Three Black Women Writers Stand Apart in Graduate Research

In these ProQuest One Literature searches, Edwidge Danticat returned 527 dissertation and thesis results, Zadie Smith 470, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 445. The next highest among the ten writers was Jacqueline Woodson, with 147.

Coates and Whitehead in Dissertation and Thesis Searches

In these ProQuest One Literature searches, Ta-Nehisi Coates returned 268 dissertation and thesis results and Colson Whitehead 255. The next highest among the ten writers was Teju Cole, with 145.

What Difference Does a Fast Pace Make?

I’ve been thinking about the pace of our Emerging Humanities Scholar Workshop, in part because my colleague Elizabeth Cali and I moved fairly quickly through three presentations.

Cali and I have met nearly every week for more than a decade to discuss some of these topics. We know where each other is going, and we move quickly to keep up with the next idea. In the workshop, we brought some of that rhythm into the room.

 
We also knew we were speaking with advanced scholars. We assumed they would recognize many of the situations we described, so we spent less time setting them up and more time naming patterns and offering examples. That let us cover a lot of ground.

 
Still, I wonder what a fast pace gives people and what it asks of them. It can leave less time to absorb an idea or form a question. But it can also bring energy to a presentation, make connections visible, and give people more ideas to carry away.

More Senior Scholars, More Conversations

What if more graduate students and junior professors had chances to hear from senior professors in African American literary studies?

On Friday, at the Emerging Humanities Scholar Workshop, Elizabeth Cali and I facilitated a series of mini-presentations for advanced graduate students, one junior professor, and one librarian. The gathering gave us a chance to compare experiences, respond to questions, and share ideas we’ve been developing through more than a decade of conversations.

I kept thinking about how much professional knowledge circulates informally. Scholars learn things about presenting their work, managing projects, and navigating institutions through conversations that many emerging scholars rarely get to hear.

What if opportunities like this took place across the country? I’d like to see more emerging scholars hear brief, candid presentations from senior scholars, with enough time afterward to ask the questions those presentations raise.

Five Novels, One Notable Year

“2016 was a big year for novels by emerging Black women novelists.” Elizabeth Cali

The year 2016 marked an unusually strong concentration of literary fiction by Black women, with five notable novels appearing from three debut novelists and two established writers.

Brit Bennett published The Mothers, Kaitlyn Greenidge published We Love You, Charlie Freeman, and Yaa Gyasi published Homegoing, marking the novel debuts of all three writers. They were joined by established writers Jacqueline Woodson and Zadie Smith, who released Another Brooklyn and Swing Time, respectively.

How did the momentum visible in 2016 develop over the next decade?

Related:

• Black Novel Findings

Black Lit Network Findings

• Books in Brief

• Black Novel Findings 

• Black Poetry Findings

• Black Lit Studies Findings

Related:

• The Black Lit Network 

Emerging Humanities Scholars Workshop

On September 18, in downtown St. Louis, my colleague Elizabeth Cali and I convened our Emerging Humanities Scholars Workshop, which involved 11 participants and featured a conversation with SIUE Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief of Staff Jessica Harris. The one-day workshop was designed to give advanced graduate students and recent graduates an inside look at academic hiring and strategies for strengthening their professional profiles. We focused especially on what we call the “Experience Problem,” the challenge scholars face when institutions expect them to demonstrate readiness before they have had sufficient opportunities to acquire substantial experience.

Throughout the day, we discussed how scholars can build experience portfolios, communicate their readiness, navigate academic hiring, and develop a broader understanding of university life. Our conversation with Harris focused on what university leaders want early-career scholars to know and the qualities and professional habits that contribute to long-term success. The workshop gave us an opportunity to make some of academia’s unwritten rules and overlooked professional opportunities more visible to emerging scholars.

Entries: 

• What Difference Does a Fast Pace Make?

• More Senior Scholars, More Conversations

Related:

• Black Lit Network

A Familiar Group of Poets

I'm co-teaching two African American literature courses for first-year collegiate Black men, with approximately 75 guys in each class. It's a lot.

As a side activity this semester, I'll spend some time with works I've returned to quite a bit over the last decade by a familiar group of poets: Amiri Baraka, Cornelius Eady, William J. Harris, Tyehimba Jess, Adrian Matejka, Kevin Young, and Reginald Harris. We'll cover many other poets, of course, but I'll develop some recurring activities around this smaller group.

I'll explore depictions of bad men in works by Eady, Jess, Matejka, and Young. I'll also get a chance to develop some activities related to Reginald Harris's poem "The Lost Boys," which I've been blogging about for more than ten years. I'll discuss the interplay between poems and sketches in William J. Harris's work. And I'll talk about Baraka being Baraka, including his poem "Dope," which I've been teaching for more than 20 years.

Related:

• A Notebook on Amiri Baraka 

• A Notebook on Corneilus Eady

• A Notebook on William J. Harris

• A Notebook on Adrian Matejka 

• A Notebook on Reginald Harris 

• A Notebook on Kevin Young