Romanoff Collection in Special Research Collections:
The Romanoff family’s bequest to the University of Oklahoma includes the personal papers of Princess Janet, Prince Nikita, and Prince Theodore Romanoff. Housed in the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Special Research Collections, this archival collection contains family photographs and correspondence, records pertaining to the scholarly work of Princess Janet and Prince Nikita Romanoff, and documents reflecting the family’s charitable commitments and travels, including trips taken by Romanoff family members to the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia. Most materials in the collection date to the post-Revolutionary era and document the lives of Romanoff family members and other members of the Russian nobility in emigration. The Romanoff Collection contains a copy of the diary that Grand Duchess Kseniia Alexandrovna kept from January 1916-January 1918. It also includes a few pieces of family correspondence from the Civil War period. A number of documents and photographs were added to the Romanoff Collection by Princess Mimi Romanoff in 2021. Scholars wishing to access the Romanoff collection should contact: lib-hos@ou.edu. The finding aid for the collection can be found here: https://archives.libraries.ou.edu/repositories/8/resources/12053.
The Ballets Russes Special Collections and Archive:
The Ballets Russes Special Collections and Archive at the University of Oklahoma contains 179 linear feet of materials that document the history of the Ballets Russes companies. The three primary companies performed from 1909 to 1962. Serge Diaghilev brought together Russian artists, and dancers to perform in Paris in 1909. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Colonel de Basil and Rene Blum formed the company that became known as the Original Ballet Russe. This group incorporated dancers and artists from the Diaghilev company and a trio of young dancers discovered by George Balanchine known as the “Baby Ballerinas”. A later group, also made of up some of the dancers and artists who had worked with Diaghilev, became known as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and found its home in the United States. Donations from Ballet Russe dancers Miguel Terekhov and Yvonne Chouteau, who founded the OU School of Dance in 1961, led to the creation of the archive, which now includes materials from 87 individuals. More information on the archive and a finding aid can be found here: https://www.ou.edu/brarchive/index.html.
Pasternak letter in Special Research Collections/Western History:
The Western History Collections at University of Oklahoma Libraries house a letter that Nobel Prize-winning author Boris Pasternak wrote on May 4, 1959 to Ron Jones, at the time an OU undergraduate. Jones had written to Pasternak to inquire about the symbols in Pasternak’s novel Dr. Zhivago. The detailed response that Pasternak sent answers these questions and also offers a view of the novelist’s situation in a key and very difficult period of his career. The letter was donated to the Western History Collections by Ron Jones in 2021. For more information, please contact: westernhistorycollections@ou.edu.
World Literature Today:
Since 1927, the University of Oklahoma has been home to the literary journal World Literature Today (published as Books Abroad until 1977), which administers the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (founded in 1969) as well as the NSK Neustadt Prize in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (established in 2003). These prizes as well as the Puterbaugh literary festival, another WLT program, bring major contemporary writers to Norman regularly. Past guests have included Czeslaw Milosz, Adam Zagajewski, Dubravka Ugresic, Joseph Brodsky, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanislaw Baranczak, Andrei Voznesensky, Alisa Ganieva, and Ilya Kaminsky. World Literature Today regularly covers Russian and East European literature. Scholars of twentieth- and twenty-first century literature may find much that is of interest in the journal’s archive, which is housed in Bizzell Library’s Western History Collection and contains correspondence between the journal’s staff and notable contemporary writers and critics. For more information on this collection, see the finding aid posted here: https://lib.ou.edu/sites/default/files/WorldLiteratureToday.pdf. For more on World Literature Today’s recent issues and current programming, see: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/.
