August Wilson - English: 76-207 - Special Topics in Literature & Culture - CMU LibGuides at Carnegie Mellon University

African Diaspora Resources

Text Databases

African Diaspora: 1860-Present This link opens in a new window
"The collection includes 70,000 pages of never-before digitized primary documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera from the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France. On completion, The African Diaspora, 1860-Present will include 100,000 pages of international primary and secondary source documents, and 50 hours of video, curated for the Black Studies, African American History, and World History scholar." - web site. Database Guide

New York Times 1619 Project
The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.
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Create an account to read more about The 1619 Project.

Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 This link opens in a new window
Diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
Documenting White Supremacy and Its Opponents in the 1920s This link opens in a new window
This primary source collection of 1920s newspapers features significant publications of the Ku Klux Klan along with the Catholic, Jewish, and African-American newspapers opposing the Klan and white nationalism in general. For CMU users, the corpus is fully downloadable for text- and datamining purposes. Contact a CMU librarian to access the corpus in this way.
Black Drama: Third Edition This link opens in a new window
Full text plays and supporting material (3rd edition)

Video Streaming Databases;

HistoryMakers This link opens in a new window
Largest African American oral video history archive in the world. The site works best in modern (2020 or newer) browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox. It will not work in Internet Explorer. To access, choose "Colleges, Universities, and Libraries: Access Through Your Institution" and search for Carnegie Mellon to get to the login box.
Revolution and Protest Online This link opens in a new window
Revolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. Organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, this collection includes at completion 175 hours of video, 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches), and more than 1,000 images. Database Guide
Sixties Video Titles This link opens in a new window
Fifty hours of primary footage and secondary documentaries that explore the key events of the sixties and early seventies, including the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement and the sexual revolution. It features interviews with major players of the decade, including political leaders John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Richard Nixon, and revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and Elaine Brown.

Other Relevant Resources

Text Databases

20th Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window
Full text plays by major and emerging playwrights.
Gale Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Articles in academic journals from all disciplines. Database Guide.
Alexander Street Drama This link opens in a new window
A package that includes North American Theatre Online along with all the content in the following full-text play collections: Black Drama, Twentieth Century North American Drama, Asian American Drama, North American Women's Drama, Latino Drama. Everything is cross-searchable through the unified North American Theatre Online interface, with the results seamlessly integrated into one search result.
Contemporary World Drama This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.
Drama Online This link opens in a new window
Texts of over 1,200 plays from all periods and genres, with some audio and video productions, and works of context and criticism. Plays can be located by genre, period, theme, setting, cast size, roles, and more. Includes access to expanded collections: LA Theatre Works, Nick Hern Books, and Globe on Screen.
Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Cross search Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography for biographical and critical information on authors and their works.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized books, journals, and government documents from all countries and time periods.
Text-mine (full text search) over 17 million digitized works and create customized collections. HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries. Offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Articles in important academic journals from all disciplines (latest few years not available); also eBooks from leading academic publishers, as well as some images.
Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive resource for research on literary topics, authors, and their works, covering all genres and disciplines, all time periods, and all regions of the world.
National New Play Exchange This link opens in a new window
The New Play Exchange (NPX) is a script discovery database formed by the NNPN alliance of non-profit theaters “dedicated to the development, production, and continued life of new plays.”

Video Streaming Databases

Academic Video Online (Avon) This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online is the most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. Database Guide. Titles are also available in the Alexander Street Academic Video Online platform.
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
Streaming video of definitive theatre performances and documentaries.
World Newsreels Online: 1929-1966 This link opens in a new window
A streaming video product which captures full runs of many of the key international newsreels produced during the early twentieth century. Newsreels are in English, French and Japanese.

Notably Worthy Resources

Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
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Be sure to create a free account for optimum use. You can save your borrowed books to a "shelf"
Open Library
Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published
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Be sure to create a free account for optimum use. You can save your borrowed books to a "shelf"

August Wilson's Plays

The August Wilson Century Cycle Compendium is a monolog collection from all of his plays complement of the California Educational Theater Association.

The following 10 August Wilson Plays are available from Open Library*. You can also find 7 of the plays listed below in Alexander Street Press (a subscription database). The list below is mostly from the latter. Exceptions are indicated in parenthesis.

NOTE: Remember that, for the subscription database sources, you may need to authenticate using your Andrew ID

* The Open Library books are also available in audio (Automated)

Fences
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1983) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1985), 104 page(s)
Gem of the Ocean (from Open Library)
2008, Theatre Communications Group, Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
Instructions:
You need to first create an account with open library (it's free). Once you do, you are able to borrow the book for 14 days.
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Click here to view the borrowing FAQ
Jitney
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1982) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 2001), 87 page(s)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1984) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1988), 49 page(s)
King Hedley II (from Open Library)
2008, Theatre Communications Group, Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
Instructions:
You need to first create an account with open library (it's free). Once you do, you are able to borrow the book for 14 days.
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Click here to view the borrowing FAQ
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1983) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1984), 64 page(s)
The Piano Lesson
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1987) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1993), 110 page(s)
Seven Guitars
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1995) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1996), 108 page(s)
Two Trains Running
written by August Wilson, 1945-2005 (1990) (Alexander Street Press, originally published 1992), 112 page(s)

Films and Documentaries

American masters (WQED). Season 29, Episode 2, August Wilson : the ground on which I stand
Explore the life and legacy of playwright August Wilson (1945-2005), the man some call America's Shakespeare, from his roots as an activist and poet to his indelible mark on Broadway. Film and theater luminaries including Viola Davis, Charles Dutton, Laurence Fishburne, James Earl Jones, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Phylicia Rashad share their stories of the career- and life-changing experience of bringing Wilson's rich theatrical voice to the stage. With unprecedented access to Wilson's theatrical archives, rarely seen interviews and new dramatic readings, filmmaker Sam Pollard (Slavery by Another Name) brings to life Wilson's seminal 10-play cycle chronicling each decade of the 20th-century African-American experience, including the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning Fences and Pulitzer-winning The Piano Lesson. Family, friends, colleagues, and scholars trace Wilson's influences, creative evolution, triumphs, struggles, and quest for cultural determinism before his untimely death from liver...
Duration: 86 minutes

The Piano Lesson (a hallmark film)

1995 ‧ 1h 39m (read the IMDB description)

Fences [2016]

Director: Denzel Washington

Writers: August Wilson,

Stars: Denzel Washington Viola Davis Stephen McKinley Henderson Jovan Adepo Russell Hornsby Mykelti Williamson Saniyya Sidney

Plot: Some people build fences to keep people out - and other people build fences to keep people in. Academy Award winner® Denzel Washington and Academy Award nominee® Viola Davis deliver the year's most powerful performances in the film adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fences. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, the film takes a passionate look at former Negro-league baseball player Troy Maxson (Washington) as he fights to provide for those he loves in a world that threatens to push him down. Washington's directorial triumph pulses with the universal truths of love, forgiveness, and happiness despite what lies beyond your own fence.

Places to rent the movie:

Amazon Prime [$3.99]
YouTube [$3.99]

Harriet [2019]

Director: Kasi Lemmons

Writers: Gregory Allen Howard, Kasi Lemmons,

Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn

Plot: The extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes [read more on IMDB]

Places to rent the movie:

Amazon Prime [$5.99]
YouTube [$5.99]

Need additional help?

Please feel free to contact me with any comments or suggestions.

English: 76-207 - Special Topics in Literature & Culture: August Wilson

In His Own Words: August Wilson Primary Sources