EAST LANSING, Mich. — Robert Coles, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his five-volume “Children of Crisis” series, has donated his literary archive to the Michigan State University Library. 

The archive consists of working drafts and manuscripts of Coles' books, articles and essays; more than 90,000 pages of correspondences spanning five decades; and the literary and business files of “DoubleTake,” an award-winning magazine of documentary photography, nonfiction, fiction and poetry.  

An eminent child psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard University, Coles was the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at the Graduate School of Education until his retirement in 2003. 

The collection found its way to MSU thanks in part to Coles’ collaborations with David Cooper, director of MSU’s Public Humanities Collaborative. The collaborative is an initiative of the MSU College of Arts and Letters that celebrates and promotes arts and humanities teaching, scholarship, and programming on campus and beyond. 

“I have known Robert Coles personally for more than 15 years and have worked with him on a number of projects related to our mutual interests,” Cooper said. “This is an extraordinary collection, and we are proud to have it here at Michigan State.” 

It was through this relationship that earlier this year Coles gave Cooper permission to compile, select and edit an edition of Coles’ selected letters as well as exclusive access to his archive. 

Peter Berg, MSU Special Collections librarian, said he hopes the collection will be an “active archive,” used by faculty, students and others for research. 

“Robert Coles’ career,” said Hiram Fitzgerald, University Distinguished Professor of psychology and associate provost of University Outreach, “crosses a range of disciplines that is staggering, and this archival collection will attract scholars from around the world.” 

Karin Wurst, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, called the acquisition “an exciting opportunity for MSU, because it fits so well with our institutional emphasis on community engagement, the public humanities and other engagement foci.” 

The author of more than 80 books, Robert Coles is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. 

While Coles may be best known for his books that explore children's moral, political and spiritual sensibilities, he is equally esteemed and recognized as an eloquent spokesperson for community service, civil rights and the public responsibilities of academics, writers, artists and intellectuals – subjects of recent books including “A Call to Service,” “The Secular Mind,” “Bruce Springsteen's America” and “Political Leadership.” 

He has written several volumes of literary criticism, numerous biographies, reviews, poetry, social commentary, children's books, and regular columns for The New Republic, The New Yorker and American Poetry Review.  

“The Robert Coles Archive extends MSU’s reputation and reach nationally and builds on the library’s cross-disciplinary holdings in complementary research areas such as popular culture and social psychology,” said Clifford Haka, director of MSU Libraries. 

The Robert Coles Archive is currently being processed and will be available to scholars and students in 12 to 18 months. 

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