- unitid
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{"value"=>"24254", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"b21474725", "type"=>"local_b"}
{"value"=>"MssCol 24254", "type"=>"local_call"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1948-2014", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1948/2014"}
{"value"=>"1967-2003", "type"=>"bulk", "normal"=>"1967/2003"}
- unittitle
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{"value"=>"Jonathan Schell papers"}
- physdesc
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{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"138 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"65 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear_feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"1,821 computer files", "unit"=>"computer_files"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"287.8 megabytes", "unit"=>"megabytes"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- repository
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{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">Manuscripts and Archives</span>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"Jonathan Schell, best known for his book, <span class=\"title\">The Fate of the Earth</span>, was a writer and educator who devoted his professional life to writing in opposition to nuclear weapons and war. His papers date from 1948 to 2014, and detail his career, education, and personal life through manuscripts, research files, notebooks, journals, and correspondence."}
- langmaterial
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{"value"=>"English"}
- origination
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{"value"=>"Schell, Jonathan, 1943-2014", "type"=>"persname", "role"=>"cre"}
- bioghist
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{"value"=>"<p>Jonathan Edward Schell (1943-2014) was a writer, educator, and proponent of anti-war and anti-nuclear causes.</p> <p>Schell was born in New York City, and raised among a family of human rights advocates by his mother, Marjorie Bertha, and his father Orville Hickok Schell, Jr., who was a lawyer, co-founder of Helsinki Watch, chair of Americas Watch, and the eventual namesake of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. Schell had two older siblings, Suzanne Schell Pearce, who was a peace activist, and Orville Hickock Schell III, who is a writer, academic, activist, and the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.</p> <p>Schell was educated at the Dalton School in New York, the Putney School in Vermont, and graduated from Harvard University in 1965 with a Bachelor's degree in history. After graduating from college, Schell spent a year studying Japanese at the International Christian University in Tokyo. On his way home from Japan at the age of twenty-four, Schell secured press credentials and travelled to Vietnam for twelve days. He was taken on a helicopter mission, where he witnessed American and South Vietnamese soldiers raiding and destroying the village of Ben Suc.</p> <p>Upon his return to the United States, Schell penned his first article for the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span>, \"The Village of Ben Suc,\" about his experience in Vietnam, which was published in June of 1967, and promptly distinguished Schell as a leading voice in the anti-war movement. He remained a staff writer with the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span> until 1987, authoring numerous long-form articles, and writing many uncredited works in the \"Notes and Comments\" section with the support of editor, William Shawn. Schell wrote on topics such as military operations in Vietnam, the consequences of nuclear war, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the Nixon administration. Many of Schell's articles were subsequently published as books, which include, <span class=\"title\">The Village of Ben Suc</span> (1967), <span class=\"title\">The Military Half</span> (1968), <span class=\"title\">The Time of Illusion</span> (1976), <span class=\"title\">The Fate of the Earth</span> (1982), <span class=\"title\">The Abolition</span> (1984), <span class=\"title\">History in Sherman Park</span> (1987), <span class=\"title\">The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War</span> (1987), and <span class=\"title\">Observing the Nixon Years</span> (1989), which is a compilation of Schell's \"Notes and Comments\" about the Vietnam War and Watergate. In 1982, <span class=\"title\">The Fate of the Earth</span> was awarded the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Critics Award, and a Pulitzer Prize.</p> <p>When the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span> decided to oust Shawn as editor in 1987, Schell opted to leave the magazine as well. Schell continued writing on war, politics, and nuclear weapons, taking a new job as current-affairs columnist at <span class=\"title\">Newsday</span> and <span class=\"title\">New York Newsday</span>, and later at <span class=\"title\">The Nation</span>, as the peace and disarmament correspondent. Schell also contributed articles to <span class=\"title\">Harper's</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Atlantic</span>, and <span class=\"title\">Foreign Affairs</span>, and published more books including, <span class=\"title\">Writing in Time</span> (1997), <span class=\"title\">The Gift of Time</span> (1998), <span class=\"title\">The Unfinished Twentieth Century</span> (2001), <span class=\"title\">The Unconquerable World</span> (2003), <span class=\"title\">A Hole in the World</span> (2004), and <span class=\"title\">The Seventh Decade</span> (2007).