Three hundred years after Gulliver first set sail, his strange worlds have landed on the third floor of Gleeson Library. Nestled in the back of Gleeson Library, the fiery exhibit “Gulliver’s Travels at 300: Voyages Into Strange Worlds” brings new life to the Donohue Rare Book Room. Ten glass cases, accentuated by deep-cherry wooden molding transports visitors to 1726, historic and pristinely preserved books and literary works, visual art and a sharp curatorial voice immerse us in the world of Jonathan Swift and his revolutionary novel, “Gulliver’s Travels.”
The first edition book sits in the center case, embellished by a dramatic illustration and grand borders, surrounded by marbled and colorful 18th-century bookbinding and historic photographs.
English majors Joyce Chu and Amira Walker worked collaboratively with Department Chair of USF’s English department Omar F. Miranda for nearly seven months to research, curate and design the exhibition leading up to its grand opening on Sept. 10. Chu and Walker worked to write the didactic labels, explanatory texts that accompany the exhibition’s objects, and played a large role in curating and executing the exhibit.
While “Gulliver’s Travels,” especially the beginning, is a classic children’s story with iterations continually interpreted through film, books and illustration over the centuries, its satirical tone utilizes absurdity to indirectly criticize European society. “Swift is one of the great satirists, and he is merciless about vanity, greed, politics, intellectual pretension and our endless talent for convincing ourselves that ridiculous behavior is perfectly reasonable,” Miranda said.
Jonathan Swift lived in Ireland and England during a period of political unrest and the Enlightenment, where new discoveries and societal attitudes shifted toward the pursuit of scientific knowledge. This plays a large role in the societal qualms Swift expresses through “Gulliver’s Travels,” questioning systems of authority and knowledge very early in their implementation.
“The exhibition moves through Gulliver’s increasingly bizarre worlds. … We wanted people to experience the book as a journey,” said Miranda.
The exhibition guides viewers to understand the social commentary that emerges from each of Gulliver’s four fantastical voyages to foreign societies, while providing historical context for the work. “Each voyage is its own fictional world, and satirized something very specific. So our idea was to create this exhibit that kind of teases out those different layers of satire within each voyage,” Chu said.
In its celebration of the novel’s tercentennial, Walker said that the exhibition is an opportunity “for students to think about how this book can still be related to after 300 years, and not just today, but also throughout that entire time period.”
The exhibition also connects the centuries-old satire to USF. “Our school has a lot of history with satirical work,” Walker shared, “especially because our school, in certain aspects, is very political.” There are more satirical and politically activating texts to discover in USF’s collection.
“Satire gives us a way to expose absurdity and challenge authority through humor,” Miranda said, “that has a long and wonderfully unruly history, and I think it speaks especially well to the Bay Area and to a USF community that takes questioning institutions seriously.”
USF acquired the first edition of “Gulliver’s Travels” from USF alumnus C. Albert Schmate in 1989. Schmate was a historian, a preservationist, and a USF graduate of 1927.
“I think another part of the exhibit is just to enter the Rare Book Room because I think the Rare Book Room is such a cool place on campus,” said Chu. Gleeson Library’s Donohue Rare Book Room has an extensive and enriching archival collection of over 17,000 texts, artworks and photographs, available for USF students to access.
The exhibit will continue until Dec. 4, 2026, and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday. Financial support from USF’s College of Arts and Sciences made this exhibition possible, along with collaborative support from Gleeson Library and Thatcher Gallery, and exceptional contributions by John Hawk, Head of Special Collections and University Archives at Gleeson Library’s Donohue Rare Book Room.
