Zimring awarded support for manuscript project
The American Philosophical Society has awarded Professor of English Rishona Zimring a $6,000 grant for her current project, Olive and Al: A Story of Partnership in Life, Law, and Letters. Olive and Al will interest general audiences and contribute to scholarship in law, women’s history, literary studies, and American intellectual and social history. As Dr. Zimring shared, “This dual biography recounts the untold story of two remarkable women. Olive Rabe (1887-1968) was a pioneering lawyer. Her domestic and creative partner, Aileen (Al) Fisher (1906-2002) was a poet, children’s book author, and avid naturalist. Their intimate world was also a public world which brought them into contact with many of the shaping forces of 20thcentury American history such as feminism, legal battles over free speech and freedom of conscience, immigration, pacifism, the foundation of the United Nations, and ecology.” The Franklin grant program is particularly designed to support the cost of travel to libraries and archives for research; Dr. Zimring will use her grant to spend three weeks conducting archival research at the University of Colorado, Boulder and in the De Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, during her 2023-2024 sabbatical. These two collections have papers that will help Dr. Zimring complete two chapters of her book manuscript, which she intends to research and draft during her sabbatical year.
April 2023
