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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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