UF students and members of the community smiled when they saw the original Superman comic book Monday.
The UF Smathers Libraries celebrated UF President Kent Fuchs’ inauguration with their first of three talks this week. Library Popular Culture Curator James Liversidge led the discussion, which served to showcase the libraries’ large popular culture collection.
During the talk, Liversidge showed about 20 attendees, including Fuchs, items that were a part of the libraries’ popular culture section, which includes films, comic books and costume sketches that impacted a large number of people during a particular era.
Liversidge also shared the original "Superman" comic book prototype from 1934.
"Superman was a villain," Liversidge said of the book, "which kind of parallel with what was going on in Europe with Adolf Hitler."
UF wildlife ecology and conservation alumna and Smathers Libraries assistant Alexandria Warwick, who attended the talk, said they liked seeing how popular culture changed through the decades.
"I think seeing a physical object cements the idea that popular culture was a large part of history and it’s interesting to see how advanced things were back then and how far popular culture has come," Warwick said.
Liversidge said even though students live in a digital age, he thinks they still want to see hard-copy information.
"There is something about holding a piece of history that is very exciting," he said.
There will also be curator talks today and Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Judaica Suite.
