English professor receives research fellowship
An English professor at USU is on his way to New York City to uncover details about the life of a poet and icon of the civil rights era.
Associate Professor Shane Graham received an eight-week fellowship to study archives in the New York Public Library. During that time, Graham said he will continue his research on the jazz-poet Langston Hughes, and Hughes’ connection to other influential African-American writers of his time. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture awarded the fellowship.
“It’s great to see Dr. Graham receive this kind of recognition for his work,” said Jeannie Thomas, head of the English department.
During the fellowship, Graham will reside two blocks from the house in Harlem where Hughes lived for the last 25 years of his life, Graham said.
Graham said Hughes has been embraced as an American poet who led the charge of the Harlem Renaissance. However, he added, Hughes’ connections to other artists worldwide have not been given enough recognition in the scholarly world.
During his archival work in South Africa and at the University of Texas, Austin, he said he stumbled upon correspondences between Hughes and influential South African writers such as Ezekiel Mphahlele and Jamaican poet Claude McKay.
“That’s the beauty of archival work,” Graham said. “You don’t know what you’re going to find until you start digging around. It’s like detective work. You find a clue and follow that clue, and you find things you didn’t know existed.”
Graham said a group of poets from the Caribbean and French West Africa that met in Paris called the Negritude Poets were deeply inspired by Hughes to embrace their African heritage instead of disavowing it like many other poets of the time.
“He was this global figure, and scholars are only now starting to recognize that,” Graham said. “I’m trying to contribute to that broadening of our view of this important poet.”
Graham said his favorite find was a poem that Hughes had written for a friend’s wedding. The poem was written in his own hand and had never been published. Finding small, handwritten poems made literary giants like Hughes feel like real people, Graham said.
Graham said students looking to get into scholarly research should have a real love for the subject they’re researching. Research often involves tedious tasks like archival research and writing letters seeking permission to search archives, he said.
“Once you find that thing you can’t stop thinking about, (research) becomes easy. It’s not really work anymore,” Graham said.
Graham said his archival work has made him continually better both in the classroom and in the field. Students are attracted to his class due to firsthand knowledge of texts, as well as the books he has written himself.
He said he’s been able to teach classes on Hughes and his world connections because of his research, but he’s acquired expertise to write articles from teaching classes.
According to the USU website, Graham has written “South African Literature After the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss” and “‘Come on here!’: Langston Hughes and the South African Drum Generation: Letters 1953-1967.” He is in the process of writing a third piece, entitled “Cosmopolitanism in Black Atlantic Literature.”
“We are pleased for Dr. Graham to have access to the Schomburg Collection, which is one of our nation’s archival treasures,” said Patricia Gantt, associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “It speaks well for the level of his scholarship that he has received this honor. We also look forward to the scholarship he will create based on such an enviable experience.”
– marissa.shields@aggiemail.usu.edu