Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 2, 2008|Volume 36, Number 28|Two-Week Issue

Inaugural James Weldon Johnson Fellow
to research Harlem Renaissance

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has established a new fellowship that will allow scholars to devote a full academic year in residence at Yale to do research and writing in connection with the library’s James Weldon Johnson Collection.

The first recipient of the James Weldon Johnson Fellowship in African American Studies is Emily Bernard of the University of Vermont, who will hold the post during the 2008-2009 academic year.

Founded in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten, the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection stands as a memorial to author, composer, educator and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson, and celebrates the accomplishments of African-American writers and artists, beginning with those of the Harlem Renaissance. Grace Nail Johnson contributed her husband’s papers, leading the way for gifts of papers from W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White and Poppy Cannon White, Dorothy Peterson, Chester Himes and Langston Hughes. The collection also contains the papers of Richard Wright and Jean Toomer, as well as smaller groups of manuscripts and correspondence of such writers as Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Wallace Thurman.

At the University of Vermont, Bernard is associate professor of English and ALANA (African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Native Americans).

She has edited two books. “Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten” (2001), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and “Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship” (2004), which was chosen by the New York Public Library for its Book for the Teen Age 2006 list. Her essay “Teaching the N Word” appeared in Best American Essays 2006.

At Yale, Bernard will be conducting research for an upcoming book tentatively titled “White Shadows: Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance.” The book will cast new light on the dynamic between Van Vechten, a controversial white patron of African-American arts communities, and his black friends and protégés during the 1920s and beyond, including Hughes, Hurston and Nella Larsen. “White Shadows” is scheduled to be published by Yale University Press in 2009.

During her time on campus, Bernard will be affiliated with the Department of African-American Studies.

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