Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Century-old stories of exploited Georgia prisoners have been lifted from the University of Georgia Libraries’ vault to the gallery and now to the stage, through a collaboration among archivists, faculty members and students at UGA and Spelman College.

Through the partnership, students and faculty have engaged with dozens of artifacts and historical documents to create [The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project], which will culminate in performances this fall and winter.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is pleased to announce the School’s Photograph Collection, which has been a part of the curriculum at the Dodd for 50 years, was moved to the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, one of three special collections libraries at the University of Georgia.

Lamar Dodd School of Art Professor Emeritus W. Robert Nix began assembling the photo collection in 1969 to provide opportunities for art students to have hands-on familiarity with examples of historic photographic processes, materials, and equipment. “As our culture becomes increasingly saturated with photographic images whose differences are neutralized by reproduction and through screens, encounters with these material, hand-crafted objects can be revelatory,” said Dr. Alisa Luxenberg, Professor of Art History.

The University of Georgia Libraries will celebrate three new inductees to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame with author discussions and a special dinner this November.

The festivities honor food writer John T. Edge and poet A.E. Stallings, as well as pioneering journalist Julia Collier Harris, who is being inducted posthumously.

The University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library takes a closer look at Georgia’s incarceration history in the new exhibit The New South and New Slavery: Convict Labor in Georgia, now on display at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The display examines the forced labor of prisoners in the state from the beginnings of the convict lease system in the 19thcentury until the abolition of the chain gang in 1945.

As players and fans prepare for the kickoff of the University of Georgia’s football season, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library plans to revisit recent program history in the new exhibit Beautiful and Brutal: Georgia Bulldogs Football, 2017. The display will open Friday, Aug. 30, at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries at the University of Georgia.

Virginia Eubanks, Rachel Devlin, and Vanessa Siddle Walker are the 2019 recipients of the Lillian Smith Book Awards. An award ceremony will take place at the Center for the History of the Book on Sunday, Sept. 1st at 2:30 p.m. 

The Southern Regional Council established the Lillian Smith award after Smith's 1966 death. Internationally acclaimed as author of the controversial novel, Strange Fruit (1944), Lillian Smith was the most outspoken of white, mid-20th century Southern writers on issues of social and racial injustice. Today the University of Georgia, the Georgia Center for the Book and Piedmont College join the SRC in presenting the awards. 

The University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library will take a closer look at Georgia’s carceral history in the new exhibit The New South and New Slavery: Convict Labor in Georgia, opening July 26 at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The display examines the forced labor of prisoners in the state from the start of the convict lease system in 1868 until the abolition of the chain gang in 1945.

Poet Coleman Barks has spent the past sixty years exploring the possibilities of American ecstatic poetry. His life and work is the subject of a new exhibition, Praying Aloud in Public: The Papers of Coleman Barks, opening in the Rotunda Gallery of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries on Friday, May 24.

Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Barks studied English literature at University of California, Berkeley, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining the faculty of the University of Georgia in 1967. He taught at UGA until his retirement in 1997.

The University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library will be hitting the road this summer with a traveling exhibit of materials from the UGA Athletic Association Archive.  Jason Hasty, UGA Athletics History Specialist for the Hargrett Library, will bring historic materials to several public libraries in east and central Georgia.“This is a great chance for everyone to see materials – uniforms, equipment, photographs –  that represent UGA’s rich athletics heritage”, said Hasty.  “I’m especially excited that this travelling exhibit will feature a mix of older artifacts as well as some items donated from our recent student-athletes and teams.” 

Congratulations to our folks who recently received National Endowment for the Humanities grants.

We were delighted to learn that the UGA Press and its partners (including Hargrett and DLG) will receive an NEH/Mellon Open Book Grant for the Georgia Open History Library. This project, in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the United States, will allow for the digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 50 titles on the history of Georgia.

The Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies will receive funds for the exhibit "NEH on the Road: Power of Children."