The NIU Libraries have selected Dr. Owen Clayton as the recipient of the first Pick/Laudati Rare Books and Special Collections Fellowship. This award uses funds from the Pick/Laudati library endowment for the recipient to visit the NIU Libraries for two weeks, conducting research using our Rare Books and Special Collections. Dr. Clayton is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Lincoln, UK. He specializes in recovering lost literary voices, including people experiencing homelessness and imprisonment. He has published several books, including Representing Homelessness (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency 1890–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Clayton’s project for the Pick/Laudati fellowship involves research for a book project on US prison writings, focusing primarily on Northern Illinois’s Special Collection of Civil War carceral memoirs, examining the works for common narrative devices and representational tropes to draw conclusions about the genre of Civil War carceral memoirs, including both the northern and southern prisoners. He will investigate whether prison writings prisoners on different sides of the conflict drew on similar or unique tropes to construct their narratives. Clayton’s research will also include materials related to other chapters in the book.
