Library of Congress's Blog, page 31

Mississippi Author Jesmyn Ward: Winner of the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction

Jesmyn Ward. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

This is a guest post by Leah Knobel, a public affairs specialist in the Library’s Office of Communications.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today that the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction will be awarded to Jesmyn Ward, whose lyrical works set in her native Mississippi feature the lives of Black people finding a way to endure and prevail over a world of harsh racism and violence. At 45, Ward is the youngest person to receive the Library’s fiction award for her lifetime of work.

“Jesmyn Ward’s literary vision continues to become more expansive and piercing, addressing urgent questions about racism and social injustice being voiced by Americans,” said Hayden. “Jesmyn’s writing is precise yet magical, and I am pleased to recognize her contributions to literature with this prize.”

One of the Library’s most prestigious awards, the annual Prize for American Fiction honors an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art but also for its originality of thought and imagination. The award seeks to commend strong, unique, enduring voices that — throughout consistently accomplished careers — have told us something essential about the American experience.

“I am deeply honored to receive this award, not only because it aligns my work with legendary company, but because it also recognizes the difficulty and rigour of meeting America on the page, of appraising her as a lover would: clear-eyed, open-hearted, keen to empathize and connect,” Ward said. “This is our calling, and I am grateful for it.”

Hayden selected Ward as this year’s winner based on nominations from more than 60 distinguished literary figures, including former winners of the prize, acclaimed authors and literary critics from around the world. The virtual prize ceremony will take place at the Library’s 2022 National Book Festival on Sept. 3.

The fiction prize was inaugurated in 2008, recognizing Herman Wouk. Last year’s winner was Joy Williams. Other winners have included Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Isabel Allende and E.L. Doctorow.

Ward is the acclaimed author of the novels “Where the Line Bleeds” and then two books that each won the National Book Award: “Salvage the Bones” in 2011 and “Sing, Unburied, Sing” in 2017. Her nonfiction work includes the memoir “Men We Reaped,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2020 work “Navigate Your Stars.” Ward is also the editor of the anthology “The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race.”

Ward is one of only six writers to receive the National Book Award more than once and the only woman and Black American to do so. Ward was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017 and was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-2011 academic year. In 2018, she was named to Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.

Ward lives in Mississippi and is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University.

The National Book Festival will take place Sept. 3 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. This will be the first time the festival has been in person since 2019. A selection of programs will be livestreamed, and recordings of all presentations can be viewed online following the festival.

Toy Theaters: 19th Century Home Entertainment

Basia Nosek displays a 19th century shadow box animation toy. Conservation Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Dashing heroes, evil bandits, high drama and adventure. Toy theaters, beloved playthings of the 19th century, offered all these. Charles Dickens staged productions with them in his living room. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an ode to them. And a 14-year-old Winston Churchill was said to vault over the counter of a local stationer’s to grab the latest title.

Long before Netflix or video games, these tiny paper theaters served as home entertainment, outlets for imagination crafted for young people but popular with adults, too.

The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division has dozens of the miniature theaters, many in colorful boxes containing magical characters and intricate scenes from the past. Over the past few years, Library paper conservators have been painstakingly mending damage caused by historical use, making sure researchers can draw insights from the theaters for years to come.

For “a penny plain and twopence coloured” — the title of Stevenson’s tribute — the stationer in his city sold “pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults — it was a giddy joy,” he recalled, and the shop itself was a lodestone rock for “all that bore the name of boy.”

At first, English publishers sold sheets of principal characters from popular plays, imprinting the name of the theater staging a play and often the star actors. Enthusiasts — mainly boys and young men — bought them as souvenirs.

By 1812, sheets of scenes from plays were being sold with characters and, eventually, boxed kits appeared containing all the essentials of the stage: backdrops, curtains, props, orchestras and, of course, tiny actors, all to cut out and (if one spent just a penny) color. Some kits came with special script booklets or stage directions.

Nearly 300 toy productions, also known as juvenile dramas, were published in England between 1811 and 1860. Fans could choose military exploits (“The Battle of Waterloo,” “Conquest of Mexico,” “Invasion of Russia”), dramas and pirate stories (“Black Beard,” “Brigand and the Maid”) and even Shakespeare (“Macbeth,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “Julius Caesar”).

Basia Nosek demonstrates the setup of a 19th century French shadow box. Conservation Division. Photo:  Shawn Miller.

Such was the popularity of toy theaters that the first play written specifically for the medium, “Alone in the Pirate’s Lair,” published in 1866, made its way to the actual stage, followed by other original toy theater plays, according to theater historian Nicole Sheriko.

“They’ve turned out to be really compelling examples of what occupied a child in a certain period,” Mark Dimunation, RBSCD chief, said of a collecting effort focused not just on toy theaters, but also on other printed objects children played with, such as games, paper dolls and boxes with moving scenes.

