Guide to the Hazel V. Carby papers, 1972-2016

John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Box A
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148
Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Published in 2023

Collection Overview

Title:	Hazel V. Carby papers
Date range:	1972-2016
Creator:	Carby, Hazel V.
Extent:	9.75 linear feet (7 record center cartons, 2 0.25 file boxes, and 1 3-size oversize box)
Abstract:	This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of Hazel V. Carby, Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies, Yale University. Carby's foundational and extensive scholarship focuses on race, gender, class, African American Studies, and African Diaspora Studies. Materials in this collection include correspondence, administrative documents, conference files, teaching materials, lecture, essay, and book drafts, handwritten research notes, research materials, and print materials, dating 1972-2016.
Repository:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Collection number:	Ms.2022.006

Scope & content

This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of Hazel Carby, Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies, Yale University. Carby's foundational and extensive scholarship focuses on race, gender, class, African American Studies, and African Diaspora Studies. Materials in this collection include correspondence, administrative documents, conference files, teaching materials, lecture, essay, and book drafts, handwritten research notes, research materials, and print materials, dating 1972-2016. The collection is arranged into 10 series.

Series 1, PERSONAL and BIOGRAPHICAL, 1984 – 2006, includes an interview transcription, assorted materials that Hazel Carby produced and arranged in order to teach students at her son's elementary school about Black History Month, and Hazel Carby's bound doctoral thesis. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.

Series 2, CORRESPONDENCE, 1982 – 1999, includes letters, greeting cards, and related research materials and writings by Carby. Of particular interest is a small selection of the letters from Carby's intellectual collaborator, Saidiya Hartman, and from other scholars and writers. Also included are cards from friends and former students. This series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent name then by topic.

Series 3, ADMINISTRATIVE, 1979 – 2010, includes meeting documents, printed correspondence, handwritten notes, and CVs. The series holds extensive documentation of Yale University's lecture series, the "Initiative for Race, Gender, and Globalization"; including presentation introductions written by Hazel Carby and materials related to scholars such as Achille Mbembe and Tina Campt and to writers such as Caryl Phillips and Nalo Hopkinson. The series also includes printed correspondence, meeting reports, book proposals, chapter drafts, and presentation drafts related to three study groups in which Hazel Carby was involved from 1979-1980 at Birmingham University: English Studies Group, Media Group, and Race and Politics Group. This series is arranged alphabetically by institution and then by record type.

Series 4, TEACHING, 1987 – 2016, includes syllabi, annotated research materials, handwritten and typed notes, and course readings. Of particular interest are printed and handwritten lectures and lecture notes written by Hazel Carby. Also included are typed assignments by students. This series is arranged alphabetically by course title and then alphabetically by record type.

Series 5, CONFERENCES, 1991 – 2013, includes correspondence, administrative documents, conference programs, handwritten notes, and printed conference papers by Hazel Carby and others. Of particular interest is an annotated typed draft of Carby's essays titled "Imagining Black Men: the Politics of Cultural Identity" (1992) and "Issues of Race and the Assault on Diversity: The End of 'Reconstruction' and the Maintenance of the Boundaries of Segregation" (1991). Also included is a typed paper by Fred Moten titled "The New International of Rhythmic Feeling(s)" (2008) and a typed paper by Tina Campt titled "What's the Score? Gender-Diaspora-Photography" (2008). Printed conference papers that include Hazel Carby's handwritten notes on each presentation will also be of interest. This series is arranged alphabetically by conference title and then alphabetically by record type.

Series 6, WRITINGS BY CARBY, 1980 – 2008, includes articles, book chapters, papers, reviews of Hazel Carby's work, and contracts. Of particular interest are Carby's rough drafts and publication contracts. Also included is correspondence between Carby and Frederic Jameson. This series is arranged alphabetically by format and then alphabetically by title.

Series 7, WRITINGS BY OTHERS, circa 1989 – 2005, includes photocopied and printed essays, photocopied books, typed and handwritten notes, and correspondence. Of particular interest is an unpublished manuscript by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. titled "Richard Wright Memorial Lectures," as well as correspondence from Gates, Jr. to Carby. Also included is a typed essay by Rinaldo Walcott titled "Origins…Beginnings…:Transatlantic Slavery" (n.d.). This series is arranged alphabetically by author's last name then by title.

Series 8, SUBJECT FILES, ca. 1990 – 2012, includes printed essays, correspondence, clippings, handwritten notes, printed interview transcriptions. Original folder titles are written in quotations. The processor created all other folder titles. This series is arranged alphabetically by title.

Series 8, Subseries 1, PEOPLE, ca. 1990 – 2012, includes research files about people. Of particular interest is Carby's handwritten notes on Kara Walker. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by subject's last name then by record type.

