American Studies
The Ransom Center's holdings in published and manuscript materials offer an unparalleled opportunity for the interdisciplinary study of many aspects of American culture. Within the various collections are works by American publishers, photographers, novelists, poets, playwrights, lawyers, pioneers, reporters, philosophers, socialites, movie stars, and other American icons ranging from Mae West to Mike Wallace, from Gertrude Stein to Gloria Swanson, and from Langston Hughes to Lillian Hellman.
Because so many of the collections at the Ransom Center pertain to American Studies, the following descriptions represent only a sampling of the wide variety of subjects within American Studies which can be pursued at the Center. For further ideas, see in particular the areas of Literature, Film, Performing Arts, and Photography, which are described separately.
America at War
One of the leaders of the northern anti-slavery philosophers, Theodore Parker (1810-1860) addresses the general state of American politics just prior to the Civil War in the nine-page manuscript, "The Massachusetts Election: The Turning Point in American Politics" (ca. 1857). A rare, complete set of Alexander Gardner's (1821-1882) Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (1866) contains one hundred original, mounted photographs.
Approximately two thousand American and multi-national posters from World Wars I and II offer a visual history of the sentiments that shaped the country's attitude toward international conflict. Among the related items are James H. "Jimmy" Hare's (1856-1946) photographic documentation of the Spanish-American War, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I.
Also available are a collection of books by World War I poets, hundreds of original prints from Edward Steichen's (1879-1973) U.S. Navy Photographic Unit documenting the Pacific Theater in World War II, and the collection of Eisenhower historian Duncan Emrich (1908-1977), containing several World War II orders of the day, manuscripts, and broadsides.
The archive of David Douglas Duncan (b. 1916) covers over sixty years of photojournalism, including award-winning coverage of the Korean and Vietnam Wars as well as World War II. (See also Photography.)
A study of the effects of war can be pursued among the literary archives of such American writers as Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who served in World War I, and whose papers include a large collection of typescript articles written by Hemingway for the North American Newspaper Alliance during the Spanish Civil War.
An extensive archive for the novelist and screenwriter James Jones (1921-1977), who served in the 27th Infantry from 1939 to 1944, shows how he wrought his army experiences into his novels such as From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, among other works. Notebooks and drafts exist for his final and unfinished novel, Whistle, and drafts of an excerpt titled "The Evolution of a Soldier."
The papers of novelist and Korean War veteran James Salter (b. 1925) include manuscript notes and typescripts with revisions for The Hunters and The Arm of Flesh, both of which are known for their descriptions of flying and aerial combat in the Korean War.
The complete microfilm copy and photograph morgue of the New York Journal-American covers the years 1895 to 1966, providing an invaluable resource for research into any of the wars in which the United States participated during those years.
Native Americans
Documenting the vanishing life and ways of Native Americans are George Catlin's (1796-1872) Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (1845), complete with three hundred sixty engravings. Even more compendious is The North American Indian (1907-1930), the twenty-volume and twenty-portfolio magnum opus by Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), copiously illustrated with mammoth sheet-fed photogravures produced from Curtis's original photographs. The manuscripts, correspondence, journals, and library of novelist Oliver La Farge (1901-1963) include drafts of his novels on the Indian, anthropological works, his study of Mayan linguistics, drawings of the costumes and peoples of Central America and the Southwest, and his unpublished articles on "The Indian's White Man Problem," as well as his draft of a constitution for the Hopi tribe.
Exploration & Travel
Among early accounts of travel to the Americas housed at the Ransom Center is a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript assembled by "Giovan Batista Sassetti and friends." More recent manuscript accounts include those of A. Felix Giraud, Chancellor of the French Consulate in Boston (1807-08), and the unpublished diary of John I. Stickney, an 1849-50 passenger on the Brig Annah, who made his passage from Massachusetts to San Francisco via Cape Horn in one hundred thirty-four days.
The expedition of E. H. Harriman (1848-1909) into the then largely unexplored Alaskan Territory is recorded in a rare two-volume set, A Souvenir of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, May-August 1899, featuring mounted original photographs by Edward S. Curtis and others. Approximately three thousand books, rare pamphlets, and early original maps, many from the library of Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefánsson (1879-1962), chronicle early exploration of the far north. Additionally, the Center has sixty-two photographs by the Australian photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962) of Sir Ernest Shackleton's (1874-1922) 1914 voyage to the Antarctic on the "Endurance," which are complemented by the typescript narrative of the photographer.
Law & Politics
Papers of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) in the Center's collection of Story Family Papers include personal writings by the Justice, several legal opinions written in his own hand, and letters to his son, the novelist and sculptor William Wetmore Story (1819-1895), as well as public documents.
The Morris L. Ernst (1888-1976) archive includes transcripts, briefs, correspondence, and legal papers dealing with the various public movements with which this distinguished lawyer was involved, such as abortion rights, birth control, censorship, and the right to privacy. Of particular note are the files pertaining to the FBI as well as the 1920s censorship case of James Joyce's Ulysses.
A voluminous collection of correspondence, notes, legal documents, and drafts from the work of Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) contains an impressive body of research materials for the study of the American justice system, as interpreted by Mitford. The American Way of Death (1963) addresses the commercialism and greed of the American funeral industry, and Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (1973) harshly criticizes the American penal system.
The collection of John W. F. Dulles (b. 1913) reflects United States foreign affairs as perceived and directed by several generations of the Dulles family, three members of which were U.S. Secretaries of State. Furnishings, books, and personal items are preserved at the Center in a facsimile of the Washington, D.C. living room of John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), who served under President Eisenhower, and his wife Janet Pomeroy Avery Dulles (1891-1969). (The Dulles official papers are held by Princeton University.) (See also Special Collections.)
The John Valentine Collection of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) contains books by and about Roosevelt, as well as volumes from the president's private library. Letters, recordings, portraits, and memorabilia complete the collection.
Audiotapes, films, and correspondence record reporter Mike Wallace's (b. 1918) "Fund for the Republic" interviews (1958) with prominent persons in American political, religious, educational, and economic affairs.
The Watergate Papers of Bob Woodward (b. 1943) and Carl Bernstein (b. 1944) document a critical era in twentieth-century American political life. The collection gathers together the papers that the two young reporters for The Washington Post generated or collected during their investigation of the Watergate break-in, and also includes the materials used in their two jointly written books All the President's Men and The Final Days, as well as the motion picture version of All the President's Men, and Woodward's book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate. The collection includes notes from source interviews, drafts of newspaper stories and books, memos, letters, tape recordings, research materials, and other Watergate papers.
