DuBose Heyward was at the forefront of Southern literature in the early twentieth century. His novel Porgy contributed to the growing conversation about African Americans in American literature and theater. George Gershwin had been actively seeking an opera libretto when Heyward’s Porgy caught his eye. Frances Sobolak is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a Linguistics major and Music minor. She joined The Gershwin Initiative team in the fall of her sophomore year through the university’s undergraduate research opportunity program. In the early twentieth century, poets in Charleston, South Carolina, pioneered a literary renaissance where a group […]

In the ragtime-infatuated New York of 1918, George and Ira Gershwin’s lives seemed to be pulling in different directions. It only took one song to prove that a partnership between the two brothers would spell success for their musical careers. —– Sarah Sisk is an undergraduate English major at U-M’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts. She is working with the Gershwin Initiative as an undergraduate research assistant in the university’s UROP program.   The First Collaboration: The Story of “The Real American Folk Song” Most histories of George and Ira Gershwin’s popular songs begin with George’s instant hit “Swanee,” […]