Trudier Harris Papers, 1980s-2000s

Collection Number: 05565

Collection Title: Trudier Harris Papers, 1980s-2000s

This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the Duplication Policy section for more information.

Expand/collapse Collection Overview

Size	7.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1000 items)
Abstract	Literary scholar and critic and African American intellectual Trudier Harris is best known for her scholarship on major African American literary figures including Toni Morrison and James Baldwin and for her studies of southern African American identity and experience. Annotated drafts of her major published works including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (1982), Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison (1993), Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature (2001), Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (2003), and The Scary Mason-Dixon Line : African American writers and the South (2009), comprise the bulk of the collection. Other materials are editorial files for the Dictionary of Literary Biography series on Black authors, committee files for the Black Faculty-Staff Caucus and the Black Cultural Center planning group, email correspondence with her "Dreamers" cohort of students, and other correspondence, clippings, printed items, notes, lectures, photographs, and event posters pertaining to her publications, her work as distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and scholarly and literary conferences, particularly "Rescuing the Past...Securing the Future: Black Scholars and Scholarship" and the George Moses Horton Society.
Creator	Harris, Trudier.
Curatorial Unit	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Language	English

Expand/collapse Information For Users

Restrictions to Access: No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use: No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice: Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation: [Identification of item], in the Trudier Harris Papers #5565, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information: Received in July 2013 (Acc. 101814).

Sensitive Materials Statement: Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

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Encoded by: Laura Smith

Processed by: Nicole Cvjetnicanin and Rebecca Stubbs, May 2019; Dan Hockstein and Nancy Kaiser, May 2022.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine ethnic identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual’s preference for ethnicity to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@email.unc.edu.

Expand/collapse Subject Headings

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

Expand/collapse Biographical Information

Literary scholar and critic and African American intellectual Trudier Harris is best known for her scholarship on major African American literary figures including Toni Morrison and James Baldwin and for her studies of southern African American identity and experience. From 1979 to 2009, Harris was the J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she taught courses in African American literature and folklore.

Expand/collapse Scope and Content

Annotated drafts of Trudier Harris's major published works, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (1982), Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison (1993), Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature (2001), Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (2003), and The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American writers and the South (2009), comprise the bulk of the collection. Other materials are editorial files for the Dictionary of Literary Biography series on Black authors, committee files for the Black Faculty-Staff Caucus and the Black Cultural Center planning group, email correspondence with her "Dreamers" cohort of students, and other correspondence, clippings, printed items, notes, lectures, photographs, and event posters pertaining to her publications, her work as distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and scholarly and literary conferences, particularly "Rescuing the Past...Securing the Future: Black Scholars and Scholarship" and the George Moses Horton Society.

Contents list

Expand/collapse Trudier Harris Papers, 1980s-2000s

1000 items

Folder 1

Black Cultural Center, 1984-1988

Contains correspondence, research, and proposals relevant to the UNC Black Cultural Center, for which Harris was on the Planning Committee.

Folder 2

Black Faculty-Staff Caucus, 1986-1988

Contains correspondence, membership directories, financial statements, research, and meeting notes related to the Black Faculty-Staff Caucus, of which Harris was a member, as well as a pamphlet created by the Caucus and intended for Black Student Movement members

Folder 3-21

Folder 3

Folder 4

Folder 5

Folder 6

Folder 7

Folder 8

Folder 9

Folder 10

Folder 11

Folder 12

Folder 13

Folder 14

Folder 15

Folder 16

Folder 17

Folder 18

Folder 19

Folder 20

Folder 21

Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) documentation, 1981-1988

Contains correspondence with and regarding Thadious M. Davis, the Djerassi Foundation artist residency, and Harris's editorial role for the DLB's Afro-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance, Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940, Afro-American writers, 1940-1955, Afro-American Poets After 1955, Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955, and Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers.

Folder 22

Correspondence on assignments

Folder 23

College Language Association (CLA), circa 1980

Contains correspondence, membership directories, financial statements, research, and meeting notes related to Harris's membership in the College Language Association.

Folder 24

Jackson Fund, circa 1992

Contains correspondence and financial statements related to the Blyden and Roberta Jackson Fellowship.

Folder 25-26

Folder 25

Folder 26

Jackson Conference, circa 1980

Contains materials related to the "Restoring the Past...Securing the Future" conference on Black scholars and scholarship, of which Harris and Thadious Davis were co-directors.

Folder 27

George Moses Horton, circa 1998-2000

Contains materials related to Harris's participation in the George Moses Horton Society, including issues of "The Horton Herald."

Photograph Album PA-5565/1

George Moses Horton, 3-5 April 1998

Photograph album documenting the premier George Moses Horton Society Poetry Conference.

Photographs taken by Felecia Piggott McMillan.

