The NEH summer institutes and seminars are designed to allow college and university teachers to focus on particular research topics, collaborate with colleagues around the country, and debate current issues in the field. Participants are chosen from a national applicant pool. The 25 seminars and institutes offered for college and university teachers this summer included literature from classical Athens to modern biography and history from the Renaissance through the civil rights movement of the 60s, as well as projects on philosophy, music, and social science. Chester is best known for his experimental novel Exquisite Corpse published in 1947. Hibbard conducted over twenty interviews with friends and relatives of Chester, including Cynthia Ozick, George Plimptor, Irene Fornes and Edward Field.
Biographers plough a lonely furrow trying to stir up the ghosts of the past.
This year here in Murfreesboro, Hibbard plans to roll up his sleeves, sit down behind his machine, crawl around in the material he has gathered, and make headway on the book, tentatively titled Sad Angel .