Writers Without Borders: Creating Global Access to the PEN International and English PEN Records
FAIN: PW-253678-17
University of Texas, Austin (Austin, TX 78712-0100)
James C. Kuhn (Project Director: July 2016 to February 2021)
The Harry Ransom Center (HRC)
at The University of Texas at Austin requests support in the amount of $245,694
from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year project to
arrange, describe, and selectively digitize the PEN Records and share them with
the global community. The story of twentieth-century political activism,
persecution, and creative expression cannot be fully understood without
exploring the rich materials in the PEN Records at the HRC. The archives of PEN
International and English PEN offer unique insight into human rights crises and
document important cultural, historical, and literary debates of the last
century. They illustrate in vivid and compelling ways why the humanities are
integral to questions of equality, social justice, and freedom of expression
and how humanists can successfully and powerfully engage in the public square.
Media Coverage
NEH Funds Digitization of PEN International Archives at UT Austin (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ed Nawotka
Publication: Publishers Weekly
Date: 3/30/2017
URL: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/73207-neh-funds-digitization-of-pen-international-archives-at-ut-austin.html
Harry Ransom Center Receives Government Grant to Digitize Archives of PEN International & English PEN (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ed Nawotka, HARRIET STAFF
Publication: Poetry Foundation "Poetry News"
Date: 3/31/2017
URL: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2017/03/harry-ransom-center-receives-government-grant-to-digitize-archives-of-pen-international-english-pen
PEN International and English PEN Archive to be Digitised by Harry Ransom Center (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ed Nawotka, HARRIET STAFF
Publication: PEN South Africa
Date: 4/19/2017
URL: http://pensouthafrica.co.za/pen-international-and-english-pen-archive-to-be-digitised-by-harry-ransom-center/
Viewing the twentieth century via the PEN archive (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Katherine Cooper
Publication: Ransom Center Magazine
Date: 1/11/2018
Abstract: Katherine Cooper is Senior Research Associate at the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia. Her fellowship at the Ransom Center was supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment. In writing about her four-month fellowship researching the PEN archives, she concludes that "Just as the Ransom Center’s English PEN and PEN International archive is becoming more accessible, researchers are beginning to work on different areas of the organization’s history held in smaller archives and also basements, cupboards, and attics all over the world. Increased work on PEN is illuminating the key role this organization has played in the lives of individual writers and the fortunes of individual nations."
URL: http://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2018/01/11/viewing-the-twentieth-century-via-the-pen-archive/
What’s in the PEN archives? (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Harry Ransom Center
Publication: Ransom Center Magazine
Date: 3/27/2017
Abstract: The article addresses the contents and research value of the PEN Archives.
URL: http://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2017/03/27/whats-in-the-pen-archives/
Research Tools: New Digital Resources Launch Online for Study of Human Rights (Global Access to the PEN International and English PEN Records) (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Gary Price
Publication: InfoDocket
Date: 11/1/2019
Abstract: Thousands of digitized records reflecting major historical events of the 20th century related to PEN International, a global writers’ organization, are available online beginning this month. A project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and completed by the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has resulted in a new online finding aid for researchers, as well as access to teaching guides and nearly 5,000 digitized records.
URL: https://www.infodocket.com/2019/11/01/research-tools-new-digital-resources-launch-online-for-study-of-human-rights-global-access-to-the-pen-international-and-english-pen-records/
The first quarter century of PEN (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Harry Ransom Center
Publication: Ransom Center Magazine
Date: 7/21/2021
Abstract: Outlined here are eight important moments that occurred during PEN’s first 25 years. All these and many others are treated in more depth and detail in the book PEN: An Illustrated History (Interlink Publishing, September 2021).
