Author: Maryland Humanities

by Juliette Wells, PhD

In 2017 we mark the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death in July, and of her final publications—the novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion—in December. Lovers of Austen’s writings have many choices to commemorate her life and achievements. We can reread a favorite novel, perhaps in one of the richly annotated and illustrated editions recently published by Harvard’s Belknap Press. We can share Austen with our family and friends, either through one of the many excellent screen adaptations or an edition specially designed for first-time readers (such as my own reader-friendly Emma for Penguin Classics, which will be followed later this year by a comparable Persuasion). If we’re lucky, we can travel—or return—to England, to take in the many special exhibits planned in places associated with Austen’s life and novels.

But we don’t have to go all the way across the pond to see fascinating Austen material. Here are my top recommendations for open-access digital sites that will interest both those steeped in Austen and those making her acquaintance for the first time.

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts

A must-see for anyone curious about Austen’s writing practices, this site brings together all the surviving hand-written documents from her career as a fiction writer. Highlights include the three volumes of short, creative works she wrote as a teenager; the original ending of her novel Persuasion; and the pieces she left unfinished or unpublished at her death, including the novella-in-letters Lady Susan (the inspiration for Whit Stillman’s 2016 film Love and Friendship). The website’s creator, Oxford professor Kathryn Sutherland, also narrated this short video for the British Library about Austen’s habits as a writer.

“A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy”

Austen was a prolific letter writer who delighted in the minutiae of everyday life. In this online companion to a physical exhibit from several years ago, The Morgan Library and Museum presents selected letters and documents from the institution’s extensive Austen collection, including period images and illustrations. A wonderful bonus is “The Divine Jane”, a short documentary in which noted authors and scholars muse on the importance of Austen’s letters (and get to touch them!).

The Austen Family Music Books

As was typical for English gentlewomen of her time, Austen learned to play the pianoforte (a forerunner of today’s piano). She enjoyed practicing and playing for her own pleasure throughout her adult life. Because sheet music was expensive, she hand-copied songs and pieces for her own use. The University of Southampton has recently digitized several volumes of the Austen family’s surviving music books, including many items in Austen’s own notation. A lovely recording by Southampton performers brings Austen’s musical world alive.

“What Jane Saw”: Two Recreated Art Exhibitions

Austen avidly attended cultural events, including theatrical performances and art exhibits. Two of the latter have been digitally reconstructed by a team at the University of Texas at Austin: a 1796 gallery of paintings inspired by Shakespeare, and an 1813 retrospective of the works of the famous portraitist Joshua Reynolds. See for yourself the pictures that stoked Austen’s imagination in her youth and, later, in the year that Pride and Prejudice was published.

“Emma in America”

What was it like to read the first Austen novel printed in the United States? Thanks to the Goucher College Library’s full facsimile of its copy of the exceptionally rare 1816 Philadelphia Emma, we can all share this experience. Goucher’s extensive collection of Austen materials was formed by Alberta Hirshheimer Burke, class of 1928. Items from the collection are available for viewing, by appointment: contact curator Tara J. Olivero for information on individual and group visits.

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA)

Founded in 1979, JASNA is the world’s largest organization of people who care about Austen. Information about regional groups’ meetings and activities, including those of JASNA-Maryland and JASNA-D.C., is available on the society’s website. Also available is a wide range of information about Austen, including the contents of JASNA’s respected journals, Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line. Accessibly written, these articles form a rewarding resource for teachers, students, and anyone who would like a deeper appreciation of Austen’s writings.

About the Author

Juliette Wells is the Elizabeth Conolly Todd Distinguished Associate Professor of English at Goucher College. She is the author of Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination and is finishing a new book, Reading Austen in America.

The opinions expressed by guest contributors to the Maryland Humanities blog do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of Maryland Humanities and/or any of its sponsors, partners, or funders. No official endorsement by any of these institutions should be inferred.

by Jessica Baldwin

This fall I worked with over 1,000 Maryland students as they crafted their entries for our student writing contest Letters About Literature (LAL). To enter the LAL contest, students in grades 4-12 write a letter to the author of any book, story, or poem that has changed how they see themselves, others, or the world around them. Writing LAL letters urges participants to connect with literature personally and to reflect on how reading stories from different perspectives affects their own points of view.  A few students had entered the contest before, but for most it was a totally new—and sometimes daunting—experience. Some of the educators with whom I worked had been participating in LAL for years, but the majority of educators were using the program in the classroom for the first time. I worked with elementary and middle school students (hopefully, I’ll get to visit some high schools next year!) on the Eastern Shore, in cities from Annapolis to Frederick, in the mountains of Western Maryland, and several places in between. As different as the students, teachers, and schools were, a few common threads stood out as lessons learned. Here’s what I learned from Maryland students during my first year of LAL class visits:

