ABSTRACT
Vera M. Kutzinski’s essay “The Langston Hughes Archive: Perspectives on Future Research” explores challenges and opportunities regarding future scholarship on Langston Hughes. Kutzinski argues that, despite significant scholarship devoted to Langston Hughes, there are many critical problems that need to be addressed. Kutzinski provides a broad overview of Hughes scholarship, including recent trends and developments as well as copyright issues that pose difficult challenges for scholars, especially writers interested in Hughes’s poetry. Kutzinski pays careful attention, though, to opportunities in the Langston Hughes Papers (LHP) at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Using her own experience as a concrete example, Kutzinski demonstrates how examining the LHP can lead to serendipitous interests and insights. In addition, she identifies various miscues, opportunities, and reasons for studying translations that Hughes published and translations others did of his writings.
