Yale University Collection Guides

Guides to Yale University’s extensive collections of research materials related to international Modernism and African American studies are now available from the Yale University Art Gallery (to request copies please contact Christopher Gartrell: christopher.gartrell@yale.edu).

Yale University Collections Guide: Modernism directs students and scholars to collections documenting the work, lives, and communities of writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, architects, editors, curators, and tastemakers. The Guide features the work of key figures including (but not limited to): James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Joseph Conrad, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Wassily Kandinsky, Florine Stettheimer, Josef Albers, Eero Saarinen, Virgil Thomson, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.

Yale University Collections Guide: African American Studies highlights the rich collections at Yale documenting the African American experience, from materials documenting the sale trade to the work of modern and contemporary African American writers and artists. Materials in Yale collections address subjects including slavery and emancipation, Abolitionist movements, the American Civil War, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the work of African Americans in all art forms, including literature, fine art, theater, and music. Key figures represented in the Yale collections include (but are not limited to): the Amistad prisoners, Isaac Mendes Belisario, Phillis Wheatley, the Beecher Family, Hannah Crafts, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Anson Phelps Stokes, James Vander Zee, Benny Goodman, Masood Ali Wilbert Warren, Richard Wright, Romare Bearden, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weams, and Lloyd Richards.

The Guides highlight primary source materials in the Yale galleries and libraries including manuscripts, correspondence, works of art, books, journals, photographs. The Guides provide useful information about accessing Yale collections on campus and online; lists of online resources includes the following.

Yale Collections Online Resources:

Yale University Library: http://www.library.yale.edu

Digital Cross-Collections Search: http://www.library.yale.edu/libraries/digcoll.html

Orbis, the Yale University Library Catalogue: http://orbis.library.yale.edu

Finding Aid Database: http://webtext.library.yale.edu/finddocs

Beinecke Library: http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke

African American Studies at Beinecke Library: http://beineckejwj.wordpress.com

Let it Resound: Sheet Music in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/LetItResound

Irving S. Gilmore Music Library: http://www.library.yale.edu/musiclib

Oral History, American Music: http://www.yale.edu/oham

Lewis Walpole Library: http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole

Manuscripts and Archives: http://www.library.yale.edu/mssa

Yale University Art Gallery: http://artgallery.yale.edu

Yale Center for British Art: http://ycba.yale.edu

Images: Gertrude Stein, photographed by Carl Van Vechten;  “Details, An American Place (O’Keeffe paintings)” photographed by Alfred Stieglitz; Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston at Tuskegee;Jean Coctaeu photographed by Berenice Abbott.

Celebrating Richard Wright

The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at the Beinecke Library will cosponsor a centenary celebration of Richard Wright’s writing and life on September 23, 2008, from 4-6 pm in the lecture hall at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, New Haven. The event is cosponsored by the Whitney Humanities Center, the African American Studies Program, New Ideas in African American Studies, Calhoun College, and the Department of English.

The event will include readings and talks by distinguished guests Ishmael Reed and Darryl Pinckney, and Yale University faculty members including Caryl Phillips, Jonathan Holloway, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Facsimile documents from the Richard Wright Papers at the Beinecke Library will be on display at the Whitney Humanities Center for the event.

Ishmael Reed is the author of nine novels, six books of poetry, four books of essays and six plays. The collected plays will be published in 2009 by Dalkey Archives. His latest book is “Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies.” He was named Blues Song Writer of the year in 2008 by The West Coast Blues Hall of Fame for his song, recorded by Jazz Diva, Cassandra Wilson,”The Prophet of Doom.” He is the publisher of Konch, and makes his debut as a Jazz pianist on the CD “For All We Know” The Ishmael Reed Quintet. He is a Yale Calhoun Fellow.

Novelist and literary critic Darryl Pinckney is the author of the acclaimed novel High Cotton and Sold and Gone, a study of African American literary history. Pinckney has been awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction and the Harold D. Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Award winning writer and dramatist Caryl Phillips is the author of plays including Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). His novels include The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003) and Dancing in the Dark (2005). His non-fiction works include The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), and A New World Order (2001). He is Professor of English at Yale University.