In October I visited Salisbury Middle School and North Dorchester Middle School. The students with whom I worked ran the gamut in age, experience, and literary interests. But I was surprised at how many of my personal favorites were student favorites, too. And the students were shocked to realize that other readers in their school—people with whom they weren’t friends or not even in the same grade—were reading the same books they were! In Mrs. Elliott’s 6th grade classes at Salisbury Middle (pictured), we found common ground talking about identity and family in Anne of Green Gables. During a writing workshop at Dorchester Middle, in which three classes from different grades came together to work on their drafts, two students who had never even met before discussed how Jack Gantos’s Joey Pigza series made them laugh out loud while gaining empathy for their fellow students with learning differences. The kicker? The letter I wrote to use as the workshop sample was all about the first Joey Pigza book, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key. Lesson learned: Don’t judge readers by their covers! Discussing literature has the power to bring us together in unexpected ways.  

I was very fortunate that my LAL travels brought me to Garrett County during Autumn Glory season (pictured). I worked with Northern Middle School and Swan Meadow School as their students strove to write introspective letters with strong reflections and personal details. And even though everyone was focused on writing outstanding letters, their wide-ranging book choices proved how readers can find themselves in just about any book. Students wrote their letters in response to memoirs written by YouTube stars, a series written from an ornery dog’s perspective, the Bible, and historical novels about slavery and pioneer life. Using discussion and interactive activities, classes honed their skills connecting, corresponding, and synthesizing (pictured). And the stronger the students’ skills became, the more they were excited to write! All of my Garrett County classes ended with free time for draft work, in which the quality of the drafts grew by leaps and bounds. Lesson learned: Any book is a good book if it changes how you think. Great LAL letters start with the inspiration we gain from reading. 

Baltimore City’s Harford Heights Elementary is participating in LAL for the first time this year. Mrs. Kimbrow, the school’s Library Media Specialist, worked with 5^th grade English Language Arts teachers to rearrange their schedule so students could participate in LAL workshops and activities every week from September through December. When I first met Ms. Royal’s and Ms. Taylor’s 5^th grade classes, the students had never heard about Letters About Literature. And even though many of them were worried about writing a letter (today is the age of social media and texting, after all!), they enthusiastically jumped in to discussion. The more the students talked about what they were reading, the more parallels they began to draw between their own lives and the lives of fictional characters whose worlds were completely different from their own. Bit by bit, these 5th graders wrote about their connections, linked their connections together to create detailed personal reflections, and added all the trimmings to put their writing in letter format (pictured). In less than a semester, these amazing Harford Heights students grew from reticent writers who worried about not being able to do the assignment to self-possessed communicators ready to share their individual perspectives. Lesson learned: Turns out the old adage “practice makes perfect” is on-point! If participating in LAL seems daunting, try taking it one step at a time and let personal connection lead the way.

The deadline for Level 3 (grades 9-12) entries for the 2017 LAL contest has passed, but there is still time to enter for students in Level 1 (grades 4-6) and Level 2 (grades 7-8). Get the guidelines and entry coupon here. Educators, interested in a FREE LAL class visit or one-on-one consultation next fall? Email me, Jessica Baldwin. We look forward to reading this year’s letters from young Marylanders.

About Jessica Baldwin

As the program assistant for Maryland Center for the Book (MCFB) at Maryland Humanities, Jessica Baldwin provides program and administrative support for MCFB’s five literary annual programs as well as special initiatives. Jessica developed the Writing Center and taught middle school Language Lab at her alma mater, St. Paul’s School for Girls. Using her teaching experience, Maryland State Department of Education coursework, and requests from LAL teachers in Maryland, Jessica developed the LAL class visit pilot offering for fall 2016.

About Letters About Literature (LAL)

For young readers in grades 4–12, our annual writing contest, Letters About Literature (LAL), encourages a love of reading and an appreciation for the power of words and ideas. Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, this national contest not only promotes reading and writing, but also inspires creativity and encourages young people to be lifelong readers.

