Jordan Klevdal, an ECL PhD student, was recently featured in a UNC Endeavors news story. Endeavors features UNC-Chapel Hill’s researchers. The piece Beyond the Stacks focuses on research projects utilizing the libraries at UNC: “Carolina’s libraries are vital for research, fueling projects across the university from art history to health science.”
Klevdal is researching the relationship between images and the printed word: “‘I’m thinking about how readers from the 20th century got used to seeing images in the context of what they’re reading,’ she says. ‘Are they learning to read images? What is the actual interaction between the text and the image?’”
Klevdal’s work ranges from simple relationships between images and words—“like captions with photographs”—to more ambiguous pairings, such as illustrated poems. She is particularly interested in the poetry of Frank O’Hara, “a mid-20th-century writer, critic, and curator at the Museum of Modern Art who often collaborated with artists for his own work.” Jason Tomberlin, a librarian at Wilson, has helped Klevdal narrow her research on O’Hara.
Klevdal said regarding her work at Wilson: “Librarians have a wealth of knowledge and bring up things totally not on your radar. When you use search engines or finding aids, you find an answer and you’re done. Librarians not only help you find what you’re looking for, but materials associated with that topic.”
Read more here.