Samantha Pinto received a research fellowship to work in the Transcription Centre collection.

Georgetown University Assistant Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies Samantha Pinto is a fellow in the African and American Diaspora Studies Department at The University of Texas at Austin for the 2011–2012 year. She writes about her research in the Transcription Centre, an organization founded for African Literature and Culture based in London during the 1960s.

Pinto’s article explains the historical context of the Transcription Centre and the contemporary voices of the time. Her discoveries stem from her thorough examination of the Centre’s radio program “Africa Abroad.”

The Ransom Center annually awards more than 50 fellowships to support scholarly research projects that require on-site use of its collections.

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Cover of Yvonne Vera’s ‘The Stone Virgins’

Even though HIV/AIDS has been influencing American cultural production since the 1980s, only in the last ten years or so has the Ransom Center begun to acquire collections with materials documenting the effects of the pandemic.

One recent acquisition that highlights the consequences of the disease on African literature is the Charles R. Larson collection of African and African-American literature. Larson is a professor of literature at American University, as well as a writer and editor. His papers include correspondence and manuscripts by Yvonne Vera (1964–2005), the prolific Zimbabwean novelist and short story writer who died of AIDS in 2005.

In 1987, Vera moved to Toronto, where she lived with her husband and earned her…

Charles R. Larson. Photo by Roberta Rubenstein.

Tonight, Charles R. Larson of American University speaks about his collection of African, African American, and Native American literature, acquired by the Harry Ransom Center in 2009. Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin emeritus professor of English, hosts the conversation, which will be webcast live. Here Larson shares how he became interested in African literature and began collecting.

This collection of books and manuscripts would not exist if I had not gone to Nigeria in 1962 as a Peace Corps volunteer. Prior to my departure, I had earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in American literature and written my thesis on William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. I fully intended to return to the United States and…