July 2018 is here, and while D.C. residents threw barbecues and watched fireworks for the Fourth, the Kluge Center welcomed three new scholars into residence. Here are the projects that they will be working on:
Tamika Galanis, our incoming Jon B. Lovelace Fellow for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection, arrived from Duke University. During her residency, Tamika will conduct research on her project, “Activating the Archive – Engaging Bahamian Folk Culture Past and Present.” This work aims to help preserve Bahamian folkways. While in residence, Tamika will use the Bahamas Collections in the archive of Folk Culture, which includes the Alan Lomax, David Pryor, Laura Boulton, and Elsie Fardig collections. She hopes to mine these collections to find all instances of Bahamian folklife in these collections, to develop a database to help repatriate and make this content available to Bahamians, and to create new documentary fieldwork by retracing Alan Lomax’s visit to the Bahama Islands. She hopes this research will help to preserve Bahamian Folkways as the islands deal with the potential loss of their culture due to rising oceans.
Robert Dale, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow, arrived from New Castle University. During his residency, Robert will focus on his project, “Rebuilding Socialism: The Reconstruction of the Soviet Union and Its Official Ideology Through the Lens of Post-War Published Sources.” This work examines the ways in which Soviet propagandists rebuilt socialist ideology in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1955, focusing on newspapers and journals of the time. While in residence, Robert will examine the Library’s holdings of Soviet newspapers (Pravda, Izvestiia, Trud, etc.), regional titles (Leningradskaia pravda, Moskovskaia pravda), and ideological journals (Propaganda i agitatsiia and Bolshevik). He hopes to use these collections to draw connections between official propaganda materials and his previous archival research, placing both into a wider historical context.
David Isaacs, another AHRC Fellow, arrived from University College London. During his residency, David will spend time on his research project, “Philip Roth’s Revisions.” This work aims to research manuscript revisions and the histories of works by the following three authors: Geoffrey Hill, J.M. Coetzee, and Philip Roth. While in residence, David will use the Philip Roth Papers to conduct his research into the evolution of Philip Roth’s writing and the thoughts behind his writings.
Check back next month for more arriving scholars. Click here for the full list of scholars currently in residence.