Series 8, Subseries 2, PEOPLE – LOUISE THOMPSON PATTERSON, ca. 1998, 2000-2005, includes research files about Louise Thompson Patterson related to a research project on which Hazel Carby collaborated with Patterson's daughter Mary Louise Patterson. The correspondence and project report related to the project may be of particular interest. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by record type.

Series 8, Subseries 3, TOPICS, includes correspondence, annotated readings, and handwritten notes about an assortment of topics including "Black film history," "Blues women" and "Migration." Also included are several bound notebooks containing Carby's handwritten notes on a variety of subjects including Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by topic.

Series 9, PRINT MATERIAL, 1972 – 2016, includes books, journals, lecture posters, and an exhibition program. Many books included in this series were published by small, radical presses such as The Third World's Artist Collective, English Centre, Reality Press, the Centerprise Publishing Project, and the Black Ink Collective. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type and then alphabetically by title.

Series 10, RESTRICTED, 2002 – 2015, includes tenure dossiers for active professors, materials related to the 20th Century African American History Search Committee at Yale University (2003-2004), and materials related to faculty diversity at Yale University (2015). This series is arranged alphabetically by record type. The series is closed until January 1, 2032, after which date this series will open without restrictions.

Access Points

Subject Names

• Patterson, Louise Thompson, 1901-1999

Subject Organizations

• Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
• Feminist Theory Archive.
• Black Feminist Theory Project (Pembroke Center).

Subject Topics

• African American feminists
• African-American studies
• African American women Intellectual life
• African American women in literature
• African American women Music History and criticism
• African diaspora
• American fiction 20th century History and criticism
• Blues (Music)
• Feminist theory

Arrangement

This collection is arranged into 10 series.

Biographical/Historical Note

Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University. A pioneering critic in the field of Black feminist studies focusing on race, gender, class, and diaspora, Carby has published extensive scholarship including five books: Multicultural Fictions (1980), Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (1987), Race Men: The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures (1998), Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America (1999), and Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands (2019).

Born in Okehampton, Devon, Great Britain to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Hazel Carby grew up with her parents Carl Colin Carby and Iris Muriel Carby in South London. She trained as a ballerina before pivoting to the study of literature. In 1970, she earned her Bachelor's degree in English and History at Portsmouth Polytechnic University (now University of Portsmouth). After supplementing that degree with a Professional Graduate Certificate in Education from London University's Institute of Education (1972), Carby taught secondary school in Newham from 1972-1979; a time when then-Secretary of Education Margaret Thatcher was beginning to dismantle social service policies in which Carby was invested. She moved on to pursue a Master's degree and then a PhD at the University of Birmingham, where she studied under the mentorship of foundational Black Marxist cultural theorist Stuart Hall in the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. During this time, Carby co-edited The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain and produced a groundbreaking dissertation called "Uplifting As They Write: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist" (1984), which would later become Reconstructing Womanhood.

Carby taught for the majority of her academic career at Yale University, beginning in 1981-1982 and then spanning from 1989 until her retirement in 2019. In 1982 she married Cultural Studies scholar and fellow Yale University Professor Michael Denning. They have one child: the anthropologist Nicholas Carby-Denning. From 1982-1989 Carby taught English at Wesleyan University.

Across her essential scholarship, Carby engages deeply with translatlantic questions of and historical materialist approaches to race, gender, sexuality, class, migration, empire, inheritance, and the narrative production of history. Her papers currently focus on her extensive academic career, with particular emphasis on her commitment to teaching and student mentorship, her participation in various councils and committees for Yale University's American Studies and African American Studies departments, her time directing Yale's Initiative for Race, Gender, and Globalization, her extensive research, and her participation in various conference and publication projects.

Access & Use

Access to the collection:	There are no restrictions on access, except for Series 10, RESTRICTED, is closed until January 1, 2032. The collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Use of the materials:	All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the John Hay Library are requested to complete a Notice of Intent to Publish, available on the John Hay Library website or by request, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Preferred citation:	Hazel V. Carby papers, MS.2022.006, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
Contact information:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts Box A Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148 Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Administrative Information

ABOUT THE COLLECTION
Acquisition:	Gift of Hazel Carby beginning in 2020.
ABOUT THE FINDING AID
Author:	Finding aid prepared by Sophie Abramowitz, on behalf of the Pembroke Center for the Teaching and Research on Women and the Brown University Library.
Encoding:	This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-02-22.
Descriptive rules:	Finding aid based on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)
Sponsor:	Curatorial work and processing provided by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women on behalf of the Feminist Theory Archive, Brown University Library.

Additional Information

Inventory

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