URL: https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2021/07/21/the-first-quarter-century-of-pen/
PEN at 100 (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Michael Schaub
Publication: Fine Books & Collections
Date: 11/1/2021
URL: https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/winter-2022
Consul General of Mexico Rosalba Ojeda Interviews PEN International President Jennifer Clement (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Rosalba Ojeda
Publication: Harry Ransom Center YouTube Channel
Date: 12/17/2021
Abstract: Rosalba Ojeda, Consul General of Mexico, interviews PEN International President Jennifer Clement about the archive of the organization held at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin in Texas, USA.
URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pX30M0jW60&feature=shares
Associated Products
New digital resources launch online for study of human rights (Blog Post)Title: New digital resources launch online for study of human rights
Author: Harry Ransom Center
Abstract: Thousands of digitized records reflecting major historical events of the 20th century related to PEN International, a global writers’ organization, are available online beginning this month. A project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and completed by the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has resulted in a new online finding aid for researchers, as well as access to teaching guides and nearly 5,000 digitized records.
Date: 11/01/2019
Primary URL:
https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2019/11/01/new-digital-resources-launch-online-for-study-of-human-rights/Blog Title: Ransom Center Magazine
Website: Ransom Center Magazine
PEN Teaching Guides (Course or Curricular Material)Title: PEN Teaching Guides
Author: Reid Echols
Author: Adrienne Sockwell
Author: Jennifer Follen
Author: Sarah Gutberlet
Author: Christopher Mendez
Author: Chido Muchemwa
Abstract: The PEN Teaching Guides contain materials for the use of instructors to support teaching on human rights, politics, literature, and cultural history. These materials include manuscripts, drafts, clippings, correspondence, official publications, books, posters, video recordings, and additional items from the PEN Digital Collections and related collections held at the Harry Ransom Center. These guides are designed to allow students to engage not only with evolving conversations surrounding human rights and free speech in the twentieth century, but also with landmark events and broad historical trends, from the rise of fascism in the interwar years, through the intensification of the Cold War, and into the era following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/teaching/pen/Audience: Undergraduate
PEN Digital Collections (Web Resource)Title: PEN Digital Collections
Author: Harry Ransom Center
Abstract: PEN (originally P.E.N., an acronym for Poets, Essayists, and Novelists) is an international writers' organization with member centers present in over 100 countries worldwide. Founded in London in 1921 by Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, PEN began as a simple dinner club, meant to bring writers together to socialize and share ideas. Within a few years, the organization grew to include centers throughout Europe, and by the 1930s included centers in Asia and South America. PEN remains one of the top international writers' organizations in the world and its members continue to champion the organization's ideals: celebrating literature, defending free expression, protecting writers at risk, supporting writers in exile, and promoting linguistic rights around the globe. The PEN Records, 1912-2008 (bulk 1926-1997), occupy 362 boxes (153 linear feet) documenting the history and activities of the English PEN Centre and PEN International, as well as the formation (and sometimes dissolution) of other PEN centers around the globe. The PEN Digital Collection contains 3,500 images of newsletters, minutes, reports, scrapbooks, and ephemera selected from the PEN Records. To further enhance research, the English PEN newsletters (1927-1964) and minutes (1931-1970) have undergone OCR conversion to create full-text searchable documents, enabling users to locate names, events, and topics in their original chronological contexts and use that information much like an index into the rest of the archive.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
https://cdm15878.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll97/Secondary URL:
https://cdm15878.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll97/searchPEN (Organization): An Inventory of Its Records at the Harry Ransom Center (Web Resource)Title: PEN (Organization): An Inventory of Its Records at the Harry Ransom Center
Author: Anne Kofmehl
Author: Joan Sibley
Abstract: The records of the London-based writers' organizations English PEN and PEN International, founded by Catharine Amy Dawson Scott in 1921, contain extensive correspondence with writer-members and other PEN centres around the world. Their records document campaigns, international congresses and other meetings, committees, finances, lectures and other programs, literary prizes awarded, membership, publications, and social events over several decades.
Year: 1999
Primary URL:
https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=01209