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Alison Fraser

Associate Curator, Poetry Collection and Coordinator, Rare & Special Books Collection

Pronouns: she/hers

420 Capen Hall, North Campus
Buffalo, NY 14260

  • Ph: 716-645-1374
  • Fax: 716-645-3714
awfraser@buffalo.edu

Office Hours

Office hours by appointment.

Education and Training

  • PhD, English, University at Buffalo, 2017
  • MA, English, University of Maine, 2010
  • BA, English, Hollins University (Roanoke, VA), 2008. Phi Beta Kappa

Awards and Honors

  • Senior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, 2023
  • Junior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, 2020-2022
  • Malkin New Scholar, Bibliographical Society of America, 2020
  • Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2016-2017

 

Publications

Books

  • Nice: Collected Poems by David Melnick. Co-edited with Benjamin Friedlander, Jeffrey Jullich, and Ron Silliman. Brooklyn, NY: Nightboat Books, 2023.
  • The Collages of Helen Adam. Ed. Fort Collins, CO and Victoria, TX: Further Other Book Works/Cuneiform Press, 2017.

Articles

  • "Creating the Twentieth-Century Literary Archives: A Short History of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo." Information & Culture 55.3 (Fall 2020): 252-270.
  • "Mass Print, Clipping Bureaus, and the Pre-Digital Database: Reexamining Marianne Moore's Collage Poetics through the Archives." Journal of Modern Literature 43.1 (Fall 2019): 19-33.
  • "Teaching Creative Writing in Special Collections." RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage 20.2 (Fall 2019): 70-82.
  • "Diasporic Object Lessons: Material Identity and the Korean Diaspora in the Work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha." Asian Diasporas. Spec. issue of WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 47.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2019): 31-47. 

Research

My research interests include twentieth-century Anglophone poetics, historical bibliography, material culture, print ephemera, feminist theory, critical archival studies, and special collections pedagogy.

Professional Memberships

  • Rare Books & Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of ACRL
  • Libraries and Research Forum Executive Committee, Modern Language Association
    • Secretary, 2024-2025

Presentations

Selected presentations from 2018 to present:

  • "Occulted Bibliography: Queer Book Objects in the San Francisco Renaissance," Queer Bibliography Conference, CalRBS, University of California, Los Angeles, July 2024
  • “Beyond Manuscripts: Teaching with Special Formats in Special Collections,” lightning talk panel, Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Annual Conference, June 2021.
  • "Public Readership and the Private Press: An Archival Recovery of Erica Marx’s The Hand & Flower Press," 20th- and 21st-Century British and Anglophone Forum roundtable, Annual Convention of the Modern Language Assocation, Jan. 2021
  • “Homemade Books in Twentieth-Century Poetics: A Feminist Bibliography,” Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America, Jan. 2020. Invited as a BSA New Scholar
  • “Poetic Manifestations: Witchcraft and Magic in the Work of Helen Adam,” Occult Humanities Conference, New York University, Oct. 2019. Invited
  • “Women Who Live to Destroy: Helen Adam’s Witchy Poetics,” Rochester Institute of Technology, Sept. 2019. Invited
  • “Ephemeral Materials and Invisible Women: Labor and Language in the Helen Adam Collection,” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing Annual Conference, July 2019
  • “Homemade Books: Ephemeral Book Objects in Twentieth-Century Book History,” Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association, Jan. 2019
  • “From Wastebasket to Library: Creating the Twentieth-Century Literary Archive,” The Past, Present, and Future of Libraries Conference, American Philosophical Society, Sept. 2018