The division initiated a “very self-conscious push” to collect these objects to complement its substantial holdings of children’s literature, Dimunation said. “They help us understand what is going on in some of the literature.”

Their research value also lies in the vivid hues imprinted on many, enabled by the rise of chromolithography in the 19th century. “They’re part of the history of printing, too,” Dimunation said. “The world suddenly becomes colorful.”

In England, the raucous stage of early 19th century London inspired the art form. But toy theaters flourished elsewhere as well — America, Germany, France — where they evolved and took different forms, a fact reflected in the collections.

Multiple theaters in the Library’s collection are panoramas — paper scenes wrapped around rods. When turned, cranks on either side of the theater advance scenes. Sometimes, the scenes progress through a play; in other cases, they are unassociated with one another.

These theaters, especially, have wear and tear, as paper ripped as a panorama was unwound, or cranks went missing or broke over time. The Library’s conservation lab has treated both issues. Basia Nosek, a recent intern in the lab, crafted an entirely new wooden crank to restore one theater.

“Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.” Conservation Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Betsy Haude of the Conservation Division finished work in the spring on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” a beautifully illustrated panorama in deep blues and greens based on Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

It arrived with tears that had been repaired by an earlier owner with pressure-sensitive tape, “which is terrible for paper,” Haude said. So, she carefully removed the tape and mended the tears with archival-quality materials.

Sometimes, however, when a historical mend is determined not to be causing damage, conservators leave it in place, not wanting to remove something that might tell a bigger story about the object and its use, Haude said.

She is the paper liaison to RBSCD. The division’s retired children’s literature specialist, Sybille Jagusch, reached out to her to assess which theaters needed treatment. Haude and colleague Gwenanne Edwards identified an initial batch most in need of repair.

Edwards completed work recently on a shadow puppet theater, a variety that includes cutouts that were placed behind the theater’s paper curtain. A light illuminated them from behind, and viewers could see silhouettes of the cutouts from the front. A single theater could have up to 100 puppets, some with moveable parts.

“The little players … sometimes had an unfortunate habit of creasing up or becoming unglued,” biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote of Dickens’ theaters.

“There’s a lot of structural work that we have to do with the puppets if it’s that kind of theater,” Edwards said.

Betsy Haude shows the setup of a 19th century shadow box toy. Conservation Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

As a final step before returning repaired theaters to RBSCD, conservators construct archival-quality housing to ensure their longevity.

The most popular English toy theater play, “The Miller and His Men,” debuted in London’s Covent Garden in 1813. The story climaxes with fire and an explosion, an exciting spectacle that, in toy form,  caused some home setups to perish.

The play captivated Dickens and, many years later, Churchill. It’s possible Churchill’s immersion in the story even inspired some of his trademark rhetoric as the United Kingdom’s World War II prime minister, theater historian George Speaight speculates.

In the final scene of “Miller,” a cornered villain exclaims, “Surrender? Never! I have sworn never to descend from this spot alive!”

Can there be a remembered echo in Churchill’s dramatic words to the House of Commons in 1940? Speaight asks — “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds … we shall never surrender!”

Likewise with Stevenson: “What is ‘Treasure Island’ but one of the piratic dramas retold?” Speaight postulates.

Gradually, toy theaters faded in popularity as the 20th century brought new diversions. But their magic is such that even a researcher today, visiting the Library’s Rare Book Reading Room, is sure to find delight in the carefully preserved record left behind.

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Len Downie: The Washington Post Papers

Leonard Downie Jr. speaking at the Library’s “50 Years of Watergate” event on June 17. Photo: Screenshot from video of the panel discussion.

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft in the Manuscript Division. It has been slightly adapted from its original publication last week on the “Unfolding History” blog.

Steven Spielberg’s 2017 film “The Post” depicts The Washington Post’s efforts to publish its account of the Pentagon Papers, but if you’ve only seen the movie’s first 40 minutes you might think it’s about New York Times journalist Neil Sheehan. “Sheehan!” Post executive editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) gripes as he wonders about the reporter’s activities. Sheehan came to prominence covering the Vietnam War and in 1971 he broke the Pentagon Papers story, the epic, constitutionally challenging scoop that drives the film’s plot.

Former Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., at the time a reporter for the newspaper, had his doubts about the movie’s depiction of Bradlee’s Sheehan obsession. “I have a hard time believing Ben paid attention to what Sheehan was doing,” he wrote to the movie’s producers.

Having been brought on as a consultant to the film, Downie praised “The Post” as one of “the most realistic and meaningful screen depictions of the importance of newspaper journalism” and placed it among classics such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight.” In his notes, which can be found in the Manuscript Division’s recently acquired Leonard Downie Jr. Papers, he offered numerous other insights.

