What is Research?

March 11, 2021, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Featured1, Research + Teaching

SARA COLERIDGE: A life unfolding

by JEFFREY W. BARBEAU This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Sometimes the scrawled letters on a page slow reading to a halt. Unlike printed words in a bound volume or transcripts that risk sanitizing history, handwriting produces an entirely different reading experience. Words unfold, as… read more

ABOUT JEFFREY W. BARBEAU
Jeffrey W. Barbeau is professor of theology at Wheaton College. The author and editor of several books, he has published widely on religion and literature, including an intellectual biography of the poet, Sara Coleridge: Her Life and Thought (Palgrave, 2014). He received a Pforzheimer Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center in 2007–2008.

March 4, 2021, Filed Under: Authors, Featured1, Research + Teaching

Researching microbiography in Tennessee Williams’s artwork

by JOHN S. BAK This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Research helps solve mysteries we didn’t even know existed. While most scholars search for answers in an archive, others like me seek out questions. For us, discovering a mystery is as fun as solving… read more

ABOUT JOHN S. BAK

John S. Bak, Professeur at the Université de Lorraine in France, holds degrees from the universities of Illinois, Ball State and the Sorbonne. A Fulbrighter to the Czech Republic in 1995, he has been Visiting Fellow at Harvard (2011), Columbia (2013), the Harry Ransom Center (2014), and Oxford (2014-16). His books include Tennessee Williams and Europe (2014), Tennessee Williams: A Literary Life (2013), New Selected Essays: Where I Live (2009), and Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Queer Masculinities (2009).

February 25, 2021, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Featured1, Research + Teaching

‘It looks like a garter to me’: Students, slow research, and the long history of young couples’ intimacy

by JULIE HARDWICK This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? What can a pink silk ribbon with a beadwork message JE M’ELOIGNE SANS ME’EN SEPARER (translated, “I’m going away but not leaving you”) tell us about young people’s relationships in eighteenth-century French history? As an historian,… read more

ABOUT JULIE HARDWICK

Julie Hardwick is the John E. Green Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin. She grew up in the UK and has lived in Austin for over 25 years with her husband and daughters. Her new book is Sex and an Old Regime City: Young Workers and Intimacy in France, 1660-1789 (Oxford University Press, 2020).