Author’s Place, Digital Space: Mapping Tennessee Williams, 1938-1948

From 1938-­1948, twentieth-­century American author Tennessee Williams traveled the country with his portable typewriter and a battered suitcase. He wrote every day, and his writings reflect the places and people he encountered. Williams’s journey from obscurity to fame as a writer during this decade parallels the nation’s path from depression to postwar prosperity. The events of this time period remain scattered across Williams’s scholarship; however, our collaborative, interdisciplinary project takes advantage of new methods of investigation and dissemination to create a multimedia map that traces the writer’s movements. We use Google Earth to create placemarks that highlight Williams’s professional and personal connections, production histories, and social and political contexts. This highly visual multi­dimensional map acts as a resource for academic and general audiences by providing access to secondary sources and to excerpts from Williams’s plays, stories, letters, and journal entries. Users will gain a greater understanding of Williams and his world by engaging with this interactive mapping project