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May 4, 2009

Jessica Berman, Department of English, Receives Research Fellowship From Newberry Library

Summer Fellowship at Prestigious Chicago Library Facilitates Research on 1930s American Writers


CONTACT:
Mike Lurie

Office: 410-455-6380
Cellphone: 443-695-0262
mlurie@umbc.edu


The Newberry Library, a leading independent research library concentrating in the humanities, has awarded its Short-Term Fellowship for Individual Research to Jessica Berman, chair of the Department of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

The Fellowship affords Berman the opportunity to work in residence for two weeks during summer 2009 at the Chicago-based library to research her manuscript, Jack Conroy, the Community of Midwestern Radical Writers, and the Development of Political Narrative in the 1930s.

“This is an especially exciting opportunity because it offers the opportunity to do the real archival work necessary for doing first-order research in my discipline,” Berman said.

Berman is working on a book that will examine the personal papers of 1930s authors from the American Midwest, many of whom were politically engaged. Her research on Conroy will form the book’s first chapter.

The Newberry houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, maps, music, manuscripts and other printed materials, according to its Web site. The Newberry acquires and preserves a variety of special collections research materials focused on civilizations of Europe and the Americas.

The Newberry was founded as a public library by a bequest of Walter Loomis Newberry, a businessman and prominent citizen in Chicago and president of the Chicago Historical Society before his death in 1868.

Posted by crose at May 4, 2009 12:32 PM