Interests

I primarily study the literary archive placement choices of Anglophone writers utilizing mixed methods.

Open Data

I’m a proponent of open data. All my data sets are freely available. If you have questions , don’t hesitate to email me at amyhildrethchen [at] gmail.com.

Current Projects

I presented on American Indian and Asian American literary archive placement at SHARP 2024 at the University of Reading, UK. Here are my slides and data set. This content will eventually be turned into an article.

Publications

Books

1. 1,000+ Tips for Life Inside and Outside the Academy. Springer, 2022

2. Placing Papers: The American Literary Archive Market. University of Massachusetts Press, 2020

   Book Talks: American Antiquarian Society, Bibliographical Society of America, University of Southern California Kenneth Karmiole Lecture in Archival Studies

3. Miracle and Mystery: A Guide to the Wade Hall Library. University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections, 2015

Articles

1. Placing Papers Update: The Black and Latino Experience in the Literary Archives Market. Rare Books and Manuscripts 24.1 (2023): 52-70 [Data set]

2. Possessing an “Inner History”: Curators, Donors, and Affective Stewardship, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 12.3 (2016): 243-267

3. The Perils of Literary Celebrity: The Archival Stories of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes Society Journal 2.1 (2011): 30-31

Book Chapters

1. “Curators at the Top 25 ARL Institutions: Titles, Fields, and Educational Backgrounds,” Radical Visions: New Perspectives on Special Collections Curatorship, Society of American Archivists (Forthcoming 2025) [Data set]

2. “The Collections Cycle of the Modernist Archive Market,” Cultural Heritage and the Literary Archive: Objects, Institutions, and Practices Between the Analog and the Digital, Routledge (2024)

3. With Kathryn Ross. “Mentoring a Peer: A Feminist Ethic for Directing Undergraduate Humanities Research, “ Undergraduate Research and the Academic Librarian, Ed. Kaye Hensley Merinda and Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Association of College and Research Libraries (2017): 209-217

4. With Melanie Meyers, Charlotte Priddle, and Abby Saunders, “K-12 Outreach Methods,” New Directions for Special Collections: An Anthology of Practice (2016): 39-54

5. With Brooke Champagne. “‘A Certain Kind of Seduction’: Integrating Archival Research into a First-Year Writing Curriculum,” Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections, Ed. Kate Theimer, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2015): 117-129

6. With Sarah Pickle and Heather Waldroup. “Changing and Expanding Libraries: Exhibitions, Institutional Repositories, and the Future of Academia,” The Process of Discovery: The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Future of the Academy Ed. John Maclachlan, Elizabeth Waraksa, Christa Williford, Council on Library and Information Resources (2015): 62-81

Interviews

1. With Shannon K. Supple and Michelle Chesner. “Roundtable Discussion: Teaching Printed History with Codex Conquest,” Printing History 23 (2018)

2. Natural Life Archive: A Q&A with Tirtza Even, Archive Journal (2016)

GAMES

1. Codex Conquest: A Game of Book History, CC BY-SA (2017)

Reviews

1. Book Review of The Pioneer Americanists: Early Collectors, Dealers, and Bibliographers, Rare Books and Manuscripts 19.2 (2018): 154-156

2. Game Review of The Publishing Trap, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 6.1 (2018): 2267

3. Book Review of Cheap Modernism: Expanding Markets, Publishers’ Series, and the Avant-Garde, Archives and Manuscripts 45.3 (2017): 258-259

4. Book Review of Trends in Rare Books and Documents Special Collections Management, 2013 Edition, RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage 15.1 (2014): 78-81

5. Book Review of The Art and Life of Clarence Major, Callaloo 37.2 (2014): 454-456

6. Book Review of The Tower, The Traveler, and The Worm, Textual Cultures 8.1 (2013): 121-123