Priority Subject Areas Not Supported by Centers

• American Literature
• Gay and Lesbian Studies
• History of Economic Thought
• Religion in the U.S. and Britain
• Southern U.S. History and Culture

Other subject areas are actively collected and vital to the Library's collection development program, though at this time they are not the focus of separate research centers. These are:

American Literature

Existing Collection Strengths: 19th to early 20th-century authors such as Walt Whitman (manuscripts and early editions), Paul Hamilton Hayne (papers and library), Thomas Nelson Page (papers), William Dean Howells and William Cullen Bryant (books), and printed works of 19th-century American humor; personal papers and printed works of contemporary authors such as Kathy Acker, James Applewhite, Richard Bausch, Sallie Bingham, Fred Chappell, George Garrett, Jim Grimsley, Josephine Humphreys, Gwendolyn Parker, Peggy Payne, Joe Ashby Porter, Padgett Powell, Reynolds Price, Alix Kates Shulman, William Styron, and Anne Tyler, as well as important archival material for Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers; records of the Harriet Wasserman Literary Agency, with extensive materials on Saul Bellow, Alice McDermott, Reynolds Price, and others; and works produced by Southern small literary presses from 1945, intensively from 1992, and the records of a number of presses.

Current Collecting Focuses: Personal papers and printed works of authors noted above and of other novelists and poets of national or international importance, especially from the American South; papers and printed works of authors writing from a bi-cultural perspective; papers and records of literary editors and agents; papers and products of small literary presses in the South; and works that relate to other collecting areas, such as women's studies and African-American studies

More on American Literature.

Gay and Lesbian Studies

Existing Collection Strengths: Records and publications of Southern gay and lesbian organizations, such as the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA); the personal papers and printed works of gay and lesbian writers, especially Southern authors; runs and records of gay and lesbian newspapers and journals; 1950s-1960s gay and lesbian pulp fiction; various 19th and early 20th-century sources documenting homosexual issues.

Current Collecting Focuses: Materials noted above; materials falling under other collecting focuses, such as religion or Southern politics, that touch on homosexual issues.

More on Gay and Lesbian Studies.

History of Economic Thought

Existing Collection Strengths: Personal papers of internationally important economists such as Kenneth Arrow, Carl Menger, and Oskar Morgenstern.

Current Collecting Focuses: Personal papers of internationally important economists.

More on the History of Economic Thought.

Religion in the U.S. and Britain

Existing Collection Strengths: American and British Methodism, featuring the Frank Baker Collection of Wesleyana and British Methodism; English Anglican and American Episcopal materials; manuscripts and published works dealing with religion from the Southern U.S.; hymnody; Biblical editions from all eras and varied languages.

Current Collecting Focuses: American and British Methodist materials (including Wesleyana and the papers of leaders and theologians); Southern U.S. religious materials; unpublished materials on religion and gender (especially controversies involving feminist and women's issues and matters involving sexuality).

More on Religion in the U.S. and Britain.

Southern U.S. History and Culture (exclusive of overlapping categories above)

Existing Collection Strengths: records of families and plantations; Confederate military and other Civil War materials; 19th-century imprints (especially concerning slavery and race issues); broadsides; maps; newspapers; trade catalogs; political life; industry; sheet music, tobacco; local Durham materials.

Current Collecting Focuses: Categories listed above; materials concerning race relations; social change and reform; substantive papers of ordinary Southerners (especially prior to World War II).

More on Southern U.S. History and Culture.