</p> <p>In addition to his journalistic work, Schell also taught at Princeton University, Emory University, the New School, New York University, Yale University, and Wesleyan University, where he was a Distinguished Visiting Writer from 1997 to 2002. In 2002, he was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and in 2003, he was a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Globalization. Over the years, Schell also made appearances on television and radio programs, and at numerous conferences and events to address nuclear proliferation and disarmament issues.</p> <p>Schell died of cancer in 2014, and is survived by his companion, Irena Gross, as well as his wife, Elspeth Schell, their three children, and two grandchildren.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Jonathan Schell papers date from 1948 to 2014 (bulk dates 1967-2003), and contain files from Schell's career as a journalist, author, and teacher; his research files; his education files; and personal materials including correspondence, journals, and photographs. Schell's papers chronicle his career as a writer and educator who was critical of war, nuclear proliferation, and United States foreign policy, revealing his research methods, writing process, and teaching objectives. There are also files documenting Schell's education and his personal relationships with friends and family.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Jonathan Schell papers are arranged in five series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/24254#c1442512'>Series I: Writing</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1967-2007</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Schell's Writing files hold materials from his career as a journalist and author. Files are arranged chronologically within the following categories: Journalism; Books; Speaking Engagements; Speechwriting; Unpublished Manuscripts; and Unidentified Manuscripts.</p> <p>Much of the journalism files hold records from Schell's twenty year tenure as a contributor at the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span>. This includes notes, research, drafts, manuscripts, galleys, proofs, correspondence, and press from such articles as, \"The Village of Ben Suc,\" \"Quang Ngai and Quang Tin,\" \"The Time of Illusion,\" \"The Fate of the Earth,\" \"The Abolition,\" and \"History in Sherman Park,\" as well as the numerous \"Notes and Comments\" pieces that Schell authored and edited, many of which were uncredited. The manuscripts range from early handwritten fragments to annotated typescript drafts. Later iterations of these same articles are found in the edited Proofs and Galleys. The content of Schell's writing for the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span> garnered an abundance and diversity of reaction from readers, ranging in tone from enthusiastic praise to outrage. The most divisive pieces were Schell's writings on Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal in both \"The Time of Illusion\" and the \"Notes and Comments.\"</p> <p>Files from Schell's post-<span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span> journalistic career are less thorough, and tend to contain only the final or near final versions of articles, along with small amounts of correspondence. There are unannotated electronic versions of Schell's articles for <span class=\"title\">The Nation</span>, as well as documentation from his tenure as a fellow with The Nation Institute. Schell also kept the final typed versions or photocopies of his articles for <span class=\"title\">Newsday</span> and <span class=\"title\">New York News Day</span>.</p> <p>Books files from the first two decades of Schell's writing career have contracts, administrative materials, and correspondence related to his published books, all of which first appeared as serialized pieces in the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span>. The research, notes, drafts, and manuscripts for <span class=\"title\">The Village of Ben Suc</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Military Half</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Time of Illusion</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Fate of the Earth</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Abolition</span>, and <span class=\"title\">History in Sherman Park</span> are found in the <span class=\"title\">New Yorker</span> files. Records for <span class=\"title\">The Fate of the Earth</span> also contain additional letters from readers, press reaction, reviews, and court papers related to plagiarism charges filed against Schell by the German writer, Günther Anders.</p> <p>The most well-documented books are those from later in Schell's career, particularly <span class=\"title\">The Gift of Time</span>, which contains transcripts of interviews conducted by Schell, and <span class=\"title\">The Unconquerable World</span>, which comprises years of research and numerous iterations of the manuscript. <span class=\"title\">The Unconquerable World</span> manuscripts include handwritten drafts, annotated typescripts, and electronic drafts grouped into chapters. All these versions and formats of the manuscript reveal the manner in which the book evolved over the course of a decade.