Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick papers, 1945-2013

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Access restricted. Portions of this collection require staff screening prior to use. Series requiring screening include: Duke Office Files; Correspondence; Works by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; Writings...
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Summary

Creator:
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky and Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture
Abstract:
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009) was a literary critic, teacher, artist, and poet. She is best remembered as one of the founders of the field of queer theory. Her work on sexuality influences our continuted understanding of contemporary culture. This collection contains materials that document her scholarly career, her visual art, and her personal life. It includes drafts and copies of her published and unpublished works, her correspondence, research files, and teaching materials, as well as her visual artwork, and some documentation of her personal life, particularly her experience living with breast cancer. Acquired as part of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture.
Extent:
130.25 Linear Feet
Language:
Materials in English
Collection ID:
RL.11829

Background

Scope and content:

Materials in this collection include writings and speeches, writings of others, notebooks and calendars, research, teaching, and activism files, event and travel files, correspondence, photographs, memorabilia, legal, medical, and financial materials, books and other published material, as well as her paper, textile, clay, glass, ceramic, and other artworks.

The materials reflect the scope of Sedgwick's work, which includes queer theory, queer performativity, feminist theory, Buddhism, psychoanalysis, Proust, experimental writing, critical pedagogy, artists' books, and fabric and textile art.

The Duke office files series contains mainly subject and research files from Sedgwick's time as a professor in the Duke University Department of English (1988-1997). Also present are some general administrative and teaching files related to courses, event planning and participation, student papers, college recommendations, and committee and task force participation. Folder titles supplied by Sedgwick and are arranged in alphabetical order.

Correspondence series contains series for both personal and professional correspondence. The professional correspondence is sorted into files based on topic or correspondent.

The Works series is divided into sub-series for books, periodical and journal articles, art and art works, poetry, and the Proust project. The Books sub-series contains published books written by or contributed to by Sedgwick as well as materials related to the production of work. The Periodical and journal articles sub-series contains both final copies and drafts of various short pieces for periodicals and journals, some fragmentary and others complete. The art and art works series is further sub-divided into artists' books, ceramics, textile art objects, small art objects, works on paper, and supporting materials about the works. The poems sub-series contains titled and untitled poems as well as notes and drafts about Sedgwick's poetry. The Proust project sub-series contains books by and about Proust, Sedgwick's drafts, notes, and production files for her work on Proust.

The Writings about Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick series is divided into the following sub-series: Books and book reviews, Profiles and interviews, and News clippings. The reviews of Sedgwick's books are filed by book title. The profiles and interviews also include awards and honors. The news clippings sub-series include articles about Sedgwick from the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, Art Forum, and Speak magazine; there are also files of clippings about Sedgwick collected by year.

The Subject and research files series contains clippings, student papers, obituaries, essays, articles, publications, ephemera, and notes on a variety of topics of interest to Sedgwick as well as books that were presented to Sedgwick. Of note are the reader's reports for some of Sedgwick's writings such as Shame and Its Sisters and magazine articles.

The Events and conferences series has two sub-series. The Lectures, readings, and conferences sub-series includes notes, slides, abd texts for talks given at various institutions, as well as awards and ephemera from a variety of other events Sedgwick attended or participated in. The Memorial events and writings sub-series documents memorials, celebrations, and symposiums that honored Sedgwick after her death, in addition to correspondence, invitations, and planning files for these events. Also present are obituaries from a number of publications including the New York Times.

The Teaching materials series contains materials created in support of Sedgwick's teaching activities with topics ranging from various forms of critical theory frameworks to notes, bibliographies, and readings on particular texts. Also present are course lists, student papers, and class lists.

The Personal materials series contains multiple sub-series. Planners and calendars are contributed by both Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Hal Sedgwick. The Buddhism notebooks sub-series contain notes and materials from conferences and lectures. The Travel sub-series has a chronology of Sedgwick's travel, notebooks, and files of ephemera and other materials related to travel; these are filed by location. The Panda archive consists of artifacts and ephemera involving pandas, including textiles, jewelry, stuffed animals, and other memorabilia. The Financials series includes correspondence and communication about employment and salaries, invoices and receipts, expenses, and financial reports. The Medical information and cancer research consists of both Sedgwick's own medical records and her files reflecting her research and activism around cancer and cancer survivors. The Mixed personal materials sub-series contains ephemera and artifacts, items presented to Sedgwick, personal and educational documents, and a few photographs. Of special note are the dream and sleep journals. Hal Sedgwick's class notes and readings reflect his career as an educator and include class syllabi, readings, and files of material about Marcel Proust. The final sub-series consists of hats owned by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, some of which she created. Hats known to be created by Sedgwick or commercially produced are noted at the item level.

The Audiovisual materials series contains slides, video and audio cassettes, DVDs and CDs, many of which document Sedgwick's appearances and events, her art, celebrations of her life, and times with family and friends.

The photographs in the Photographs series are both in physical and digital form; most of them are personal pictures reflecting Sedgwick's travels, activities, and friends.

The final series contains materials donated by Adam J. Frank, an academic and former student of Kosofsky Sedgwick who co-edited Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader with her. It includes email correspondence from Sedgwick's time at Duke, readers' reports for Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, an extensive outline of Tomkins's Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, and a notebook of art made by Sedgwick.

Biographical / historical:

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009) was a literary critic, teacher, artist, and poet whose work is foundational to the field of queer theory.

Kosofsky was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1950 and was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Cornell University on a scholarship at Telluride House where she met Hal Sedgwick, whom she married in 1969. At Cornell Sedgwick studied English and graduated summa cum laude in June of 1971. She completed her Ph.D. In English at Yale in 1975, submitting a dissertation entitled The Coherence of Gothic Conventions.

