• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Print Edition

fellow

Slowly, and then round again

March 18, 2021 - Harry Ransom Center

by SIMON LOXLEY
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

During my time as a researcher, I have always been a working graphic designer. I suspect that, as a consequence, my underlying mindset has always been very results-driven. As a designer, if you want to get paid, all the ends have to be tied up, all ideas followed to a conclusion. Therefore, sitting at a desk in a library, I still feel that I have to produce something that can be shown to the world, whether this be in book form, an article, or other verbal or visual presentation. Although I always really enjoy the process of research, rightly or wrongly, a product is always at the back of my mind. Investigation, then communication. [Read more…] about Slowly, and then round again

Filed Under: Featured1, Research + Teaching Tagged With: archive, fellow, fellows, What is Research?

ABOUT SIMON LOXLEY
Simon Loxley is the author of Type: the secret history of letters (2004), Printer’s Devil: the life and work of Frederic Warde (2013),Type is Beautiful: the story of fifty remarkable fonts (2016), and Emery Walker: arts, crafts and a world in motion (2019). He is a graphic designer, teacher, and writer in the UK, where he serves as designer and editor of Ultrabold, the journal of St. Bride Library.

Fellowships awarded to 56 scholars

May 4, 2020 - Harry Ransom Center

2020-2021 Fellows

The Ransom Center has awarded 56 fellowships for the upcoming year to postdoctoral, dissertation and independent researchers from around the world. The 2020-2021 fellows reflect the global stature of the Center’s collections, representing 15 U.S. states and eight countries, with more than half traveling from abroad. [Read more…] about Fellowships awarded to 56 scholars

Filed Under: Featured1, Research + Teaching Tagged With: 2020-2021 Fellows, archive, fellow, fellows, Fellowships, Research

Fellows Find: Scholar explores connections between Langston Hughes and other black writers around the globe

April 26, 2012 - Shane Graham

Cover of Langston Hughes's "Not Without Laughter," published by Knopf.
Cover of Langston Hughes’s “Not Without Laughter,” published by Knopf.

Shane Graham, Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, is the author of South African Literature after the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss (2009), and the principal editor of Langston Hughes and the South African Drum Generation: The Correspondence (2010). He has published articles in Modern Fiction Studies, Theatre Research International, Studies in the Novel, and Research in African Literatures, and he serves as Reviews Editor for Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. His work at the Ransom Center was funded by an Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf Fellowship.

An Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf Fellowship allowed me to spend a month at the Harry Ransom Center exploring the connections between African-American poet Langston Hughes and black writers throughout the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. I began this research some time ago at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, where the great majority of Langston Hughes’s papers are deposited. The Ransom Center holdings allowed me to expand and enrich my investigation into these transatlantic connections in innumerable ways.

For instance, the Knopf records and the Nancy Cunard papers contain correspondence with Hughes, typescripts of his poems, essays, and speeches, and media clippings about his books. Moreover, the Transcription Centre records include information about its parent organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which established important links between African and diasporic writers. The Transcription Centre papers also contain records and reports from the important “Conference for African Writers of English Expression” held at Makerere College in Uganda in 1962, which the CCF co-organized and which Hughes attended as a guest of honor. These holdings provide small but important pieces to the jigsaw puzzle I am trying to complete sketching the transnational connections between Hughes and his many friends and correspondents.

Among other unexpected treasures I discovered were dozens of letters that Jamaican poet and novelist Claude McKay wrote to his agent and to Nancy Cunard in Paris, from a period when McKay himself was living in Marseille, Spain, and Morocco. While not proving an immediate link to Langston Hughes, these letters do establish McKay as an equally transnational figure and have prompted me to return to the Langston Hughes papers to investigate the two men’s relationship. I’m happy to report, then, that my time at the Ransom Center opened up an important new area to explore in my book-in-progress.

Filed Under: Research + Teaching Tagged With: African American literature, Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf fellowship, Alfred Knopf, Blanche Knopf, Charles McKay, Congress for Cultural Freedom, diaspora, fellow, Fellows Find, Fellowships, Langston Hughes, Nancy Cunard, Research, Shane Graham, Transcription Centre

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_kazYMjNM

Recent Posts

  • Celebrate with us in 2023
  • Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
  • A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting
  • “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • A Greek fragment is the first-known New Testament papyrus written on the front side of a scroll

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy