Ransom Center Magazine

What is Research?

The slow research of collection development

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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. 

Shortly before the end of 2020, the papers of National Book Award–winning author Lily Tuck arrived at the Harry Ransom Center. It is always exciting when a new archive enters our building, but this arrival from New York City, in the midst of a devastating pandemic, felt especially significant. The collection’s delivery was originally scheduled for March of 2020 but was promptly put on hold as we began to learn of a dangerous, new, and rapidly spreading virus and as institutions shut down around the world. Until measures could be put into place to ensure the safety of everyone involved, the delivery of Lily Tuck’s correspondence, her research notes, manuscripts of such novels as The News from Paraguay and The Double Life of Liliane, and other material documenting her writing life had to be delayed. [Read more…] about The slow research of collection development

What is research but a conversation in search of the truth?

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by IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
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. 

Biography is a long, slow process of careful research … Reading diaries and letters and sifting through artifacts … I found the answers to these questions by carefully examining each document and artifact, and slowly I was able to write her story … As a biographer, going to an archive is how you find the person you are writing about.
—IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE

[Read more…] about What is research but a conversation in search of the truth?

ABOUT IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes and lives in Northern California and is the author of Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and her latest collection of poetry is West : Fire : Archive (Center for Literary Publishing, 2021). Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

ETCHED ARCHIVE: Windows at the Harry Ransom Center

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by ANNE TERRILL
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. 

Buildings tell stories. When Victorian-era critic John Ruskin looked at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, he saw a building that reminded him of an illuminated book, intended to be legible to a visitor. The façade created a space that could start doing the work of the church before the visitor even went inside; as he wrote, “both externally and internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in pictorial effect” as “a vast illuminated missal.”[1] The colors, materials, images, and ornamentation are not just objects of analysis or delight but incorporate a viewer as a participant in the building’s project and environment. [Read more…] about ETCHED ARCHIVE: Windows at the Harry Ransom Center

ABOUT ANNE TERRILL

Anne Terrill is a Visitor Services Assistant at the Harry Ransom Center. Prior to joining the Ransom Center, she worked as a guide at Glenstone, a contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland. She is currently working on a project to broaden access to information about the Center's windows.

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