Eudora Welty's Secret Sharer: The Outside World and the Writer's Imagination

FAIN: BH-50203-07

Millsaps College (Jackson, MS 39210-0002)
Suzanne Marrs (Project Director: March 2007 to July 2009)

Two one-week workshops for 100 school teachers to study landmarks and archival collections associated with Eudora Welty in their historical context.

The two one-week "Landmarks in American History and Culture" workshops will focus on the ways that landmarks can enrich the teaching of Eudora Welty's fiction. The Eudora Welty House, a National Historic Landmark, reveals much about Welty's life- her friends, her reading interests, her passion for art- and the house is the source for many images in her work. The extensive collection of Welty manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence held at the state archives tells the story of her creative process: The revisions she undertook, the images that inspired stories, and the wide-ranging comments she made in letters to friends and colleagues are all there. The evolving nature of the world about which Welty wrote is documented at the Smith Robertson Museum, the state Agriculture and Forestry Museum, and the Medgar Evers House. The workshops will focus on the insights these locales can bring to teachers of Welty's fiction and on the insights her fiction can bring to historical studies.