Sara Rutkowski

Drawing on a surge of new research on the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), which sent thousands of unemployed workers out to document American life during the Depression, my ACLS/Mellon Fellowship will support the development of a proposal for a first-of-its kind series of four books on the FWP. Collectively entitled “Rewriting America,” these volumes will engage interdisciplinary scholarship on specific themes—including new readings of former slave narratives, lost immigrant voices, women writers, and the practice and pedagogy of oral history—and will introduce readers to the FWP’s accomplishments while revealing their striking relevance to our time. This planned series follows my initial volume of edited essays, "Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project," that will be published in 2022 by the University of Massachusetts Press.