Folder 28-31

Folder 28

Folder 29

Folder 30

Folder 31

Peppers Fund Award, 1987-1988, 1999

Correspondence and donation records relating to the establishment of the Wallace Ray Peppers Award in Performance of African and African-American Literature. Peppers was a professor of speech communication at UNC Chapel Hill until his death in May 1987.

Folder 32

Ohio State University, 1994

Correspondence and publicity relating to Harris receiving a College of Humanities Alumni Award of Distinction.

Folder 33

Readers' Reports, 2008

The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South.

Folder 34-37

Folder 34

Folder 35

Folder 36

Folder 37

Black Scholars and Scholarship Conference, 1981

"Rescuing the Past…Securing the Future: Black Scholars and Scholarship Conference," was organized in honor of the retirement of Blyden Jackson, the first Black faculty member to receive the rank of full professor at UNC Chapel Hill. Materials include correspondence, a program, conference checks, and logistics planning for attendees and exhibitors.

Folder 38

Palgrave, 2001

Author contract, "Handbook for Authors."

Folder 39

Biographical material, 1979, 1985

Newspaper clipping announcing Harris's faculty appointment at UNC Chapel Hill; "Afro-American Traditions in American Literature" by Ann F. Stafford in Endeavors and "From Poverty to Ph.D.: Trudier Harris" by Tonya V. Smith.

Folder 40

Biographical material, 1986-1996

Clippings.

Folder 41

Walker Volume: G. K. Hall, 1986

Correspondence regarding Critical Essays on Alice Walker.

Folder 42

Southern Lit Lecture, 1986

"What's Southern about Southern Literature" lecture and notes.

Folder 43

Distinguished Scholar, 2004

Email correspondence, notes, essays, and other materials relating to Program in the Humanities and Human Values seminar on "African American Literature, the South, and the Revelations of Scholarship."

Folder 44

Adams Lecture, 2007

"Failed, Forgotten, Forsaken: Christianity in Contemporary African American Literature."

Folder 45

Sula lecture, 1987, 1989

Folder 46

Ohio State University Lecture: "Toni Morrison's Literary Folklore," 1988

Folder 47

Baldwin, 1982-1984

Harris's notes on essays and other writings on Baldwin.

Folder 48

Book Reviews by Harris, 1984-1985

Folder 49

The Color Purple, 1984, 1986

Essays by Harris on the novel and the movie.

Folder 50

"Gathering" (Lee Greene), 2005

Correspondence and a proposal relating to "The Gathering: A Symposium on African American Literature and Literary Scholarship," a homecoming for present and former faculty, students, and other scholars affiliated with the African American literature program at UNC Chapel Hill since 1969.

Folder 51-53

Folder 51

Folder 52

Folder 53

Bibliographic file

Index cards with bibliographic information (approcimately 100 cards).

Folder 55-56

Folder 55

Folder 56

Ritualized Violence

Notes, writings, and readings.

Folder 57

Printed material, 1979, 1998

off our backs: a women's news journal: special issue on: racism and sexism Black Scholars and Scholarship Conference program and letterhead. Clipping with announcement of the hiring of Trudier Harris. North Carolina Literary Festival insert in the Independent. Review of Toni Morrison's Paradise by Harris.

Folder 58-60

Folder 58

Folder 59

Folder 60

From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black Anerican Literature, 1982

Folder 61-64

Folder 61

Folder 62

Folder 63

Folder 64

Exorcizing Blackness, 1984

Folder 65

Morrison

Folder 66

Introduction, 1990

Chapter 1 draft.

Folder 67

The Bluest Eye, 1990

Chapter 2 draft.

Folder 68

Sula, 1990

Chapter 3 draft.

Folder 69

Song of Solomon, 1985, 1988, 1988

Chapter 4 draft.

Folder 70

Tar Baby, 1989

Folder 71

Beloved, 1987, 1989

Correspondence, corrections for Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison.

Folder 72-79

Folder 72

Folder 73

Folder 74

Folder 75

Folder 76

Folder 77

Folder 78

Folder 79

Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison, 1991

Folder 80-86

Folder 80

Folder 81

Folder 82

Folder 83

Folder 84

Folder 85

Folder 86

Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature, 2001

Various drafts, 1997, 1999

Folder 87-94

Folder 87

Folder 88

Folder 89

Folder 90

Folder 91

Folder 92

Folder 93

Folder 94

Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature, 2001

Draft, 1999; draft, 3 April 2001; page proof copy, 1 August 2001; index copy

Folder 95-104

Folder 95

Folder 96

Folder 97

Folder 98

Folder 99

Folder 100

Folder 101

Folder 102

Folder 103

Folder 104

South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature, 2002

Drafts 2001; first proof; correspondence with publisher.

Folder 105-107

Folder 105

Folder 106

Folder 107

Summer Snow: Reflections on Being Black and Southern, 2003

Draft, 2001; publicity for author events.

Folder 108-114

Folder 108

Folder 109

Folder 110

Folder 111

Folder 112

Folder 113

Folder 114