Steven Enniss, Director of the Harry Ransom Center

Curating Our Time: The Story of the Harry Ransom Center

Vast treasures lie within the walls of an unassuming building on the southwest corner of the University of Texas campus. Often unnoticed by the students who pass by it every day in their rush to class, the Harry Ransom Center has one of the most incredible collections and archives in the world.

The Ransom Center houses some 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art. Among the collections – a Gutenberg Bible (one of only 21 known to exist), Edgar Allan Poe’s writing desk, the papers of Robert De Niro, two paintings by Frida Kahlo, and original costumes from the Ballets Russes.

Come learn the early history of the Ransom Center and how it currently supports teaching and research in the humanities.

About Our Speaker

Dr. Stephen Enniss is Director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has held previous appointments at the Folger Shakespeare Library and at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. His research interests are in twentieth century poetry, and he has written on Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney, among other figures. He co-curated the award-winning Grolier Club exhibition “No Other Appetite”: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry. He is past recipient of a Leverhulme Fellowship from the University of London, and he is the author of After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon (Gill and Macmillan, 2014). He is currently at work on a collective biography of the Belfast Group poets.

Directions and Parking to UT Club