Undated photo of Isaac Bashevis Singer, with wife Alma in the background. Unidentified photographer.

Alexandra Tali Herzog, PhD candidate in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, visited the Harry Ransom Center in June 2011 on a dissertation fellowship to investigate the Isaac Bashevis Singer collection. In her dissertation, she examines the interplay between demonology, libertinism, and religion in Singer’s work. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of both Kabbalah and gender theory, Herzog analyzes Singer’s unorthodox conception of love and sexuality, attending to his recreation of an erotic, subversive “underworld” in the Eastern Europe of his writings—one permeated with mysticism, magic, demons, and antinomianism.

With the very generous support of a dissertation fellowship, I had the incredible opportunity to spend four…

The locations of the 2010-11 fellowship recipients. ©Rand McNally Map. Click on map to enlarge.

The Ransom Center has awarded more than 60 research fellowships for 2010–11.

The fellowships support research projects in the humanities that require substantial use of the Center’s collections of manuscripts, rare books, film, photography, art and performing arts materials.

The scholars, almost half of whom will be coming from abroad, will use Ransom Center materials to support projects with such titles as “William Faulkner’s Early Career: A Chronology,” “Cogs in the Dream Machine: Jack Harris and the Role of ‘Still Men’ in Promoting Hollywood Cinema,” “Jimmy Hare and the Beginnings of Photojournalism” and “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles.”

The fellowships range from one to three months in duration, offering funds…