Lost & Found is excited to announce the first annual Archival Research Grant for Community College Faculty is awarded to Professor Sara Rutkowski of Kingsborough Community College. Her project unearths archival materials from the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), housed at both the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. Her findings reveal the influence of this Depression-era program on a new generation of postwar writers. Among the most exciting materials are children’s rhymes that Ralph Ellison collected in Harlem while working for the FWP in the late 1930s. Charming and irreverent, the rhymes have an improvisational quality that captures the idiom of 1930s Harlem, offering readers an exceptional glimpse into American history through children’s eyes.
In 2017, Lost & Found inaugurated an annual Archival Research Grant for CUNY Community College Faculty to expand support for CUNY scholars working across all 5 boroughs. Each year, Lost & Found will offer a grant enabling the development of one exemplary project highlighting works and figures that deepen our understanding of New American Poetry and its evolving literary and cultural influence. This grant helps Lost & Found to connect a wide range of intergenerational writers, readers, students, and educators through archival research; to develop our innovativeeditorial model that centers community, support, and collaboration; and to circulate previously unknown works by important -often under-represented- 20th century writers through our publication series.