By Kari Kelly and Emily Perper from Curious Iguana

During the holidays, it’s easy to fall back on old favorites—the classics we know and love—because it can be extremely difficult to choose the perfect gift for that hard-to-please relative or a new literature-loving friend. You don’t necessarily know what they’ve read before or what they like to read, so it’s tempting to play it safe. But to truly understand others, we need to read all different kinds of stories—even if they’re different from what we’re used to and out of our literary comfort zones.

Keep your eye out for new-to-you authors and titles you and your loved ones can enjoy together. Don’t be afraid to ask your local bookseller for recommendations or bring a list of ideas (like this one!) with you to your local independent bookstore. The following suggestions are books our employees and customers have enjoyed, spanning different ages, genres, and reading levels.

Babies (ages 0-2):

• All Fall Down by Mary Brigid Barrett and LeUyen Pham (Candlewick, 2014): Our best-selling baby book pick, this fun book consistently delights the youngest readers.

• Counting on Community by Innosanto Nagara (Triangle Square, 2015): A vibrant board book that illustrates that a community can always count on each other.

• Music Is…by Brandon Stosuy and Amy Martin (Little Simon, 2016): This title keeps little ones giggling and babbling while learning about music.

Toddlers (ages 2-3):

• Cityblock by Christopher Franceschelli and Peskimo (Harry N. Abrams, 2016): Fun, chunky board book that introduces little readers to things that go, things to see and things to eat in a busy city.

• It Is Not Time for Sleeping by Lisa Graff and Lauren Castillo (Clarion Books, 2016): This dreamy new bedtime book is sure to become a new classic.

• Tinyvilletown Gets to Work! by Brian Biggs (Harry N. Abrams, 2016): A wonderful new series, reminiscent of Richard Scarry, which shows how everyone in the community keep things running smoothly.

Ages 3-5:

• My Pen by Christopher Myers (Disney-Hyperion, 2015): Inspiring romp through the imagination as a little boy describes all of the things he can do with his pen.

• Swatch: the Girl Who Loved Color by Julie Denos (Balzer + Bray, 2016): An energetic must-read for all children, this wildly lovely tale is one of our best-selling picture books of the year.

• Teacup by Rebecca Young and Matt Ottley (Dial Books, 2016): Gorgeous, simple, hopeful story of leaving one home and finding another.

Ages 6-8:

• Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2016): A bestselling author-illustrator duo returns with the latest lyrical installment about the boundless curiosity of a little girl and her endless science experiments.

• Mango, Abuela and Me by Meg Medina and Angela Dominguez (Candlewick, 2015): Heartwarming intergenerational story about tradition, storytelling, and thinking outside the box.

• The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes by Duncan Tonatiuh (Harry N. Abrams, 2016): Highly-acclaimed retelling of an Aztec folktale with funky, collaged illustrations.

Ages 8-12:

• The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin Young Readers, 2016): This poetic, magical fantasy is a store favorite and bound to be a classic someday soon.

• The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz and Hatem Aly (Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2016): A riveting medieval-era tale told from multiple perspectives that touches on magic, miracles, and the importance of loving people different from yourself.

• When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2016): This adventure weaves together folklore, mystery, and fantasy into a beautifully told, illustrated treasure.

Young Adult (ages 13+):

• Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown (HarperTeen, 2016): Joanna has been out and proud for a while, but when her family moves to a new town, her preacher father asks her to keep her identity a secret. A fast-paced, sweet book about falling in love and taking ownership of your values.

• Saving Red by Sonya Sones (HarperTeen, 2016): A novel-in-verse about a naive 14-year-old who meets a young homeless woman named Red and comes to understand that homelessness, mental illness and independence are far more nuanced than she ever could have imagined.

• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (Delacorte Press, 2016): Natasha meets Daniel serendipitously. They couldn’t be more different, but there’s an undeniable chemistry between them. They’re star-crossed lovers with a contemporary twist.

Adult:

• Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton (Workman Publishing, 2016): Atlas Obscura began as a scrappy website where users could submit the weird and wonderful places they encountered. Now, it’s a glorious collection that highlights the self-mummifying monks of Shugendo, the Icelandic elf school, and literally hundreds of other sites. This title is thorough and engaging enough to delight both the reluctant reader and the seasoned traveler.

• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau, 2016): Trevor Noah may be best-known as the heir to Jon Stewart’s throne on The Daily Show and as a stand-up comic, but his writing chops mean Born A Crime—a memoir about the gritty reality of growing up biracial in apartheid-era South Africa—is a great gift for comedy fans and history buffs alike.

Books that transcend age:

• A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston (Candlewick, 2016): This gorgeous ode to literature and imagination has been our most gifted-to-adults children’s book of the year.

• Illuminature by Rachel Williams and Carnovsky (Wide Eye Editions, 2016): Use the included colored lens to discover 180 animals throughout this oversized kaleidoscopic delight.

• Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl (Ten Speed Press, 2016): A celebration of some of the world’s most inspiring women, past and present.

About the Authors

Kari Kelly is the Children’s Book Buyer at Curious Iguana.  Emily Perper is Content Manager at Curious Iguana. Curious Iguana is an independent bookstore in historic downtown Frederick, Maryland that aims to inspire global awareness and community connection.

What book would you recommend for the perfect gift this year? Share your ideas in the comments!

What is the impact of the humanities on American life? As part of the Pulitzer Prizes’ Centennial Celebration, Maryland Humanities has partnered with the University of Maryland, College Park’s College of Arts and Humanities to present Pulitzer Prize-winning author-historians Taylor Branch and Isabel Wilkerson in conversation on December 6^th.

Though now known for their sweeping narrative histories, Branch and Wilkerson began their writing careers as journalists. In 1970, Branch started work as an editor and journalist for The Washington Monthly. His success there led to subsequent positions as staff writer for Harper’s and Esquire. After interning at The Washington Post, Wilkerson began her career as a journalist at the Detroit Free Press in 1983. In 1984, she accepted a position as a metropolitan reporter at The New York Times, where she was promoted to national correspondent in 1986 and then Chicago Bureau Chief in 1991.

Though she later received international acclaim for her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book The Warmth of Others Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Wilkerson won her Pulitzer Prize for Feature Reporting in 1994. Wilkerson’s poignant portrait of fourth-grader Nicholas Whitiker from Chicago’s South Side and her two stories reporting about the Midwestern flood of 1993 earned her the prize. Early in her career, Wilkerson committed herself to sharing the personal experiences of those without a voice. As she explained to Emory Report editor Kim Urquhart, “In the end, nothing really matters until I can see from the perspective of the human heart.”

Branch won his Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63, the first book in his epic trilogy of America in the midst of change. Branch developed his interest in the Civil Rights Movement in college, when he found most books on the subject to be “overly analytical,” and “like a chess match” for readers. After college, his graduate work at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs led Branch to write a short piece about “the implications for economic development” of the school’s summer project encouraging voter registration. Branch kept a diary of his experiences “trying to gain the trust and interest of skeptical blacks in southern Georgia.”  Such experiences spurred Branch to further explore the struggle of civil rights, from the end of the Eisenhower administration to the dawning of the New South. Discussing contemporary social justice, Branch shared that he’s “worried, that if people don’t really immerse themselves in what it means, they’ll take it for granted.”

In addition to their journalistic origins, Branch and Wilkerson are both National Humanities Medal recipients and share an all-encompassing commitment to research. Wilkerson spent 15 years researching African-American migration for The Warmth of Others Suns. She traveled extensively and interviewed more than 1,000 people who migrated from the South to Northern and Western cities. The final version of Branch’s trilogy spans 2912 pages and his research for the project, ranging from legal documents to personal correspondence, is included in the “Taylor Branch Papers, 1865-2013” collection, housed at Branch’s alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Branch’s research now fills 87 linear feet of shelf space at the UNC library.

Join us December 6^th when Maryland Humanities and The University of Maryland College Park present “WORLDWISE Arts & Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series: The Pulitzer 100”, featuring Taylor Branch and Isabel Wilkerson in conversation. NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund’s Sherrilyn Ifill will moderate an engaging discussion between the two author-historians on the historical context behind their Pulitzer Prize-winning work and its relevancy to our lives today.

Event begins at 7 PM at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. A book signing and reception will follow the event. Tickets are free, but required. Tickets are available here!

This program is part of the 2016 Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfire Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils, sponsored in part by the Mellon Foundation.

Bibliography

Urquhart, Kim. “Write from the Heart.” Emory Report. 8 Nov 2016. http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2006/September/September%2025/Profile.htm.

“Awards & Honors: 1999 National Humanities Medalist: Taylor Branch.” National Endowment for the Humanities. 8 Nov 2016. https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/national-humanities-medals/taylor-branch.

by Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.

