The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and Afeni Shakur-Davis, mother of the late MC Tupac Shakur, will partner with the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center to make available for scholarly research Shakur’s manuscript writings and other papers.
Tupac Shakur Collection, now housed within the Woodruff Library’s Archives & Special Collections Department, features Shakur’s handwritten lyrics and track listings, personal notes, video and film concepts, fan correspondence, promotional materials and other items providing a unique insight into his career and creative genius.
Speaking of the partnership, Afeni Shakur stated,
“The Woodruff Library Archives has done a phenomenal job archiving my son’s materials. I thank their staff for partnering with my family and the Foundation in helping to make these important documents available in a professional manner that will benefit scholars for years to come.”
Currently, Library staff are re-housing the collection’s 11 boxes of material into archival boxes and folders, and preparing a finding aid listing the categories and order of items included. A digital (online) finding aid will be prepared to further enhance scholarly access. The Tupac Shakur Collection is expected to be open for research in Fall 2010.
Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, added,
“The Woodruff Library is honored to collaborate with the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation to preserve the artistic legacy of Tupac Shakur. Mr. Shakur was a multi-dimensional artist, who helped define a musical genre, and as the academic library serving four institutions of higher learning, it is our mission, as well as a great privilege, to help promote scholarship and research of his work, and the mechanics of his creative process and the hip hop culture.”
The Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center (AUC) serves the collective research and information needs of Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College and Spelman College. The Library’s Archives & Special Collections is the repository for historical materials documenting the AUC institutions, as well as manuscript collections and organizational records, including the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection and the Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative Records.
In addition to the archival partnership with the Woodruff Library, the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation has recruited some of the nation’s top scholars to assemble the Tupac Shakur Secondary School Curriculum, a seventh-12th grade academic curriculum and a college-level reader. In this comprehensive curriculum, the poetry, music and views of Tupac Shakur are used to teach basic Hip-Hop studies units within academic disciplines such as fine arts, history and language arts.
This learning tool can be used separately or in conjunction with any state-mandated learning standards curriculum. Both the release of the secondary and college-level curriculums will coincide with the opening for research of The Tupac Shakur Collection at the Woodruff Library in Fall 2010.