She returned to Cornell on a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in English and creative writing; she taught at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York before joining the faculty at Boston University and later Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute and Amherst College. In 1988, she accepted a professorship at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and in 1992 became a distinguished professor, receiving the Newman Ivy White Chair. Graduate students whom Sedgwick influenced during her time at Duke include include Amanda Berry, Renu Bora, Tyler Curtain, Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, Adam Frank, Katie Kent, Jose Munoz, Brian Selsky, Melissa Solomon, and Sara Washburn. Her home in Durham became a focal point for local AIDS activism.

Her first book, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, was published in 1985. It was followed by Epistemology of the Closet, published in 1990 which was awarded second place ("honorable mention") for the MLA's 1990 prize for "outstanding literary or linguistic study." In 1993 she published Tendencies, whose essays helped to bring into being the field of queer theory. In 1994 she published her first book of poetry, Fat Art, Thin Art; in 1995, together with her graduate student, Adam Frank, she published Shame and its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader. In 1996, she published Gary in Your Pocket, a selection of Gary Fisher's writing that she edited and introduced after his death from AIDS (Fisher had made her his literary executor). 1997 saw the publication of Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, a collection of essays by Sedgwick and her students and colleagues. In 2000 she published A Dialogue on Love, a blend of poetry and prose, in a seventeenth-century Japanese form known as haibun, drawing on the years of psychotherapy that she had entered into with Shannon Van Wey, following her breast cancer diagnosis. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity appeared in 2003. During the last few years of her life, she worked on a series of essays and lectures revolving around Proust's A la recherche but also encompassing the work of the philosopher JL Austin, the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, the poet CP Cavafy and others, which were posthumously published as The Weather in Proust (2012).

Early in 1991, Sedgwick was diagnosed with breast cancer and had major surgery and then six months of chemotherapy. Her breast cancer returned in 1996; it had metastasized to her spinal column. In 1998, she moved to New York City to join the City University of New York and be closer to husband Hal. She deepened her study of Buddhism after the move and made her first trip to East Asia and began to travel more extensively, gathering materials for her art. In 1999 Sedgwick had the first solo exhibit of her artwork, titled "Floating Columns," at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2001 she had another solo exhibition, titled "In the Bardo," at the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York. This exhibition was also presented at the CUNY Graduate Center in the same year. A third solo exhibition, titled "Bodhisattva Fractal World," was mounted in 2002 at the Johns Hopkins University and again in 2003 at Dartmouth College. Her fourth solo exhibition was at Harvard University in 2005. It was titled "Works in Fiber, Paper, and Proust."

She died of cancer on April 12, 2009 in New York City.

Biographical information drawn from The Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation website: www.eveksedgwickfoundation.org (accessed May 1, 2020 and December 9, 2025)

Date Event
1950
Born, Dayton, Ohio
1969
Married Hal Sedgwick
1971
Graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University
1976
Completed Ph.D. in English at Yale
1978-1981
Assistant Professor, Hamilton College
1981-1984
Assistant Professor, Boston University
1984-1988
Associate Professor, Amherst College
1985
Published Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire
1988-1997
Professor, Duke University
1990
Published The Epistemology of the Closet
1991
Diagnosed with breast cancer
1993
Published Tendencies
1994
Published first poetry volume, Fat Art, Thin Art
1998-2009
Professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
1999
Published A Dialogue on Love
1999-2005
Mounted four solo visual artwork exhibits
2003
Published Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity
2009
Died
2011
The Weather in Proust published.
Acquisition information:
The Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick papers were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as a gift in 2008, 2019 and 2025.
Processing information:

Processed by Megan E. Lewis, May, 2020

Accessions described in this collection guide: 2008-0080; 2019-0181; 2025-0041.

This collection guide was created or updated with information provided by donors or external parties, and box or file lists have not been verified by Rubenstein Library staff. Errors may be present and can be reported to AskRL@duke.edu.

Some portions of this collection rehoused and inventoried by Shiloh Jines, Elizabeth Berenguer, Leah Tams, and Tracy Jackson, March 2023; and Tracy Jackson, June 2023.

Art object descriptions added by Katie Carithers and Mary Mellon, April-November 2024.

Accession 2025-0041 processed by Ren Bickel, December 2025.

Box 35 was re-labeled as Box AV01, September 2025, by Craig Breaden. Barcode was retained.

Arrangement:

The Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick papers are arranged into the following series: Duke Office Files, Correspondence, Works by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Works About Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, Subject and Research Files, Events and Conferences, Teaching Materials, Personal Materials, Audio Visual Materials, and the Adam J. Frank Addition.

The Duke Office Files materials were created during Sedgwick's time in Durham from 1988-1997, and had been held at Duke since 2008. The remainder and bulk of the collection was transferred to Duke in 2019. The order and folder titles of both accessions have largely been preserved.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Contents

Using These Materials

Using These Materials Links:

Using These Materials

Restrictions:

Access restricted. Portions of this collection require staff screening prior to use. Series requiring screening include: Duke Office Files; Correspondence; Works by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; Writings by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; Subject and Research Files; Events and Conferences; Teaching Materials; Personal Materials. Contact Research Services for more information.

Access restricted. Some materials in this collection include student records. In accordance with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 as amended, Duke University permits students to inspect their education records and limits the disclosure of personally identifiable information from education records. Contact Research Services for more information.

Access restricted. Some materials in this collection are personnel records. Records pertaining to employment where individuals are identified are closed for 70 years.

Access restricted. Personal correspondence in Box 63 is closed by donor request until 2040.

Access note. Some materials in this collection are original audiovisual items that may need to be reformatted before use. Contact Research Services for access.

Access note. Some materials in this collection are fragile and may require extra assistance from staff. Contact Research Services for more information.

Terms of access:

The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the copyright section of the Regulations and Procedures of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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