Despite Digital Devices Young Women Students opt for Physical Media

By Albert Smith

Of 214 FAME respondents, 40% noted that their most used format when reading books are print books. Yet 79% of these young women reported that they anticipated primarily having to read on digital devices in college (smartphone, laptop, tablet, desktop computer).

This difference was particularly interesting as these readers prefer physical books, but they are mostly anticipating completing their academic related reading on digital devices. The results suggest that despite these students opting for physical media in their reading outside of class, they are ultimately expecting to engage mostly with digital media in college.

These findings offer insight into the habits of students reading on their own against what has been mapped for them in the classroom. Begging the question: How are higher education spaces adhering to the habits of their Black young women readers?

Related: 

• Black Readers Findings

What’s so scary about Poetry?

By Kai Steward

When 214 FAME students were asked which aspect of college reading concerns them the most, 46 percent of students were concerned about being able to understand difficult texts.

What texts are the students most concerned about? Poems. They felt much more comfortable with short stories. The results suggest that because of a lack of exposure to poetry they feel underprepared for the genre.

The findings raise the question of why poetry, even though often a shorter genre, intimidates young readers. And how can we help them feel better prepared?

Related: 

• Black Readers Findings

Why Students Prefer Short Stories

By Joyce Woodard

When 302 FAME AND GAME students were asked what they expected to be the most enjoyable readings of the semester, the majority answered short stories.

Is this preference among the FAME and GAME classes an indication of the shortened attention spans of Gen Z? On the contrary, when the same students were asked which readings they expected to enjoy the least, most answered poems.

Considering the fact that it usually takes longer to read a short story than a poem, the preference may have nothing to do with keeping students' attention. Perhaps the issue is how the details of the readings are presented; short stories are a bit more straightforward while poems require more interpretation. The way a story is told matters and ultimately determines how excited students will feel about reading for class.

Related: 

• Black Readers Findings

Poet William J. Harris Inspires Successful Visual Art Activity

My decades-long conversations with poet and literary scholar William J. Harris continue to pay dividends. This week offered one of the best examples.

 
Some years back, I discovered that when Professor Harris visits museums and art shows, he sketches what he sees in notebooks. He’s not a visual artist, but he enjoys tracking and tracing what catches his attention.

 
This week, I encouraged the 300 students enrolled in my African American literary Discovery Labs to follow Harris’s model. They perused art books featuring work by Kerry James Marshall, Amy Sherald, Kehinde Wiley, Jacob Lawrence, and others, and then spent time sketching.

 
To say it’s been a really good week based on their work would be an understatement. I had no idea so many of these students were such talented artists. Even more, I didn’t anticipate how seriously they would take the activity or how focused they would remain for extended periods.

 
We do our Discovery Lab activities in the Redmond Center, and because there are so many students, we have relatively short periods to meet. That’s usually not a problem, as students tend to complete the activity for the week and leave. This week, though, was different. More than with any previous activity, multiple students approached me and asked if they could stay longer to work on their drawings.

Black Literary Data Findings

A roundup of graphs and brief analyses of Black literary patterns.

• September 26: Beloved Reveals the Limits of “Widely Discussed"

• September 26: When One Major Novel Stands Apart

• September 25: Three Black Women Writers Stand Apart in Graduate Research

• September 25: Coates and Whitehead in Dissertation and Thesis Searches

• September 10: Tracking Beloved in Graduate Research, 1990-2025

• September 10: Toni Morrison Novels in Graduate Research: What ProQuest Reveals

• September 10: Which African American Novels Get Studied Most?

• March 11: Dissertation Citations for Six Black Women Writers, 1970–2026

• March 11: From Nine Citations to Thousands: Toni Morrison in Dissertation Research

• April 30: Amiri Baraka and Dissertations

• May 21: What ProQuest Reveals About Black Poetry Scholarship

Related:

• Black Lit Network Findings 

Beloved Reveals the Limits of “Widely Discussed"

We routinely describe several major Black novels as “widely discussed,” but that description can hide how unevenly scholarly attention is distributed among them.

 
One of the ideas I’ve been developing lately is visibility disparities among major Black novels. Richard Wright’s Native Son, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved are all widely discussed.

Yet grouping them together conceals a substantial gap. From 1990 to 2025, searches for Beloved returned 4,568 dissertation and thesis results, while each of the other four novels returned more than 1,000 but fewer than 2,000. “Widely discussed” describes all five, but it does not tell us how much more often scholars return to Beloved.

When One Major Novel Stands Apart

Native Son, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Invisible Man, The Color Purple, and Beloved are all widely studied Black novels, but dissertation and thesis search results reveal a sizable gap among them. From 1990 to 2025, Beloved returned 4,568 results, more than twice as many as any of the other four.

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.