Some were mundane but important for authenticity, such as when he pointed out that the Post had no garage at the time, so the newspaper’s publisher Katharine Graham had to be dropped off in front of the old building on L Street. Others proved more revealing. Downie noted the movie’s accuracy in capturing Graham’s role as tipster for Bradlee and himself.

Katharine Graham at her desk in 1976. Photo: Marion S. Trikosko. Prints and Photographs Division.

Downie’s consultancy provides a useful entry point into a collection that spans decades at one of the nation’s most august newspapers. His papers, which recently opened in the Manuscript Division, provide not only an overview of Downie’s career but also as a perch on the Post’s inner workings.

Starting as an intern during the 1960s, Downie worked his way up the Post food chain, including stops as deputy (1972-1974) and assistant managing editor (1974-1979) for the Metro desk, foreign correspondent in London (1979-1982), national editor (1982-1984), managing editor (1984-1991) and then as executive editor (1991-2008).

The Post won its share of Pulitzers during Downie’s leadership, taking six of the fourteen prizes in journalism in 2007, only the fourth time a newspaper emerged with more than three Pulitzer Prizes in a single year. Though he retired from the newspaper in 2008, Downie continues to work in the field, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and at Arizona State University to name just two.

Downie’s work consulting on “The Post” serves as just one dot in his collection’s pointillist rendition of journalistic history, which is full of strong characters and personalities. Downie succeeded legendary editor Ben Bradlee. Together they stewarded the Post’s rise to national prominence. The Downie papers do not lack for vantage points from which to witness Bradlee’s combative dynamism.

In an email to Robert Kaiser, a fellow Post editor, Downie offered his perspective on Bradlee’s tenure, correcting a popular memory that envisioned him roaming the newsroom and regularly engaging reporters.

In reality, he suggests, the famed editor sought out “those journalists he knew best and liked to talk to.” Still, his “aura” pervaded the newsroom, and he stood by his reporters’ stories. Downie recalled his 1960s series on the scandals in the savings and loan industry which cost the newspaper hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising when local S&L institutions boycotted the paper over his reporting. Bradlee, aware of the financial costs of Downie’s reporting, simply told him to “get it right kid.”

Downie’s press credential. Manuscript Division.

While Bradlee vigorously supported the newspaper’s journalists, the inspiration one drew from his praise could also curdle. “His turning his back on you when you failed was devastating,” Downie recalled. As for his “personal touch,” it could sometimes be described as “favortism” (sic), and often left Bradlee blindsided when women and non-white reporters complained about inequality at the paper.

For researchers interested in the newspaper’s internal dynamics, the collection offers a unique window. The Pugwash Files, named after the newspaper’s annual retreat, includes a number of publisher Don Graham’s annual state of the newspaper addresses. At the retreat, editors and journalists bounced around ideas for the newspaper’s direction in the coming years and discussed pressing internal issues.

Following the 1994 Pugwash, deputy managing editor and future ombudsman Michael Getler wrestled with the direction of the paper’s competitors. Should the Post run fewer series and investigative projects like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the two papers he identified as focusing on simply being the “best daily paper?” “The Washington Post, however, wants to do it all and does a very good job at trying,” observed Getler.

At its 1993 retreat, attendees made clear that the newspaper needed to do better in regard to diversity. Characterizing the 1993 Pugwash meeting with its associate managing editors as “extraordinarily productive,” Downie recounted a survey of the newspaper’s journalists that credited the newspaper with diversifying the newsroom generally, but asserted that greater strides needed to be made: “You said the least progress has been made in the promotion of women and minorities into high level editing jobs.”

As result, the Post organized a task force chaired by Getler to address the issue. According to a 2005 Downie memo, the seed planted at that 1993 Pugwash had begun to sprout. The numbers of women and persons of color working in the newsroom had reached all-time highs for the Post that year, with minorities at 23 percent. “This newsroom is stronger than ever,” he wrote.

Researchers will also find correspondence and other materials featuring  coverage of events such as Watergate, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Valerie Plame affair, 9/11, the Unabomber and much more.

“Journalism, the old adage goes, should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” Downie wrote in his 2020 memoir, “All About the Story.” “This is just what the Post did during my leadership of the newsroom.” A lifetime at one of the nation’s most influential newspapers is laid out in the Leonard Downie Jr. Papers.

Len Downie

Leonard Downie Jr. speaking at the Library’s “50 Years of Watergate” event on June 17. Photo: Screenshot from video of the panel discussion.

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft in the Manuscript Division. It has been slightly adapted from its original publication last week on the “Unfolding History” blog.

Steven Spielberg’s 2017 film “The Post” depicts The Washington Post’s efforts to publish its account of the Pentagon Papers, but if you’ve only seen the movie’s first 40 minutes you might think it’s about New York Times journalist Neil Sheehan. “Sheehan!” Post executive editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) gripes as he wonders about the reporter’s activities. Sheehan came to prominence covering the Vietnam War and in 1971 he broke the Pentagon Papers story, the epic, constitutionally challenging scoop that drives the film’s plot.

