While doing research in the John Herrmann collection during her fellowship at the Ransom Center, Sara Kosiba found a manuscript of an unpublished 1925 novel. Titled Foreign Born, it tells the story of Ernst Weiman, a German immigrant living in the fictional town of Fairbanks, Michigan during World War I. [Read more…] about A novel discovery
Research + Teaching
Weird Fiction
James Machin is the author of the book Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939 (2018). Machin was a 2014-2015 fellow at the Ransom Center. While here, he spent time researching the Arthur Machen, M.P. Shiel, and John Buchan archives. Machin utilized those materials for his Ph.D thesis, and later book, on early weird fiction.
The word on the streets
During the modernist era, writers experimented with the language of the street in their works. Brooks Hefner’s The Word on the Streets explores how multiple writers of different genres used street slang to emphasize classism through dialect. At the Ransom Center, Hefner consulted the archives of influential detective fiction writers Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner to inform his book. [Read more…] about The word on the streets
A very Texan story: Shelby Hearon writes Barbara Jordan’s biography
People always want you to be born where you are. They want you to have leaped from the womb a public figure. It just doesn’t go that way. I am the composite of my experience and all the people who had something to do with it. And I’m going to try to lay that out. —Barbara Charline Jordan [Read more…] about A very Texan story: Shelby Hearon writes Barbara Jordan’s biography
American publishing during the Cold War
In Amanda Laugesen’s new book, the novel is an object of war. In Taking Books to the World: American Publishers and the Cultural Cold War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), Laugesen tells the story of Franklin Publications, a publishing company created in 1952 as a joint project between American publishers and the USIA. Amid the scramble for influence during the Cold War, Franklin was tasked with disseminating books that promote American ideals throughout the developing world. [Read more…] about American publishing during the Cold War
Born to be posthumous: An interview with cultural critic Mark Dery
Critics never quite knew what to make of Edward Gorey (1925-2000), the author and illustrator whose darkly droll tales have influenced Tim Burton, Lemony Snicket, Alison Bechdel, and Guillermo Del Toro. [Read more…] about Born to be posthumous: An interview with cultural critic Mark Dery