The goal of the A Writer with Writers blog series is to interview interesting and engaging authors and explore the ways in which they use their pen and paper to think about some of the issues with which our country is struggling. My questions range from defining democracy to defining liberation; from analyzing the strength of community organizing to finding ways to bend our privilege to make substantive changes; from understanding the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement to measuring the ongoing impact of the Black Lives Matter social movement.

This month, in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month and in an effort to continue our conversations about protest and community engagement, I sat down with Dr. Darrel Wanzer-Serrano to talk about his latest book, The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation.

Kaye Whitehead: Your book seems to have some good parallels to Baltimore’s current uprising. How do you see your book connecting to our city?

Darrel Wanzer-Serrano: I think that one of the great lessons of the Young Lords (and they are, by no means, the only group of the era to offer this lesson) is to never underestimate the ability of a group of young people to change things. Young folks are at the cutting edge of new communication practices and technologies, they’re at the forefront of new ideas operating on the ground, and they have their pulse on the communities in which they reside. Another connection is something I write about most explicitly in the intro and conclusion: community control. As in Baltimore today and in other eras, the Young Lords demanded that communities have some level of control over institutions and land, that the people must have a say in the decisions that impact their daily lives. Finally, I think there’s something to the connections between racism, sexism, and capitalism that the Young Lords so aptly diagnosed in their time—something that can be helpful in explaining the conditions that gave rise to the recent Baltimore Rebellion.

KW: Who are some of your greatest writing influences?

DWS: Most, but not all, of my influences come from the other scholars that I read, and that list is constantly shifting. I love the way that my grad school mentor, John Louis Lucaites, writes his endnotes. I’m drawn to the complexity of folks like Chela Sandoval, whose Methodology of the Oppressed is a marvel of decolonial[1] feminist scholarship. I’m drawn to the imaginative interplay between content and form in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and other decolonial feminist scholars and artists.

KW: What does being a writer mean to you?

DWS: To me, being a writer means that I am enacting a set of commitments to social responsibility with/to various real and imagined audiences. Writing emerges from my own embodiment and geo-political locatedness, which is something that I feel compelled to recognize explicitly in my written work. Being a writer who is a critical rhetorician, I see my task as fundamentally persuasive in the sense that I’m trying to get my readers to understand some aspect(s) of the world differently than they had before.

KW: Are there any subjects that you find it difficult to write about? Why?

DWS: I’ve been having a hard time writing about how to challenge racism(s). (Don’t get me wrong—I think writing about the histories of racism and anti-racist struggle, as complicated and complex as they might be, is relatively straightforward.) When I think about how to get my predominantly white, Midwestern students to commit to anti-racist struggle, I am more prone to draw blanks. This isn’t a writing problem, per se; rather, it’s more of a conceptual problem of how to efficiently and comprehensively (a paradox, to be sure) make the case to young white people who lack a vocabulary for talking about race and racism in public.

KW: In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, what are some books that you would recommend that elucidate the Hispanic culture?

DWS: The first is the second edition of Juan Gonzalez’s Harvest of Empire. It’s probably my favorite history of the Latino/a experience in the US. Gonzalez (a former Young Lord) is a wonderful writer and does a marvelous job weaving together Latino/a historiography, primary sources, and oral histories to tell the complex story of how Latino/a people came to be. The second is Raquel Cepeda’s Bird of Paradise, which is a memoir that tells the tale of her troubled childhood and coming-to-be as her own self. She engages complex issues of Latino/a history and anti-blackness, along with her own journey of personal discovery as she traces her ancestral roots.

[1] Decolonial: relating to the act of getting rid of colonization, or freeing a country from being dependent on another country

About the Author: Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Public Advocacy in the Department of Communication Studies, and founding member of the Latino/a Studies Minor Advisory Board, at The University of Iowa. He is a critical rhetorical historian whose research is focused on the intersections of race, ethnicity, and public discourse, particularly as they relate to formations of coloniality and decoloniality in the United States and within Latino/a contexts. Follow Dr. Wanzer-Serrano on Twitter or Facebook.

About the Interviewer: Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, Ph.D. is Associate Professor, Department of Communication at Loyola University Maryland and the Founding Executive Director at The Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research, and Culture. She is creator of the #SayHerName Syllabus. Her new anthology, RaceBrave, was published in March 2016.