PAPER TRAILS: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist Alice Walker (left) views manuscripts of her novel The Color Purple with Emory University’s Rudolph Byrd. Walker’s archives are housed in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory.
What’s the most valuable resource filed away and catalogued in the Emory University Libraries? Could it be the first-edition copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses from 1922? One sold in London for 275,000 pounds earlier this summer. Actually, the copy of Ulysses is just a single volume of the 75,000 rare and first editions included in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, which opened at Emory in 2004.
There’s also the Flannery O’Connor archives, rich with handwritten correspondence and childhood ephemera. And don’t forget Sir Salman Rushdie’s archives, which were placed here in 2006 with an undisclosed price tag, as were Alice Walker’s papers in 2007. And that’s all aside from the invaluable library staff, which includes specialized liaisons for more than 50 subjects.
As Emory responds to a shrinking $4.3 billion endowment, though, some faculty members are expressing concern for the future of the library’s collections and workforce. In a letter published at the beginning of the year, university president Jim Wagner cited “worldwide financial turmoil” while explaining that the value of Emory’s endowment and investment portfolio had shrunk by more than 20 percent. On Sept. 23, Emory announced a $1 million library budget cut, which included the elimination of 29 out of 178 total jobs. Twenty-seven employees were laid off. “What we think of as the heart of the university is being cut deeply,” says Lynne Huffer, professor and chair of women’s studies at Emory.
5. Alice Walker sews and tells (The Color Purple author’s archive opened at Emory last week, and you were invited to celebrate with Walker, Gloria Steinem and Howard Zinn, among others.)
GLOBAL WARMING: The Color Purple and its accompanying quilt
Author and activist Alice Walker has long championed the quilt. For the narrator of her story “Everyday Use,” quilts aren’t simply objects of beauty and handiwork, but industrious articles meant to be used as well as learned from. Walker’s writing has reinforced the symbol of handmade blankets in American history, calling attention to the ways culture and tradition have passed through the hands of women. When Emory University opens the Alice Walker Archive to the public Thurs., April 23, with the exhibit A Keeping of Records: The Art and Life of Alice Walker, the center of attention will likely be a quilt Walker made nearly 30 years ago while writing The Color Purple.
Emory first acquired the archive from Walker in 2007. It’s a massive collection of documents and ephemera that encompasses almost all of the author’s life. Included are drafts of every manuscript, along with letters, photographs, and a scrapbook she started keeping as a teenager. “It is evidence of Walker’s belief and self-awareness that she would become an important American writer,” curator Rudolph P. Byrd has said of the collection. A Keeping of Records will showcase 200 of the archive’s items.
Whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium (Photo by Joeff Davis)
Marine biology meets archeology at Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum in a discussion on the connection between ancient Latin American spirituality and … whale sharks. Rebecca Stone, curator of the museum’s Mesoamerican collection, speaks alongside the Georgia Aquarium’s Bruce Carlson about the interplay between zoology and shamanism.
The talk begins tonight, April 2 at 7 p.m. in the museum reception hall. (And don’t forget those “wonderful” King Tut photos… .) Contrary to previous scholarship (including her own), Stone now believes that a certain, centuries-old statue is modeled after whale shark anatomy, an interpretation corroborated by certain migration patterns still observed in the Caribbean and off the coast of South America today.
Ceramic female shaman statue (Photo courtesy Michael C. Carlos Museum)
More from the Carlos Museum:
Recent research and conversation with Dr. Carlson has led Dr. Stone to re-evaluate the imagery on a ceramic female shaman effigy in the collection, and to interpret her shape and markings as representing a whale shark.
Dr. Stone and Dr. Carlson will look at the animal itself and present information about its appearance, behavior, and habitat. Then they will discuss why the whale shark would have been seen as a “spirit companion” in the ancient Americas.
Still waiting to understand Godot? The Letters of Samuel Beckett, the first volume of which was released last month, promises to shed a little light on the work of that famously tight-lipped, Nobel prize-winning author. Emory’s putting together a gaggle of events to celebrate his edited correspondence, including a seriously long marathon of his plays on film. If you’ve had chance to check out the book or saw Ed Albee and Salman Rushdie read aloud from it, then you might be ready to check out this six-hour program on Wed., March 19. I’d bring a snack.
Here’s a clip from a performance of Not I, to give you a hint of what you’re in for. Complete details after the jump.
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