First Day of Issue Ceremony for Postage Stamp Honoring Saul Bellow
Author, UChicago professor, and Nobel laureate Saul Bellow will be remembered at the unveiling of the new U.S. postage stamp.
Date: February 6, 2024
Time: 11-11:30 a.m. CST
Location: Social Science Research Building, Tea Room, Room 201, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Register
Speakers will include:
- Regina Aikens, ’98 (MBA), US Postal Service Manager Customer Relations IL 1
- Torsten Reimer, University Librarian and Dean of the University Library, The University of Chicago
- Gabriel Richardson Lear, Chair of the Committee on Social Thought, Professor of Philosophy and in the Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago
- David Wellbery, LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor of Germanic Studies, the Committee on Social Thought, and in the College, The University of Chicago
- Sean Hargadon, US Postal Service Strategic Communications
The Saul Bellow Papers at the University of Chicago Library
The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library is home to the Saul Bellow Papers, 1926-2015.
Bellow was a prolific writer and educator and the recipient of many awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the National Book Award for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known novels include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, and Ravelstein.
Through a sometimes gritty, often comic, and uniquely American lens, Bellow grappled with large philosophical and sociological themes in his work such as morality, self-actualization, and the meaning of art and culture in the 20th century. Bellow possessed a capacious ability to straddle multiple identities: Québécois, Jewish immigrant, working class Chicagoan, academic, solitary novelist, globe-trotting cultural commentator, fêted celebrity. In 1976 his talent garnered him both a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."
The Saul Bellow Papers contains personal ephemera; correspondence; materials related to the creation and publication of his writings; writings by others given to or collected by Bellow; writings about Bellow's life and work; administrative and teaching materials from the University of Chicago and Boston University; awards; photographs and audio recordings; artwork, broadsides, and posters.
All interested researchers are welcome to consult the Saul Bellow Papers. Learn more about how to make arrangements to visit Special Collections and consult collections.
