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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 of Death of a Salesman; a journalist’s photograph of Mexican Bracero workers bent over in the fields; a massive book for young homemakers published by Better Homes and Gardens; a condescending letter from Norman Mailer to the Black playwright Lorraine Hansberry; a photograph of a white, middle-class mother braiding her tomboy daughter’s hair in their postward, suburban back yard. The students are often so engrossed in observing these objects that I have to remind them not to lean on the glass. [Read more…] about Taking time to teach hidden histories in the archives