Former Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., at the time a reporter for the newspaper, had his doubts about the movie’s depiction of Bradlee’s Sheehan obsession. “I have a hard time believing Ben paid attention to what Sheehan was doing,” he wrote to the movie’s producers.

Having been brought on as a consultant to the film, Downie praised “The Post” as one of “the most realistic and meaningful screen depictions of the importance of newspaper journalism” and placed it among classics such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight.” In his notes, which can be found in the Manuscript Division’s recently acquired Leonard Downie Jr. Papers, he offered numerous other insights.

Some were mundane but important for authenticity, such as when he pointed out that the Post had no garage at the time, so the newspaper’s publisher Katharine Graham had to be dropped off in front of the old building on L Street. Others proved more revealing. Downie noted the movie’s accuracy in capturing Graham’s role as tipster for Bradlee and himself.

Katharine Graham at her desk in 1976. Photo: Marion S. Trikosko. Prints and Photographs Division.

Downie’s consultancy provides a useful entry point into a collection that spans decades at one of the nation’s most august newspapers. His papers, which recently opened in the Manuscript Division, provide not only an overview of Downie’s career but also as a perch on the Post’s inner workings.

Starting as an intern during the 1960s, Downie worked his way up the Post food chain, including stops as deputy (1972-1974) and assistant managing editor (1974-1979) for the Metro desk, foreign correspondent in London (1979-1982), national editor (1982-1984), managing editor (1984-1991) and then as executive editor (1991-2008).

The Post won its share of Pulitzers during Downie’s leadership, taking six of the fourteen prizes in journalism in 2007, only the fourth time a newspaper emerged with more than three Pulitzer Prizes in a single year. Though he retired from the newspaper in 2008, Downie continues to work in the field, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and at Arizona State University to name just two.

Downie’s work consulting on “The Post” serves as just one dot in his collection’s pointillist rendition of journalistic history, which is full of strong characters and personalities. Downie succeeded legendary editor Ben Bradlee. Together they stewarded the Post’s rise to national prominence. The Downie papers do not lack for vantage points from which to witness Bradlee’s combative dynamism.

In an email to Robert Kaiser, a fellow Post editor, Downie offered his perspective on Bradlee’s tenure, correcting a popular memory that envisioned him roaming the newsroom and regularly engaging reporters.

In reality, he suggests, the famed editor sought out “those journalists he knew best and liked to talk to.” Still, his “aura” pervaded the newsroom, and he stood by his reporters’ stories. Downie recalled his 1960s series on the scandals in the savings and loan industry which cost the newspaper hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising when local S&L institutions boycotted the paper over his reporting. Bradlee, aware of the financial costs of Downie’s reporting, simply told him to “get it right kid.”

Downie’s press credential. Manuscript Division.

While Bradlee vigorously supported the newspaper’s journalists, the inspiration one drew from his praise could also curdle. “His turning his back on you when you failed was devastating,” Downie recalled. As for his “personal touch,” it could sometimes be described as “favortism” (sic), and often left Bradlee blindsided when women and non-white reporters complained about inequality at the paper.

For researchers interested in the newspaper’s internal dynamics, the collection offers a unique window. The Pugwash Files, named after the newspaper’s annual retreat, includes a number of publisher Don Graham’s annual state of the newspaper addresses. At the retreat, editors and journalists bounced around ideas for the newspaper’s direction in the coming years and discussed pressing internal issues.

Following the 1994 Pugwash, deputy managing editor and future ombudsman Michael Getler wrestled with the direction of the paper’s competitors. Should the Post run fewer series and investigative projects like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the two papers he identified as focusing on simply being the “best daily paper?” “The Washington Post, however, wants to do it all and does a very good job at trying,” observed Getler.

At its 1993 retreat, attendees made clear that the newspaper needed to do better in regard to diversity. Characterizing the 1993 Pugwash meeting with its associate managing editors as “extraordinarily productive,” Downie recounted a survey of the newspaper’s journalists that credited the newspaper with diversifying the newsroom generally, but asserted that greater strides needed to be made: “You said the least progress has been made in the promotion of women and minorities into high level editing jobs.”

As result, the Post organized a task force chaired by Getler to address the issue. According to a 2005 Downie memo, the seed planted at that 1993 Pugwash had begun to sprout. The numbers of women and persons of color working in the newsroom had reached all-time highs for the Post that year, with minorities at 23 percent. “This newsroom is stronger than ever,” he wrote.

Researchers will also find correspondence and other materials featuring  coverage of events such as Watergate, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Valerie Plame affair, 9/11, the Unabomber and much more.

