October 23, 2020, Filed Under: Featured1, Theatre + Performing ArtsCollecting effort to document theater community’s response to 2020 launched This month, the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin is launching the Theatre 2020 Project to invite theater artists and organizations to register and submit stories about how the events of 2020 have affected them, from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent closures and furloughs, to national… read more
October 22, 2020, Filed Under: Authors, Featured1Thoughts during a pandemic on Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and what ‘it’ is by JAMES ARNETT “Why was it so hard to see while it was happening that that was what was happening?” —URSULA K. LeGUIN, In and Out [1] “What’s ‘it’–what do you mean by ‘it’?” “O, anything–I mean–you know what I mean.” —VIRGINIA WOOLF, Kew Gardens typescript The walls have closed… read more
October 21, 2020, Filed Under: Featured1, Research + TeachingTaking time to teach hidden histories in the archives This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? The students stand, pencil and paper in hand, before the display window in the Harry Ransom Center’s seminar room. Behind the glass are an array of objects from the Center’s archives: Arthur Miller’s handwritten notes on a draft… read more
October 14, 2020, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Featured1, Research + TeachingLearning how to read again This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Part of what is so compelling about doing research with old books is that the learning curve never ends—there’s always some new challenge, another thing to explain, something else to get to the bottom of. Reading old books… read more
October 8, 2020, Filed Under: Featured1, Research + TeachingLISTEN SLOW: Researching Anne Sexton putting poetry her way by TANYA E. CLEMENT This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Annotated Audio: Anne Sexton Class Visit at Sweetbriar College, 1966 Recording annotations and transcription by Tanya Clement Anne Sexton Papers 1912-1996, R 0084, Harry Ransom Center. 17:10 Anne Sexton (AS): . . .… read more
October 6, 2020, Filed Under: Digital Collections, Featured1Archive of The Well of Loneliness author offers a view of queer history In her 2019 memoir, In The Dream House, author Carmen Maria Machado writes about the importance of seeing queer people not as saints, but as full human beings – human beings with complicated and sometimes upsetting ideologies. She writes in her essay, “Dream House as Queer Villainy,” “…it sounds terrible… read more
