Faculty

Liesl Olson is Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry. Her research interests include twentieth-century literature, modernism, theories of the archive, feminism, critical theory, dance, and the visual arts. She is author of the prize-winning book Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis (Yale U P, 2017), a history of the literary and cultural centrality of Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century; and Modernism and the Ordinary (Oxford U P, 2009), which examines a broad range of twentieth-century works that represent the habitual and unselfconscious actions of everyday life. She is curator of the Newberry exhibition Chicago Avant-Garde: Five Women Ahead of Their Time (Fall 2021), which includes an accompanying catalog. Olson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Beinecke Library. Olson completed her doctorate in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and her BA from Stanford University.

Visiting Faculty

Raquel Flores-Clemons is the University Archivist and Director of Archives, Records Management, and Special Collections at Chicago State University, where she stewards collection, preservation, and access to institutional and historical records of Illinois’ only designated 4-year Predominantly Black Institution (PBI). In this role, she also serves as Vice-Chairperson for the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC). She is also a member of the collective of Black archivists, the Blackivists. An advocate for equity and access, Raquel maintains a deep commitment to capturing historical narratives of communities of color and engages Hip Hop as a method of archival praxis. Raquel is passionate about connecting community members and organizers to valuable primary resources and intentional in ensuring that historical gaps are filled by documenting and amplifying the often underrepresented historical narratives and contributions of BIPOC communities to better support efforts to create a more equitable society. Raquel received her Master of Library and Information Science with Special Collections certification from the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also has studied at Howard University and received her Bachelors in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Kari Kraus is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her teaching and scholarship focuses on new media and the digital humanities; textual scholarship, print culture, and the history of the book; digital preservation; game studies; transmedia storytelling; and speculative design. Currently, Kraus is writing a book about how artists, designers and humanities researchers think about, model, and design possible futures. Kraus has written for the New York Times and the Huffington Post, and her work has been mentioned in the Atlantic, Baltimore Public Radio, the Huffington Post, Gamasutra, Wired, and the Long Now Foundation. 

At the Newberry

Will Hansen is Director of Reader Services and Curator of Americana, at the Newberry. He manages the Department of Reader Services, which serves researchers at the reference desks, in the reading rooms, and outside the Newberry’s walls via email and other communications; as Curator of Americana he collects current monographs, antiquarian books, and manuscript Americana for the Newberry. Mr. Hansen began his career in libraries at the Newberry in 2003. He holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From 2007 to May 2014 he was Assistant Curator of Collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and returned to the Newberry in June 2014. Mr. Hansen has published articles on Herman Melville, active learning with primary source materials, archives of “born-digital” materials, and other topics. He has curated or co-curated exhibitions on Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, the Bloomsbury Group, female writers of the Victorian era, Alexander Hamilton, and other topics.

Alison Hinderliter is Lloyd Lewis Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Archives at the Newberry. She has worked on a variety of archival projects at the library, including the Pullman Railroad Company Records, the Illinois Central Railroad Company Records, the Ann Barzel Dance Collection, Voices of the Prairie (social action-related collections), and Headlines from the Heartland (journalism-related collections). She has been an archivist in Chicago for over twenty years, working for the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Old Town School of Folk Music. She holds a BA in English from Oberlin College and an MLIS from the University of California, Berkeley.

Catherine Grandgeorge is a Manuscripts and Archives Librarian at the Newberry. She has worked recently on processing the Newberry’s Midwest Dance Collections, and crowdsourcing an archive of modern protest, including protest signs, photographs, and personal accounts. She received her BA in Women’s Studies from The College of Wooster and her MLIS from the University of Washington.

 

Analu Lopez is the Ayer Indigenous Studies Librarian at the Newberry Library. Analu is interested in underrepresented Indigenous narratives dealing with identity, language, and decolonization. She writes and creates photographic-based projects exploring these topics. A student of the Nahuatl language for over ten years, she is also interested in Indigenous language preservation efforts. She holds a Master of Library and Information Sciences with a certificate in Archives and Cultural Heritage Resources and Services from Dominican University and a Bachelor of Arts in Photography with a minor in Latin-American Studies from Columbia College Chicago.

Rose Miron is the Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library. Her work focuses on how Native peoples use tribal archives to claim authority over the creation, assembly, and use of their historical materials. Centering on the Mohican Nation of Wisconsin, she shows how Native activism through the creation of archives enables tribal members to craft their own historical narratives and to intervene in public representations of their history. She completed her PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.