Title: Jorge Luis Borges Collection, compiled by Ana C. Cara, 1979, 1983-85, 1988, 1994, 2012, 2016, n.d.

ID: RG 30/461

Extent: 2.26 Linear Feet

In 1983, Professor Carlos Cortinez organized a conference at Dickinson College titled “Borges the Poet” and subsequently published the papers from the conference in a book by the same title (The University of Arkansas Press, 1986). The conference featured the writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges in person, and arranged for several other colleges to host him for speaking events that spring. After one of the campuses on the schedule had to cancel their event, Cortinez at Dickinson contacted Professor Ana Cara and proposed that Oberlin host Borges in their stead. Cara arranged for Borges to visit Oberlin accompanied by his companion and literary secretary, Maria Kodama, in May of that year. They were hosted by Esmeralda Martinez-Tapia, director of La Casa Hispanica at Oberlin. Borges’ visit and events were sponsored in part by the Moors Lecture Fund, Department of Romance Languages, English Department, Committee on Comparative Literature, Latin American Studies Committee, Third World Studies Program, and the Office of the Dean.

Two events with Borges were held at First Church in Oberlin: On May 6, “A Conversation with Borges,” and on May 7, “The Art of Translation.” Jessica Brown, a student prize winner in Comparative Literature, was invited to the latter event. Smaller events included an informal meeting with students at La Casa Hispanica, and a dinner in Borges’ honor at the Faculty Lounge in Rice Hall. Peter Tacaks of the Conservatory performed the Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 13, op. 27 no. 1 for him at the dinner.

In 2011-12, Ana Cara and student Robin Su compiled audio and video recordings, transcriptions and testimonials for a digital humanities project on Borges funded by an Andrew W. Mellon grant awarded to the Five Colleges of Ohio. The project was developed in Omeka, the open-source web publishing platform, by Robin Su and published by the Five Colleges of Ohio in 2012. The website offered three main sections: Borges’ visit to Oberlin, which included transcriptions of interviews with key faculty involved in his visit conducted by Robin Su, an interview with Borges by Ana Cara in 1984, and a section related to pedagogical use of the materials.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose works became classics of 20th-century world literature. Through his work, Latin American literature emerged from the academic realm into the realm of generally educated readers. Three years before his death, Borges was a guest of honor at select colleges in connection with a conference arranged by Dickinson College in 1983. His visit to Oberlin College that May was orchestrated by Professor Ana Cara, who had interviewed him in 1979, and met with him again in 1984 to interview him on his poetry in the milonga genre (Argentine music, poetry and dance). Shortly before his death in the Spring of 1986, Cara visited Borges in Geneva under a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, to receive his comments on translations of his milongas by her and her colleague David Young. She returned to the U.S. from Geneva on June 14, 1986, and learned that Borges had died that day.

Ana C. Cara

Ana C. Cara holds a PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the Oberlin College faculty in the Department of Romance Languages (now Hispanic Studies) in 1980 and directed and taught in several programs abroad, including Córdoba, Spain; London, England; Guadalajara, Mexico; Havana, Cuba; and Córdoba, Argentina. Her scholarship spans a range of fields, including folklore, creolization theory, Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures, tango music and dance, and Jorge Luis Borges. She has conducted fieldwork in Argentina, the Caribbean, and among Latinos in the U.S. Her co-edited volume Creolization as Cultural Creativity received international acclaim, and her articles and chapters have appeared in various books and journals, including the Journal of American Folklore and the Latin American Research Review.

Cara has conducted numerous interviews with major writers and musicians, including Jorge Luis Borges in 1979 and 1984. She coordinated his visit and events at Oberlin College in May 1983. In 2011-12 she developed the Jorge Luis Borges Collection, a digital exhibit hosted by the Five Colleges of Ohio with funds from a Mellon grant for developing digital projects with the Oberlin College Libraries. She is currently completing a book on Borges’ milonga poems. Most recently, she appeared in and helped produce the documentary In the Moment: Poetry Duels and Improvisations, directed by Steve Zeitlin and Amanda Dargan. She retired from Oberlin College in 2020. In 2023 Cara collaborated with the Oberlin College Archives to produce a new version of the digital exhibit first published in 2012. The new edition was published by the Oberlin College Libraries in 2023.

