organizations. Visual interest is achieved by means of distinctively-shaped booklets or embellishments, as well as creative designs playing on other forms of printed matter. Kappa Delta 1948, for example, substitutes the usual numbered roster for penciled-in dance partners with a blank bank check for each of the 12 dances. Handwritten notes add flavor to bland printed contents—lists of members, chaperones, musical performers, and guests, with the occasional dinner dance menu (roast turkey, again?). The dance cards issued by the Theta Chi frat (a.k.a. “OX”) tend to be a bit zestier—exotic themes such as “Barbary Coast” and “Harem Party” along with irreverently humorous text lead me to surmise that this bunch was the Animal House of the Monmouth College campus.

Browsing through this collection, I immediately cottoned to the card from Alpha Xi Delta’s 1958 Rose Formal, its glossy, iridescent, lacquer-like appearance and tasseled cord like that of an inrō box (minus the ojime bead and netsuke toggle). The flower’s decorative detail gets somewhat lost in the lustrous sheen of the cover surface, though. The same design, printed in a single shade of dark green that provides strong contrast against a light-colored background, is much more visible on Kappa Delta 1951: The motif of a dancing couple defines the lines forming the petals.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Associate Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

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