n e w s m a k e r s : Remarkable and Rare

by Cate House

hilip Gura, professor of American literature and culture, has made news for two reasons, recently. First, Gura won a national award for his book, America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century, which he cowrote with James Bollman, a banjo collector and music store owner in Lexington, Mass.

The book, which is the first comprehensive history of the banjo, details how a simple instrument used by slaves became an American icon. Both Gura and Bollman have received Deems Taylor Special Citations from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which presents awards annually to American authors and journalists whose books, articles, and liner notes about music are selected for their excellence. (Gura's book was featured in the Fall 1999 edition of Endeavors.)

Gura has also been in the news for finding what may be a photograph of Emily Dickinson. There is only one known photo of the American poet. The photograph, which Gura purchased through an Internet auction site, has been inspected by a forensic anthropologist who used computer analysis to compare facial features between the two photos. While Gura's photograph is of a much older woman, the images show very striking similarities.

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