Elizabeth Alexander is the author of several collections of poetry, including American Sublime (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Antebellum Dream Book, Body of Life, and The Venus Hottentot. A collection of essays, The Black Interior, was published by Graywolf in 2004. She is a professor in the African American Studies Program and the Department of English at Yale University.

Historian Jonathan Holloway is the author of Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941, the editor of Ralph Bunche’s A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership, and the co-editor of the anthology, Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the 20th Century. He is a professor of History at Yale University and in 2005 he became the eleventh master of Calhoun College, one of Yale’s twelve residential colleges.

Image: Photograph of Richard Wright.

Readings at Yale University, Fall 2008

All events are free and open to the public; additions and changes will be posted on line: https://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/readings-at-yale-university/. To receive announcements about readings at Yale Univeristy, subscribe to the Yale-Readings ListServ.

Fall 2008 Readings at Yale University

Richard Wright: A Centenary Celebration
Readings by Ishmael Reed, Darryl Pinckney, Caryl Phillips,
Jonathan Holloway, Elizabeth Alexander
Tuesday, September 23, 4 pm
Whitney Humanities Center, Lecture Hall, 53 Wall Street
Co-Sponsored by the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection–Beinecke Library, the Whitney Humanities Center, the African American Studies Program, New Ideas in African American Studies, Calhoun College, and the Department of English
Contact: nancy.kuhl@yale.edu

Henri Cole and Louise Glück, Poetry Reading
Monday, September 29, 6 pm
St. Anthony Hall, 483 College Street
Sponsored by the Department of English
Contact: (203) 432-2233

Carson Cistulli, Poetry Reading
Friday, October 3, 6 pm
St. Anthony Hall, 483 College Street
Co-sponsored by the Graduate Poets Reading Series and the
Yale Collection of American Literature Reading Series
Contact: david.gorin@yale.edu

Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, Digital Literature Reading
Tuesday, October 14, 7 pm
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Room 101
Sponsored by the Department of English
Contact: jessica.pressman@yale.edu

Ted Conover, Reading and Conversation
Thursday, October 23, Time TBA
Location TBA
Francis Conversations with Writers
Contact: clare.schlegel@yale.edu.

Young African American Poets: A Celebration of New Writing
Poetry Readings by Evie Shockly, Douglas Kearney,
and Amaud Jamal Johnson
Tuesday, October 28, 4 pm
Slifka Center, 80 Wall Street
Co-sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature
Reading Series and New Ideas in African American Studies
Contact: nancy.kuhl@yale.edu

Jacqueline Osherow, Poetry Reading
Monday, November 3, 4:15 pm
Divinity Bookstore, 409 Prospect Street
Yale Literature and Spirituality Series
Contact: melissa.maier@yale.edu

Dan Chiasson, Poetry Reading
Thursday, November 6, 6 pm
in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Room 319
Graduate Poets Reading Series
Contact: david.gorin@yale.edu

Charles Wright, Poetry Reading
Tuesday, November 11, 6 pm
St. Anthony Hall, 483 College Street
Sponsored by the Department of English
Contact: (203) 432-2233

Linton Kwesi Johnson, Poetry Performance and Interview by Caryl Phillips
Tuesday, November 18, Time TBA
African-American Cultural Center, 211 Park Street
Co-sponsored by New Ideas in African-American Studies,
the Literature of the Middle Passage Project, and
the African-American Cultural Center
Contact: elizabeth.alexander@yale.edu

Lucille Clifton, Poetry Reading
Tuesday, December 2, 5:30 pm
Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street
Co-sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature
Reading Series and New Ideas in African American Studies
Contact: nancy.kuhl@yale.edu

Robert Alter, Reading
Monday, December 8, 5:15 pm
Yale Divinity School Common Room
Cosponsored by the Yale Literature and Spirituality Series
and the Lana Schwebel Lecture in Religion and Literature
Contact: melissa.maier@yale.edu