Road Show: Travel Papers in American Literature

Open weekdays to Yale students, staff, and faculty authorized to be on campus beginning September 1, 2021. Visit the Beinecke Library website for specific hours and details.
An exhibition celebrating the American love of travel and adventure in both literary works and the real-life journeys that have inspired some of our most beloved books, Road Show explores literary archives and the various ways travel is recorded, marked, and documented in the Yale Collection of American Literature. The exhibition highlights the work and voyages of writers including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Bennett, Truman Capote, Annie Dillard, and many others.

Road Show was organized by Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry in the Yale Collection of American Literature, with the assistance of student curators Raffaella Donatich ‘19; Isabelle Laurenzi, doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science; and Rachel Kaufman ‘19. It is accompanied by a companion exhibition, Imaginary Voyages, organized by Timothy Young, curator of modern books and manuscripts.