Natural Hair: Moments from the Movement

On October 5, I'll coordinate an exhibit highlighting natural hair. The exhibit builds on previous exhibits focusing on black women, style, and political possibility.

This exhibit, like past ones, showcases the range of ways black women stylize their hair, create and utilize products, and establish communities based on hair. Indeed, their endeavors constitute a kind of movement.

Related
• Scenes from the Natural Hair Movement exhibit (February 2016)

Haley Reading Group: Atul Gawande’s “No Risky Chances”

[Best American Science and Nature Writing]

By Cynthia A. Campbell

Atul Gawande’s article “No Risky Chances” focuses on the complexities that both physicians and patients face in making decisions about medical treatment that can prolong life and/or cause further complications. Gawande illuminates the implications of one cancer patient’s ordeal with her end-of-life treatment. Ultimately, the article speaks to the importance of understanding/processing issues of mortality.

Gawande’s discussion of courage was enlightening. At one point, Gawande notes that “The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality—the courage to seek out the truth of what is feared and what is to be hoped when one is seriously ill…the second kind... the courage to act on the truth we find” (66). This point indicates that the certainty of death (our awareness that it is natural and inevitable) can allow us to face it with humility.

After reading Gawande’s article, what was one point concerning the patient’s decisions that caught your attention? Why was that point or scene notable to you? Please provide a page number citation.

A Notebook on Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju

Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (Third World Press, 2016) offers a historical look at one of our most important cultural moments in the production of African American artistic thought.

The book includes chapters on: definitions of the Black Arts Movement; its historical background; the national birth of the movement; its theory and practice; publications; audio recordings; theatre; related black music of the art and era; film and television; dance; visual arts; critics of the time period; the critical assessment of the movement.  The book also includes images of black arts texts by Eugene B. Redmond, a study guide by Jiton Davidson, and a dialogue between Salaam and Margo Natalie Crawford.

What follows are entries on aspects of the book:

• The Magic of Juju and Black Arts texts
• The Magic of Juju and Black Arts scholarly discourse 
• Kalamu ya Salaam's introduction to the Black Arts era
• Kalamu ya Salaam, Eugene B. Redmond, and special collections

Related:
• The Black Arts Era   

The Magic of Juju and Black Arts scholarly discourse

Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (2016) anticipated and now bookends an exciting moment in the scholarly discourse on the Black Arts Movement. Salaam's manuscript circulated underground, so to speak, among scholars years before many of us produced book-length studies on the era. Now Salaam's book arrives confirming his identity as one of our most critical cultural witnesses of African American literary art of the 1960s and 1970s.

On the one hand, Salaam's book complements the scholarly work of Eugene B. Redmond in his tremendous study Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry (1976). Like Redmond, Salaam traces a wide range of literary figures and explains how they contributed to a national artistic movement. Given the benefit of time and hindsight, Salaam also discusses the activities of those artists well into the 1990s, and he highlights how a range of cultural institutions such as magazines and presses, and art forms, including dance and music, also contributed to the production of Black Arts. 

In addition to drawing on and extending past studies, Salaam's work is very much in conversation with a large number of contemporary scholarship on Black Arts and African American literary studies. His book's focus on on the national reach of  the movement corresponds with James Smethurst's The Black Arts Movement. Salaam's attentiveness to critics and theories of the era parallel aspects of Tony Bolden's Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture. Further, Salaam's examination of music and its links to black poetry bring to mind ideas raised by Meta DuEwa Jones in The Muse is Music.  


Related:
• A Notebook on Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju 

The Magic of Juju and Black Arts texts

One of the big debts I owe to Kalam ya Salaam's work in The Magic of Juju is his chapter on Black Arts publications. He identifies and discusses journals, including Soulbook, Journal of Black Poetry, Black Dialogue, and Liberator; black presses; and anthologies of the time period.

Salaam's scholarship gave me a clearer sense of the large, diverse body of journals out there that distributed black arts writing, particularly poetry and commentary about poetry. Studying publications such as Negro Digest/Black World as well as the many anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s clarified for me the extents to which Black Arts Movement was a movement.

Negro Digest/Black World was a major publication of the Black Arts era.

Negro Digest/Black World published hundreds of poets during the Black Arts era, and even more important, the periodical facilitated a national conversation about African American artistic thought. Salaam explains that "Negro Digest/Black World illustrates BAM's reach and the depth of audience receptivity to its message." He goes on to note that given American's Black population at the time, the periodical "was more broadly circulated among its target population than almost any other literary magazine in existence."

The Black Arts Movement is notable for its literary attributes,  but Salaam proposes that we also view the artistic activity as a major "'literacy movement, which encouraged reading among a mass population." The abundance of Black Arts texts surely gave readers a wide range of materials to cover.    