Sources

“Ana Cara”, American Folklife Society, April 21, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2022.

“Jorge Luis Borges”, Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed June 24, 2022. Last updated June 10, 2022.

Articles (2) by Ana Cara in the Jorge Luis Borges Collection (see Inventory).

Oberlin College and Conservatory, 2020 Commencement Program. Accessed June 24, 2022.

Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Languages of Materials

Administrative Information

Scope and Contents:

The Jorge Luis Borges Collection primarily comprises interviews, ephemera, clippings, photographs, and audio and video recordings documenting Borges’ visit to Oberlin College in May 1983, as well as other interviews with Borges by Ana Cara. Most of the materials were used in the Oberlin College Libraries' digital Jorge Luis Borges Collection published in 2012. The project was one of many developed at Oberlin and the other four colleges under a grant to support digital collection projects by the libraries from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, awarded in 2010. The digital project, on the Omeka open-source web publishing platform, was directed by Ana Cara and facilitated by student assistant Robin Su. The original audio cassette tapes and videotapes were digitized for the project; researchers will find the digital files on CD-ROMs and DVDs for access in the Archives reading room.

The collection is arranged in five series: Series 1. Photographs of Jorge Luis Borges at Oberlin College; Series 2. Sound and Video Recordings; Series 3. Ephemera; Series 4. Clippings, Correspondence, Poem; and Series 5. Digital Exhibit Files. The latter were printed off from the digital collection website and from a digital storage device for researcher access. Series 1 and Series 2 are restricted for uses other than access in the Archives reading room.

SERIES DESCRIPTIONS

Series 1. Photographs of Jorge Luis Borges at Oberlin College, May 6-7, 1983 (0.05 l.f.) RESTRICTED from copying

The photographs feature Borges in five locations on campus: The Oberlin Inn, First Church at Oberlin, the college’s Tappan Square, La Casa Hispanica and the Faculty Lounge in Rice Hall. The informal photographs taken at La Casa Hispanica and the Faculty Lounge by Esmeralda Martinez-Tapia are in color; the rest are in black and white. Sam Walker made the negatives, contact sheets and prints of the public discussion event at First Church at Oberlin. A walk across Tappan Square to First Church was captured by Edsel Little, a college photographer. John Harvith photographed Borges at the Oberlin Inn, and printed cropped close-ups.

Series 2. Sound and Video Recordings, 1979, 1983-85, 1994, n.d. (0.4 l.f.) CLOSED temporarily

This series comprises original cassette tapes and one VHS tape, and digitized versions of them on CD-ROMS and DVDs. Recordings original to and made by Ana Cara in Argentina regarding milongas include her interviews with Borges (in Spanish) in 1979 and 1984, and an interview by Cara and Lawrence MacDonald with composer Carlos Guastavino (in Spanish and English). The Borges public event at First Church in Oberlin in 1983 was videotaped, but the sound quality is poor.

Several audio recordings were made by Cara at locations other than Oberlin, including Allegheny Conferences in 1984 and 1985, and the Dickinson College Symposium on Borges in 1983. She also recorded a televised broadcast in Spanish as an audio recording.

Series 3. Ephemera, 1983 (1.66 l.f.)

The ephemera series comprises two copies of a poster and a brochure for the Borges events at Oberlin, and one program for his appearance in the same series at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

Series 4. Clippings, Correspondence, Poems, 1983, 2016, n.d. (0.05 l.f.)

The clippings document Borges events in 1983 at Oberlin from local publications. The limited correspondence concerns arrangements for Borges by Ana Cara. The two poems by Larry Smith and Stuart Friebert were inspired by their attendance at the Borges events in Oberlin.

Series 5. Digital Exhibit Files, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2012 (0.1 l.f.)

These files were compiled for the production of the Jorge Luis Borges Collection, a Five Colleges of Ohio digital project. The series is made up of files in two categories: print-outs from the 2012 Borges digital collection website in the event that the Omeka site no longer functions, and related documents printed off from a digital storage device. The latter includes original Word files for texts on the website and writings on Borges at Oberlin by Ana Cara. Common to both categories are testimonials on Borges at Oberlin from interviews with Oberlin faculty and a staff member conducted by Robin Su.

Download Box / Folder List (pdf)