If as Auden remarked, “a culture is no better than its woods,” what does it look like when books try to represent trees? Columbia graduate student Sophia Houghton visited the RBML to find out. Recently introduced to the RBML by Curator Thai Jones, Houghton returned to the archives to look at see Romeyn Hough’s American […]
Tag: News & Events
Lili Hamlyn examines rituals of public mourning in Columbia’s oral history archives
This fall, Lili Hamlyn visited the RBML to use the 9/11 oral history project. Hamlyn’s work examines public mourning: how is grief conducted in public? How do communities process grief together? What role does grief play on a public stage? Lili Hamlyn is a writer, whose work has appeared in The White Review, The Oxonian […]
Researcher Profile | Andrew Holter delves into Murray Kempton’s 1970s journalism papers and finds a surprising thank you note from Jennifer Jason Leigh
Project titleA collection of journalism by Murray Kempton. What brings you to Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library? I wanted to spend a little more time with the Murray Kempton papers, especially the short pieces he read aloud for the CBS radio program called Spectrum in the 70s. I’ve been trying to understand what the […]
Research at the RBML | Alex Cheng looks at Interzone, a mixed-up, early manuscript of Naked Lunch
Interested in the persistent cultural influence of the Beat Poets, Alex Cheng visited the library this summer to see what the archives could tell him about the writing process and social networks of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. Getting a head start on most researchers, Alex took some time from his high school […]
Event | Intoxicating the Archive – Preserving Narcotic Heritage and including Marginalized Voices in Collections and Libraries
“Intoxicating the Archive” critically explores how the memories and struggles of people who use drugs and those of other marginalized and/or activist groups in history are represented in archives, museums, and collective memory at large. While often being invisible at first, drug cultures have left traces in many archives and collections. However, finding and […]