“Journalism, the old adage goes, should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” Downie wrote in his 2020 memoir, “All About the Story.” “This is just what the Post did during my leadership of the newsroom.” A lifetime at one of the nation’s most influential newspapers is laid out in the Leonard Downie Jr. Papers.

George Chauncey, Kluge Winner

{mediaObjectId:'E1FFB12B78A2F3AAE053CAE7938C5CA5',playerSize:'mediumWide'}Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today that historian George Chauncey will receive the 2022 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. He directs the Columbia Research Institute on the Global History of Sexualities.

“Professor Chauncey’s trailblazing career gave us all better insight into, and understanding of, the LGBTQ+ community and history,” Hayden said. “His work that helped transform our nation’s attitudes and laws epitomizes the Kluge Center’s mission to support research at the intersection of the humanities and public policy.”

Chauncey is the first scholar in LGBTQ+ studies to receive the prize. He is known for his pioneering 1994 history “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940,” his 2004 book “Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate over Gay Equality,” and his work as an expert in more than 30 court cases related to LGBTQ+ rights. These include such landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases as Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and the marriage equality cases United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

“I am deeply honored to receive the Kluge Prize,” Chauncey said, “and grateful that the Library of Congress has recognized the importance and vibrancy of the field of LGBTQ history.”

Drew Gilpin Faust, former Kluge Prize winner and Harvard historian, was delighted by the news.

“(He) has entirely revised our understanding of LGBTQ history in the United States and in so doing has established it as one of the most vibrant fields of current historical inquiry,” she said. “Through his testimony in numerous court cases, he has brought the meaning of his work into the public sphere and has contributed in powerful ways to the establishment of marriage equality.”

“Gay New York.” Image courtesy of Basic Books.

“Gay New York” was released in 1994 during the 25th anniversary of the LGBTQ+ rights protests at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, focusing on the gay community in New York City before World War II. Chauncey’s research utilized newspapers, police records, oral histories, diaries and other primary sources to show that there was a much more vibrant and visible gay world than is generally understood today, less than a century later.

It argued that there was a permeable boundary between straight and gay behavior, especially among working-class men. “Gay New York” won numerous prizes for its scholarship including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Studies.

“Why Marriage?” drew on Chauncey’s extensive research prepared for court cases in which he provided expert testimony. It traces the history of both gay and anti-gay activism and discusses the origins of the modern struggle for gay marriage.

Legal historian Sarah Barringer Gordon said Chauncey’s “work gave rise to an entire new field…and has expanded into arenas that affect daily life, such as marriage equality.”

George Chauncey.

Chauncey grew up as the son of a minister in the Deep South, whose work on civil rights issues was often deeply unpopular with his white evangelical congregations. “He was sometimes asked to leave” churches, Chauncey recalled, causing the family to move often.

Chauncey received a Bachelor of Arts and a doctorate from Yale University. He was the Samuel Knight Professor of History & American Studies at Yale from 2006 to 2017, and held posts as chair of the History Department, chair of the Committee for LGBT Studies, and director of graduate studies and undergraduate studies for the American Studies program. He was awarded Yale’s teaching prize for his lecture course on U.S. Lesbian and Gay History, which more than 300 students took the final time he taught it. Chauncey taught at the University of Chicago from 1991 through 2006 before coming back to New York to teach at Columbia.

He has been an elected member of the New York Academy of History since 2007 and a member of the Society of American Historians since 2005. He is married to Ronald Gregg, a film historian and director of the master’s program in Film and Media Studies at Columbia University.

The Library will collaborate with Chauncey to create programming to bring his expertise on LGBTQ+ history to the public and policymakers.

The Kluge Prize recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society. Awarded to a scholar every two years, the international prize highlights the value of researchers who communicate beyond the scholarly community and have had a major impact on social and political issues. The prize comes with a $500,000 award. Additional funds from the Library’s Kluge endowment, which funds the award, are being invested in Kluge Center programming.

Chauncey joins a prestigious group of past prize winners that includes German philosopher Jürgen Habermas; former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso; and the groundbreaking scholar of African American history, John Hope Franklin.

Danielle Allen, a renowned scholar of justice, citizenship, and democracy, was the 2020 winner of the Kluge Prize. She held a series of events with the Library titled “Our Common Purpose,” which explored American civic life and how it might be strengthened. Faust won the 2018 prize and participated in a conversation with Hayden on women in leadership.

he Kluge Center brings some of the world’s great thinkers to the Library to make use of its collections and engage in conversations addressing the challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.

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The Genius of Cameroon’s Sultan Ibrahim Njoya

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It was the late 19th century in western Africa. European nations had just carved up the continent’s resources (and people) in the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the major chapter in what historian Thomas Pakenham described, in a term commonly used for the era, as the “scramble for Africa.” In the ensuing three decades, European colonial powers took control of almost 90 percent of the continent.