</p> <p>Schell appeared at many events and gave numerous lectures in conjunction with his writing. The texts of his lectures and remarks are present in the Speaking Engagements files. These files also hold invitations, correspondence regarding event logistics, and letters thanking Schell for his participation.</p> <p>The Speechwriting files hold a small selection of documents related to speeches Schell wrote for the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Walter Mondale. This includes notebooks, drafts of speeches, and correspondence with the campaigns.</p> <p>There is a group of titled manuscript drafts from the 1960s to 1990s which were not published, and which are held in the Unpublished Manuscripts files. There is a larger group of manuscripts which were either unpublished drafts, or early indecipherable working versions of Schell's published works. These materials are filed with the Unidentified Manuscripts, and span almost the entirety of Schell's professional writing career.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/24254#c1442528'>Series II: Research</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1960s-2007</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>While Schell's writing files from Series I contain some notes and research, he also kept separate research files that were not connected to specific projects. This research material encompasses the content of Series II. Schell conducted extensive research on the topics he most often wrote about, such as nuclear proliferation and United States foreign policy, generating substantial lists of sources, research summaries, and copious notes. With the exception of some unlabeled notebooks and assorted notes, the bulk of the series is arranged alphabetically by subject matter. The subject files contain a mixture of annotated clippings, notes, and marked up essays, providing insight into the types of sources Schell utilized, issues he investigated, and his research methodology.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/24254#c1442585'>Series III: Teaching</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1987-2004</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Files pertaining to courses Schell taught at colleges and universities are held in Series III. This includes materials from his employment at Harvard University, Emory University, Princeton University, New York University, Wesleyan University, and Yale University. The Yale files are the most thorough, and contain course packets, syllabi, and lecture notes. The rest of the teaching files hold correspondence, syllabi, notes, and a small selection of anonymous student course evaluations.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/24254#c1442001'>Series IV: Education</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1948-2001</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>6.5 linear feet (11 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Records documenting Schell's education at the Dalton School, The Putney School, Harvard University, and International Christian University comprise Series IV. There are report cards, teacher feedback, and some written assignments present from The Dalton School and Putney School files. The Harvard records include correspondence, notebooks, course work, exams, commencement materials, and Schell's Diploma. The International Christian University files consist of journals and notebooks describing life in Japan, course work, sketchbooks, and resources related to Schell's studies of Japanese.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/24254#c1442594'>Series V: Personal</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1957-2014</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series V comprises files pertaining to Schell's personal life and family. The series contains a copy of Schell's birth certificate, correspondence, journals, sketchbooks, manuscripts written by friends, passports, photographs, and remembrances of friends and family.</p> <p>The Correspondence is the most abundant component of the series, and includes both an assortment of personal letters dating from the 1960s to 2000s, as well as communications which Schell organized by correspondent name. A large portion of these letters are between himself and his immediate family. There is also a sizeable group of letters from the artist, Robert Del Tredici, with original artwork and photographs enclosed.</p> <p>The Manuscripts files contain drafts of work by friends who shared their writing with Schell. These include plays and writings by Deborah Eisenberg, Tom Hayes, and Wallace Shawn. Some of the manuscripts are accompanied by letters, but they do not typically include any feedback from Schell.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Donated by Elspeth Schell, 2017.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by <span class=\"name\">Heather Lember</span> in <span class=\"date\">2017</span>.</p>"}
- date_start
-
1948
- keydate
-
1948
- date_end
-
2014
- date_inclusive_start
-
1948
- date_inclusive_end
-
2014
- date_bulk_start
-
1967
- date_bulk_end
-
2003
- extent_statement
-
65 linear feet (138 boxes); 287.8 megabytes (1,821 computer files)
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"Jonathan Schell papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library"}