Beyond conventional texts, Salaam devotes attention to another kind of Black Arts production: audio recordings of poets reading their works. He highlights recordings by Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Jayne Cortez, Stanley Crouch, and others.

The size and variety of Black Arts texts assists in explaining the movement's movement powerful impact and enduring legacy. 

Related:
• A Notebook on Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju 

Kalamu ya Salaam, Eugene B. Redmond, and special collections

In some respects, Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju (2016) extends the work of Eugene B. Redmond's Drumvices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry (1976). Redmond's closing chapter began treating the then contemporary poetry of the 1970s. Salaam makes the history of 1960s and 1970s poetry and artistic production the central focus of his book and details the major players, publications, critics, theories, and so forth.

To produce their books, both Redmond and Salaam drew on wonderful special collections containing hundreds of primary black arts publications. For his book, Salaam called on Redmond to submit images from his collection. The Magic of Juju includes more than 150 images of people, magazine and journal covers, and volumes of poetry.

The images give a sense of the materiality of Black Arts literature. The items also provide a glimpse of Redmond's extensive special collection.   

Related:
• A Notebook on Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju 

Kalamu ya Salaam's introduction to the Black Arts era

I first read chapters from Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (Third World Press, 2016) over 15 years ago. So let's be clear: Salaam was well ahead of the expanding growth of black arts scholarship that occurred over the last 10 years. In fact, many of us who produced books during that time period were drawing on lessons from Salaam.

Salaam had shared the unpublished manuscript with me years ago when I was a graduate student, after I sent him an email and asked if could I check it out. At the time he barely knew me, but I guess he took me at my word when I said I was doing work on the Black Arts Movement. Further, my undergraduate mentor, Jerry W. Ward, Jr., and Salaam are good friends, so perhaps that's why he freely sent along the manuscript.  Or, more simply, he's just generous like that.

I first heard about  Salaam's manuscript from scholar James Smethurst, who I had met at a conference early in my graduate career. Smethurst had generously passed along chapters of his then in-progress manuscript, which would later become The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (2005). At one point in our exchanges, Smethurst referenced an important unpublished manuscript on the Black Arts Movement, and encouraged me to email the author, Salaam.

I benefited from The Magic of Juju then, and I'm benefiting by re-reading it now. This book offers a distinct and unusual perspective on the Black Arts era, as Salaaam writes from the position of "participant and critic" of the flourishing of arts that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s.

In the preface, dated 1997 and revised in 1999, Salaam notes that the "goal for this book is to give readers an accurate introduction to the history and significance of the Black Arts Movement." Although the official publication date says 2016, we understand his book as an early introduction and contribution to the contemporary scholarly discourse on black arts.

Related:
• A Notebook on Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju 

On the matter of Diversity, Pt. 1

On September 21, at Lovejoy Library, we hosted our first Public Thinking Event of the semester.  We concentrated on issues related to diversity. In particular, we took a look at "diversity statements" from various universities and responded to the ones that we thought were most effective.
 

Related:
• Fall 2016 Programming 

Bro Yao in the mix

I was pleased to read Bro Yao's book Inheritance and add him to the mix of various other volumes I've spent time reading, re-reading, and thinking about over the years. For now, I was thinking about how his poems corresponded to works by various black men poets I've studied.


Volumes by Gary Copeland Lilley, Tony Medina, Adrian Matejka, Christopher Gilbert, Kevin Young, James Cherry, and others came to mind as I thought about links to Yao's work. In particular, I was considering how Young's first book Most Way Home, with its attentiveness to family, reminded me of some of what I've been reading in Inheritance.

The attention to experiences of black men, including their vulnerabilities, leads me to draw parallels between Yao's book and writings by Lilley, Medina, and Matejka.

But then too, there's the matter of that conversational voice I was picking up on in Yao's volume, where he's observing and taking lessons from every day experiences. Had I heard anything like that recently? After some thought, my mind went back to Christopher Gilbert. I say "back" because his work was in fact published posthumously. 

Yao and Gilbert prompt us to consider the wonder of everyday moments. They make close observation an art form. It's a subtle approach and familiar across different groups of poetry. Still, what Yao and Gilbert do ends up standing out in comparison to some of our louder modes of black expressive culture.

Moving forward, I'm looking forward to giving thought to the individual qualities that distinguish Yao's work and the aspects of his work that correspond to the broader mix of poets.

Related:
• Bro Yao's Inheritance 
• Yao Glover on Bookstores and Such, Pt. 1
• Talking poetry with Tony Bolden, Yao Glover & William J. Harris in 2015  

Bro Yao's Inheritance

Now I can add Bro Yao's Inheritance to the collection.