In the interior of a territory the German occupiers called Kamerun, a sultan named Ibrahim Njoya held sway over the kingdom of Bamum (also spelled Bamoun). He was the most recent in a line of a royal family that had ruled the grasslands region for hundreds of years.

He was a remarkable man, a polymath scholar, probably the most visionary of all the rulers of his kingdom.

Born in the midcentury, Njoya grew to be a thoughtful leader who melded the modern techniques of the colonizers with the wisdom of his ancestors, taking power in the late 1880s in his capital city of Foumban. He oversaw the first surveyed map of his kingdom, called the Lew Ngu, or the “Book of the Country.” He wrote, with assistance from several scribes, the first history of his people. He created his own spoken and written language and built dozens of schools to teach it. Over time, he developed a unique religion that brought together Bamum’s spiritual practices with Islam and Christianity.

The map of Bamum that Sultan Njoya commissioned. The text is in the language he created. Geography and Map Division.

He built a mansion that still stands today as a museum, and was a devout patron of education and the arts. His half first cousin – who shared his name – became an accomplished artist and is now regarded as the nation’s first prominent cartoonist.

Today, the Library preserves several of Njoya’s achievements, including several of the maps and sketches he commissioned, along with examples of his language. There are also dozens of photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, showing men on horseback, women with unique hairstyles, buildings with elaborate carvings, and Njoya in variety of formal settings. (Most of these were purchased from an arts dealer within the past decade.) Together, they form a window into the intellectual and artistic life of African populations before they were obliterated by colonialism.

“One of the many things we do is provide research and stories that are not widely known,” says Lanisa Kitchiner, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division. “One of those is of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya. In creating (his maps, language and alphabet), he preserved not only a snapshot of his kingdom’s physical boundaries when European colonialists were erasing them, but also a picture of his nation’s hopes, dreams and aspirations.”

But Njoya was born in the wrong era for self-determination in that corner of the world.

Locked inland, with no way to match German military or economic might, he thought the best path forward was one that did not interfere with German plans. Though a man of modern aspirations, he also hewed to his ancestral practice of polygamy, claiming hundreds of wives and more than 100 children. This bifurcated approach to lifestyle and governance had its risks, most notably from more traditional military men in his own region, who did not endorse his cooperative approach to colonizers.

By the time World War I came and went, leaving the French in charge of the region, Njoya was running out of room to maneuver. French colonialists sidelined him in 1931. He died two years later, though one of his sons would later take regain power, and the family remains influential today.

Still, Njoya’s reign during a period of great upheaval and transition managed to preserve his kingdom’s remarkable history for the ages.

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My Job: Mark Horowitz, from Broadway to the Beltway

Mark Horowitz (l) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (r) looking over Jonathan Larson’s collection at the Library.

Mark Horowitz in the Music Division works with some of the biggest names in musical theater.

Describe your work at the Library.

I’m a senior specialist in the Music Division’s acquisitions and processing section, where my specialty is American musical theater. I acquire collections for the Library — these have included the papers of Howard Ashman, Adam Guettel, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Larson, Hal Prince, Jeanine Tesori and a promised bequest from Stephen Sondheim.

I process special collections — sorting, organizing, identifying, foldering, labeling and writing finding aids. I provide reference. And I get to do special projects, such as co-producing concerts and exhibits and conducting interviews for the Library’s website — including interviews with Sondheim, Burt Bacharach and Randy Newman.

Mark Horowitz. Photo: Shawn Miller.

What are some of your standout projects?

Producing a 70th birthday celebration concert for Sondheim. Our cast included Nathan Lane, Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie and Brian Stokes Mitchell. It included a newly orchestrated concert version of his “The Frogs,” which was then recorded for the first time and led to an expanded version of the show premiering on Broadway. That concert included a segment of Sondheim’s “songs he wish he’d written,” the complete list of which was then published in the New York Times and led to a series of Barbara Cook “Mostly Sondheim” concerts and recordings.

In 2018, I received the Kluge fellowship reserved for a Library staff member. My project allowed me for one year to seek out, read, review, select and transcribe correspondence from and to the lyricist, librettist and producer Oscar Hammerstein II. Among the shows Hammerstein wrote were “Show Boat,” “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific” and “The King and I.” His correspondence represents a who’s who of show business, but he was also deeply involved in social issues, including working with the NAACP. I ended up transcribing over 4,500 letters. The plan is that these transcripts, accompanied by scans of at least some of the originals, will become a Library website. I believe these letters will be a revelation to many and prove a vast source for research.

What have been your most memorable experiences at the Library?

Making Stephen Sondheim cry when I showed him Gershwin’s manuscript for “Porgy and Bess.” Doing a show-and-tell for Angela Lansbury, during which she sang “Beauty and the Beast” for me, first as Ashman and Alan Menken had performed it for her (up-tempo), then the way she insisted on singing it (as a ballad).

What are your favorite collection items?

