EVENT: The Harry Ransom Center hosts public programs.
WHEN: Various dates throughout March.
WHERE: Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 21st and Guadalupe streets; Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall at The University of Texas at Austin, 21st and Whitis streets; and Central Market Cooking School, 4001 North Lamar Blvd.
BACKGROUND: Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Please be aware that the Ransom Center’s Charles Nelson Prothro Theater has limited seating. Line forms upon arrival of the first person, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.
Poetry on the Plaza: “Culture Unbound”
Wednesday, March 2, noon
Held in conjunction with the exhibition “Culture Unbound: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century,” this event showcases selected works featured in the exhibition. Readers include Ransom Center Director Thomas F. Staley, Assistant Director for Acquisitions and Administration and “Culture Unbound” curator Megan Barnard, visiting English Professor and former Ransom Center Fellow Vanessa Guignery and Associate Professor of English Michael Adams. Refreshments will be served.
John Lahr presents “Tennessee Williams and the Out-Crying Heart”
Thursday, March 3, 7 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall
The University Co-op presents the Harry Ransom Lectures event “Tennessee Williams and the Out-Crying Heart” with John Lahr, senior drama critic of The New Yorker. Lahr will discuss the origins of Tennessee Williams’ dramatic voice and how it changed over the decades.
Curator’s Tour: “Becoming Tennessee Williams”
Thursday, March 24, 7 p.m.
Charlotte Canning, exhibition curator and professor of theatre and dance at The University of Texas at Austin, leads a gallery tour of “Becoming Tennessee Williams.” With his plays “The Glass Menagerie” (1945) and “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947), the American playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) reinvented the theater. Drawing on the Ransom Center’s extensive collection of Williams manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and artwork, this centenary exhibition explores the idea, act and process of artistic creation, illuminating how Thomas Lanier Williams became Tennessee Williams.
Tennessee Williams Cooking Class
Friday, March 25, 6:30 p.m., Central Market Cooking School, 4001 North Lamar Blvd.
Celebrate Tennessee Williams’ birthday with the Ransom Center and the Central Market Cooking School. Enjoy CM Cooking School chef Louis Ortiz’s menu of Southern comfort dishes, inspired by Williams’s life and works. The menu includes chicken and andouille jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, blackened redfish and bread pudding with bourbon sauce. The cost of the class is $50. Ransom Center members receive a $10 discount; members, please call 512-232-3669 for the discount code. We recommend that you register early. The class size is limited. Pre-payment and registration required at www.centralmarket.com.
Gallery tours of “Becoming Tennessee Williams”
Saturday, March 26, noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Commemorate Tennessee Williams’s birthday with gallery tours of “Becoming Tennessee Williams.”
“Humanists with Dirty Fingers: Correctors in the Renaissance Printing House “
Thursday, March 31, 7 p.m.
For the 2011 Pforzheimer Lecture, Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, presents “Humanists with Dirty Fingers: Correctors in the Renaissance Printing House.” Grafton explores the largely forgotten world of Renaissance correctors, the print professionals who not only corrected proofs, as their title suggests, but readied copy for the press, drew up prefaces and tables of contents, compiled indexes and wrote blurbs. Surviving sources, which range from the ledgers that record their salaries to corrected proofs that reveal their practices, make it possible to show that correctors, though underpaid and often badly treated, played several vital roles in the printing shop. The modern editor, the modern desk editor and the modern literary agent trace their professional ancestry back to these poor devils of literature.
High-resolution press images are available for all events.
