Harriet Gilliam (1944-1993) Papers

The Harriet Gilliam Papers fill twenty-seven boxes and span the years from 1962 through 1993. They are organized into six main categories: biographical material, correspondence, files relating to Carlo Maria Giulini, educational files, teaching and research files, and writings.

There is one folder of biographical material. The folder includes applications for grants, awards, and employment; several curriculum vitae; obituaries; and newspaper clippings.

Gilliam's correspondence files are slender in volume, less than one box.

Gilliam had a lengthy interest in the musician and conductor Carlo Maria Giulini. The files related to him include correspondence between the two (mostly from Gilliam) and the manuscript of a novel, Symphonic Metamorphoses, she wrote about him. The novel contains much of the history of her interest in Giulini as Gilliam intended to blend fiction and non-fiction.

The education section fills approximately six boxes and consists largely of undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate notes and papers. Included with Gilliam's files from graduate study is a copy of her dissertation, “The Novel as Fictive History: Conrad's Under Western Eyes.” Gilliam attended as a student or observer a variety of courses at Northwestern while she taught at the University. Materials from these courses, in addition to one folder of notes from her study at the C.G. Jung Institute, constitute her post-graduate education files.

The teaching and research files, filling approximately fourteen boxes, are divided into two main sub-sections: files on courses she taught and notes. Gilliam's teaching files relating to specific courses generally include class rosters, student grade records, notes, quiz and examination questions, and examples of student work. In addition to records from the courses Gilliam taught at Northwestern, there are six folders of material pertaining to courses she taught at the University of California, Riverside and at Yale University. A small volume of material documenting Gilliam's work as an academic advisor supplements her Northwestern teaching files. Research files on both general and specific topics are voluminous and usually undated. It is quite possible that much of the material within these files dates back Gilliam's graduate study at Yale. General notes appear first and are followed by notes arranged into folders pertaining to specific authors, works, and topics in literature. Included as well are a few files relating to Gilliam's fellowship and grant applications.

The last section, writings, includes Gilliam's published and unpublished work. The pieces which were published are distinguishable from those that were not by the inclusion of bibliographic references found in the container list which follows. Most of Gilliam's written work was never published, including two book-length works, a novel and a literary critique.