There are hundreds, but the first that comes to mind: Oscar Hammerstein’s lyric sketches for “My Favorite Things” (“Riding down hill on my big brother’s bike/These are a few of the things that I like”) and “Do-Re-Mi,” where for several pages he gets stuck on the line “Sew — a thing you do with wheat.” Larson’s lyric sketches for “Seasons of Love,” where you see him do the math that calculates there are 525,600 minutes in a year. A letter from George Bernard Shaw to a 19-year-old Jascha Heifetz, cautioning him to play something badly every night instead of saying his prayers so as not to provoke a jealous god.

 

Lin-Manuel Miranda tweets an acknowledgement to Horowitz on the release of “tick, tick … BOOM!”

Einstein Fellow: Lesley Anderson

Lesley Anderson. 

Lesley Anderson is a 2021–22 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator at the Library. The fellowship program appoints accomplished K–12 teachers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to collaborate with federal agencies and congressional offices to advance STEM education. Anderson teaches high school math, chemistry, biology and environmental science in San Diego.

As a STEM teacher, what resources at the Library have captivated you?

Beyond the obvious collections, such as the Wright Brothers or the Alexander Graham Bell papers, there are many artifacts that can be used in a STEM classroom. I particularly loved working on a free-to-use photo set of natural disasters to be featured on the Library’s homepage this summer. I also enjoyed compiling a related primary source set for teachers that will appear on the Library’s site for teachers.

I found so many interesting interdisciplinary connections that enable students to consider not only the scientific explanation for the cause of a disaster, but also the response to it and potential future mitigation.

How has the pandemic affected your fellowship?

The first half of my fellowship was all remote, which made it challenging to learn about how the Library is structured and how all of the departments work together. In the past two months, however, I’ve had the privilege of coming into the office twice a week, and I’m learning even more about the Library in different ways. It’s almost like having a second fellowship.

You’ve worked with federal agencies previously doing hands-on science. 

I started my first teacher-research experience with NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, looking at photocopies of old records of Arctic expeditions to compile an archive of historical sea ice thickness measurements.

Then, I further fueled my enthusiasm for polar science with a PolarTREC expedition to the South Pole in 2017, retracing the steps of polar explorers who risked everything to be the first to study the Arctic and Antarctic.

Coming to the Library, I was immediately drawn to searching for polar science artifacts in the collections. I could barely hold back my excitement when I had the chance to sit in a room with materials from explorers and expeditions — Admiral Byrd’s scrapbook with pictures from Antarctica, the Frederick Cook papers and Finn Ronne’s notebook from the Byrd Antarctic expedition. Years ago, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I never would have guessed that I would have the opportunity to hold the original copies of those old photocopied notebooks in my very own hands.

Even though I have conducted research with federal agencies in the past, I came to the Library with an open mind and the intention to learn as much as I could from the experts in the field so I can take that back into the classroom with me.

How will your experience at the Library inform your classroom teaching?

Spending a year at the Library has renewed my passion for lifelong learning and curiosity. When I look at a primary source, I immediately begin asking questions and find myself starting to “go down the rabbit hole” as I begin researching other related topics to answer my own questions. I hope that I can inspire that authentic inquisitive process, reflected in the scientific method, with my students when I return to the classroom.

How are you sharing the resources you’ve discovered?

I’ve enjoyed writing blog posts, publishing articles, hosting webinars and presenting at conferences to share the word about how to use primary sources in STEM classrooms. My posts are searchable on the Library’s blog for teachers, and my webinars will be available on the Library’s website in coming months.

What do you want STEM educators to know about the Library?

I hope that STEM educators can see the Library as I now do — the site of a rich collection of STEM resources, including curated primary sources that are ready to be used in K–12 classrooms. Primary sources can provide new access points to phenomena that may engage students who are typically disinterested in STEM topics. Additionally, primary source analysis can be a tool to enable students to think critically about a resource and incorporate science and engineering practices into their interdisciplinary learning.

For more information about this program, visit the Library’s Teacher in Residence Programs page.

“Top Gun” — The Library of Congress Keeps Receipts

Tom Cruise, the first time around, in a publicity still from “Top Gun.” Photo: Paramount Pictures.

“Top Gun: Maverick” took your breath away, did it?

The sequel to the 1986 blockbuster is, if anything, a bigger hit than the original. The film, in which Tom Cruise reprises his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, took in a Memorial Day weekend record of an estimated $156 million at the box office. Fighter jets, “Danger Zone” and popcorn. Good times.

Your friendly national library is making sure this cinematic love affair is preserved on several fronts, particularly with the first film. We were mildly surprised at just how many.

