REQUIRED READING
The readings for the NEH Summer Institute have been selected to provide participants with a broad foundation in the history, cultural impact, and continuing relevance of the Federal Writers’ Project. Required readings should be completed in advance of the institute and will serve as a shared framework for discussion throughout the program.
In addition to the required texts listed below, participants are encouraged to explore the extended recommended reading list, which includes scholarship, oral histories, archival collections, and critical studies that further expand the conversations surrounding the Federal Writers’ Project and its legacy.
To simplify navigation and access, the complete recommended reading list is available as a downloadable PDF below.
RECOMMENDED READING
Banks, Ann. First-Person America. Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
Bascom, Lionel. A Renaissance in Harlem: Lost Voices of an American Community. Bard, 1999.
Basso, Matthew, ed. Men at Work: Rediscovering Depression-era Stories from the Federal Writers’ Project. University of Utah Press, 2012.
Blassingame, John W.
“Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems.” The Slave’s Narrative, edited by C. T. David and H. L. Gates, Jr. Oxford UP,
1985, pp. 77–98.
Bold, Christine.
Writers, Plumbers and Anarchists: The WPA Writers’ Project in Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
Borchert, Scott. (2021)
Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America. Farrar, Picador Paper, 2022.
Bowen, Betsey. “Reading Slavery/Writing Freedom” Research from the Federal Writers’ Project.
Butts, J.J. Dark Mirror: African Americans and the Federal Writers’ Project. Ohio State University Press, 2021.
Butts, J.J. “New World A-Coming: African American Documentary Intertexts of the Federal Writers’ Project.” African American Review, vol. 44, no. 4, 2011, pp. 649-666.
Carter, Shannon and Deborah Mutnick. “Writing Democracy: Notes on a Federal Writers’ Project for the 21st Century.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-14.
Couch, W.T. “Preface.” These Are Our Lives. Federal Writers’ Project. Kingsport Press, 1939.
Covey, Herbert C., and Dwight Eisnach. What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods from the Slave Narratives. Greenwood, 2009.
DeMasi, Susan Rubenstein. Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force of the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project. McFarland, Inc., 2016.
Dolinar, Brian. The Negro in Illinois: the WPA Papers. University of Illinois Press, 2015.
Fox, Daniel M. “The Achievement of the Federal Writers’ Project.” American Quarterly, vol. 13. no. 1, 1961, pp. 3-19.
Griswold, Wendy.
American Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Hartman, Saidiya. (1997)
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. W.W. Norton & Co, 2022.
Hathaway, Rosemary. “Native Geography: Richard Wright’s Work for the Federal Writers’ Project in Chicago.” African American Review, vol. 42, no. 1, 2008, pp. 91-108.
Hirsch, Jerrold. “Rediscovering America: The FWP Legacy and Challenge.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, 2012, pp. 15-31.
Hirsch, Jerrold. Portrait of America: A Cultural History of the Federal Writers’ Project. The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Jones-Rodgers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. Yale University Press, 2019.
McDonogh, Gary, ed. The Florida Negro: A Federal Writers’ Project Legacy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
Mutnick, Deborah. No Race, No Country: The Poetics and Politics of Richard Wright. The University of North Carolina Press, 2025.
Mutnick, Deborah. “Toward a Twenty-First Century Federal Writers’ Project,” College English, vol. 77, no. 2, 2014, pp. 124-45.
Mutnick, Deborah. “‘Write, Persist, Struggle’: Sponsors of Writing and Workers’ Education in the 1930s.” Special Issue, “Engaged Infrastructures.” Ed. V. House, S. Meyers, and S. Carter. Community Literacy Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, 2016, pp. 10-21.
Rutkowski, Sara, ed. Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project.” University of Massachusetts Press, 2022.
Rutkowski, Sara. Literary Legacies of the Federal Writers’ Project: Voices of the Depression in the American Postwar Era. Palgrave, 2017.
Penkower, Monty Noam. The Federal Writers’ Project: A Study in Government Patronage of the Arts. University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Rawick, George. From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972.
Schulten, Susan. “How to See Colorado: The Federal Writers’ Project, American Regionalism, and the ‘Old New Western History.’” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 1, 2005, pp. 49-70.
Stewart, Catherine A. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Tidwell, John Edgar. “Recasting Negro Life History: Sterling A. Brown and the Federal Writers’ Project.” Langston Hughes Review, vol. 12, no. 2, Winter/Summer 1995, pp. 77–82.
Tidwell, John Edgar, and Mark A. Sanders, eds. Sterling A. Brown’s A Negro Looks at the South. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Tracy, Steven E., and John Edgar Tidwell, editors. After Winter: The Art and Life of Sterling A. Brown. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Wright, Richard. “The Illinois Writers’ Project Essays.” Introduction by Brian Dolinar. Southern Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 84–128.
Young, Melvina Johnson. “Exploring the WPA Narratives: Finding the Voices of Black Women and Men.” In Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, edited by S.M. James and A.P.A. Busia. Routledge, 1993, pp. 55-76.
FILMS
“The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers at Woodson Regional Library in Chicago, Illinois.” C-Span2 Book TV, Chicago, 16 Nov. 2013.
Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story. Directed by Andrea Kalin, Smithsonian Networks, 2010,
Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA. Directed by Michal Maglaras, 217 Films, 2015.
Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. Directed by Mark Jonathan Harris, HBO Video, 2004.
Federal Writers’ Project Primary Sources
American Guide Series: The WPA Federal Writers’ Project. Research Guides. Rowen University Libraries. Accessed February 20, 2020.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1940. Library of Congress Collection.
Libraries and Archives
Library of Congress
National Archives
New York City Municipal Archives
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL
Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection
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