First, the Library’s National Film Registry’s class of 2015 added the original to the the Library’s list of “culturally, historically or aesthetically” important films worthy of national preservation. Second, it turns out the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center has the original 35mm movie film print. The real reels! Third, the Music Division has the commercial sheet music for the film’s songs, which might be expected, but also (unexpectedly) has the gold-record award given to Tom Whitlock for cowriting, among other hits on the soundtrack, “Take My Breath Away.”

The Library’s 35mm prints for “Top Gun” in the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. Staff photo.

When the film was added to the registry, the Library’s film staff noted its pop-culture indulgences in their official summary, but also that it “actually comprises a deft portrait of mid-1980s America, when politicians promised ‘Morning in America Again,’ and singers crooned ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ The U.S. Navy, for one, did not complain: Applications to naval aviation schools soared in part as a result of this relentless, pulsating film famed for its vertiginous fighter-plane sequences.”

They also noted that director “Christopher Nolan has highlighted ‘Top Gun’ for the clear influence of the film’s celebrated visual style on future filmmakers.”

Whitlock’s songwriting contribution, part of the Library’s collection from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, shouldn’t be overlooked. The song, which he wrote with the influential producer Giorgio Moroder, won both an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

The movie, and the song, really did catch the nation’s imagination in the 1980s, and that’s the kind of thing the Library was meant to preserve.

Tom Whitlock’s framed gold record award for “Take My Breath Away,” the love song from “Top Gun.” Staff photo.

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The Eye of Jazz: The Photographs of William P. Gottlieb

New York City’s 52nd Street on a rainy night in July 1948. Photo: William P. Gottlieb. Prints and Photographs Division.

This story first appeared in the Library of Congress Magazine.

One of the world’s great collections of jazz photos got its start with a questionable piece of pork and a bad case of trichinosis.

The victim, a Lehigh University student named William P. Gottlieb, was laid up for some time, and his friend Doc would come by to help him pass the hours, bringing along jazz records from his collection.

Gottlieb, no fan of the genre beforehand, was hooked.

After graduating in 1936, he accepted an advertising job at The Washington Post for $25 a week and, wanting to earn extra money, persuaded the editors to let him write a weekly jazz column for an extra $10.

They agreed but told Gottleib he’d have to take his own photos, so he bought a Speed Graphic camera and taught himself to use it.

Working for the Post and later for DownBeat magazine over a 10-year span, Gottlieb captured the era’s greatest musicians in their element — Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and countless others. He left jazz journalism and photography in 1948, when he was just 31. He went into the educational film business, wrote some children’s books and was a serious amateur tennis player. He died in 2006, at age 89.

In 1995, the Library purchased Gottlieb’s collection — some 1,600 negatives and color transparencies, plus exhibition, reference and contact prints. In 2010, the photos entered the public domain, in accordance with Gottlieb’s wishes.

The legendary Charlie Parker playing at the Three Deuces in August 1947. Photo: William P. Gottlieb. Prints and Photographs Division.

Gottlieb was paying for his own film and flashbulbs, so he quickly learned to make each picture count.

“I knew the music, I knew the musicians, I knew in advance when the right moment would arrive,” he wrote decades later in his book of photographs, “The Golden Age of Jazz.” “It was purposeful shooting.”

He tried to capture not just a moment but the musicians’ inner qualities — the cool of Monk at the keyboard, wearing a goatee and a beret; the playful Gillespie peeking out from behind Fitzgerald at the mic; Ellington in his dressing room, as sophisticated as the music he created.

When he photographed Django Reinhardt, Gottlieb made sure to show the mutilated fingers of the guitarist’s fret hand — the result of a fire that left Reinhardt badly burned and forced him to learn to play his instrument again.

His photo of Holiday, lost in a mid-song moment, is perhaps the most famous image in jazz; decades, later, it served as the basis for a postage stamp. You could, Gottlieb wrote, look at the photo and feel the anguish in her voice.

Gottlieb’s columns and his book are full of stories of his encounters with musicians — revealing, heartbreaking, funny.

Armstrong carried copies of his diet in his jacket pocket and would hand one to folks he thought could use the help. Gottlieb once ran into him at a dentist’s office, and they stopped to chat. Armstrong started to leave, then turned back, looked Gottlieb up and down and pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Hey, Pops,” Armstrong said. “There’s this diet, man. The greatest. Try it.”

This 1947 photo of Billie Holiday, is one of the most iconic images in jazz. Photo: William P. Gottlieb. Prints and Photographs Division.

By late 1948, drugs and alcohol had taken such a toll on Holiday that she frequently failed to show up for gigs. At one such show, Gottlieb, on a hunch, went to the dressing room and found her there, half dressed and totally out of it.

“I helped her get herself together and led her to the microphone,” he later wrote. “She looked terrible. Sounded worse. I put my notebook in my pocket, placed a lens cap on my camera and walked out, choosing to remember this remarkable creature as she once was.”

The hundreds of photos of the Gottleib collection allow us to do the same, to remember this remarkable American art form, as it once was.

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