A busy teaching schedule this semester has slowed my poetry blogging routine. Yet, I'm still managing to check out a couple of new books and return to some old ones.

Over the last week or so, I've been carrying Inheritance (Willow Books, 2016) by Bro Yao ( Hoke Glover III). It's a book I'm enjoying, especially in the in between moments of my busier days.

Many of the poems are conversational in the sense that I can almost imagine Yao speaking them during an exchange. Speaking them in a poetic way of course. They are also conversational in the sense that ideas or themes from different poems begin to blend together in my mind. Memory. Reflections on a father and mother. Music. Nature.

In "buttoning my shirt," he recalls, as a child perhaps, watching his father standing in front of the mirror in the morning preparing for work. Shaving. Tying his tie. And more: while studying his father adjust into a serious facial expression while looking into the mirror, the son begins to "learn how to stare down the day." In "i thought my mama was god," he reflects on how "the songs she sang made the house vibrate, not moans, but something soft and terrible, with power and resonance."

Those reflections on a father and mother persist throughout the volume, and we learn that the lessons they passed along or their everyday routines, which were extraordinary feats in the eyes their child, became his inheritance. Taken together, Yao's poems in Inheritance present this wonderful catalogue of precious intangible items passed along from family and his environment.

There's also all this proverbial wisdom and these hard truths that permeate the book. In "a tale," a young girl is told that "the country is an empire without blood." However, she knows better: "there's red in the flag and mud on its boots."  In "the liar," he points out that he cannot tell the truth because "it is a face of ten thousand expressions."

Those lines and others spoke to me as I encountered them between classes or after the drive home and now before heading in to work.  

Related:
• Bro Yao in the mix
• Yao Glover on Bookstores and Such, Pt. 1
• Talking poetry with Tony Bolden, Yao Glover & William J. Harris in 2015   

Haley Reading Group: The Health Effects of a World Without Darkness

[Best American Science and Nature Writing]

Brittany Tuggle

Rebecca Boyle’s article “The Health Effects of a World Without Darkness,” reprinted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, highlights the various problematic implications of living in an industrialized world wherein entire lives are constantly bathed in light. Boyle illuminates America (and other developed countries particularly) with provoking thought about our dependence on lights, much to our detriment, in stark contrast to the ways in which developing countries rely more on darkness. Ultimately, the article speaks to an important issue of what the world at large is facing as we continue to interrupt our biological patterns with light.

Boyle’s discussion of the health effects of light was especially enlightening. At one point, Boyle notes that “light is the major factor in [cases of] depression, obesity, and cancer” (52). This point indicates the serious dangers intertwined with the pleasures of living in light.

After reading Boyle’s article, what was one point concerning the dangers of artificial light that compelled you? Why was that point or passage notable to you? Please provide a page number citation.

Fall 2016 Haley Reading Group: Best American Science and Nature Writing (2015)

 
This semester for our Haley Reading Group, we'll cover The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2015) edited by Rebecca Skloot.

In the past, we covered books related to history, educational challenges, mass incarceration, race and racism, the art of choosing, and being wrong. We've also covered volumes of poetry.  

What's been missing? Coverage on science and nature writing, among other topics. A focus on science and nature writing now seems especially fitting since so many of our participants major in STEM fields.

Reading schedule:
September 21: Rebecca Boyle’s “The Health Effects of a World Without Darkness" (43 – 54)
September 28: Atul Gawande's "No Risky Chances" (65 – 71)
October 5: Brooke Jarvis’s “The Deepest Dig” (124 – 133)
October 12: Jourdan Imani Keith’s “At Risk" & “Desegregating Wilderness” (149 - 150) & (151 -153)
October 19: Reflections
October 26: Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Big Kill” (163 – 178)
November 2: Amy Maxmen’s “Digging Through the World’s Oldest Graveyard” (179 – 190)
November 9: Sarah Schweitzer’s “Chasing Bayla” (225 – 243)
November 16: Kim Todd’s “Curious” (273 – 281)
November 30: Barry Yeoman’s “From Billions to None” (297 – 305)
November 30: Sarah Schweitzer’s “Chasing Bayla” (225 – 243)
December 7: Reflections

Related:
• Haley Reading Groups

“I own my own masters”: An exhibit on slavery references in rap music

For the second year, I hosted, “'I own my own masters': An exhibit on slavery references in rap music" -- a visual and audio project based on mentions of slavery and struggles for liberation in rap music. The exhibit is based on an article that Jeremiah Carter and I co-wrote and published last year. Our article identifies and explains “slavery references” in rap music.

On  September 13, I organized the exhibit for students in a few of my classes. The exhibit took place in the EBR Learning Center.

Related:
• Fall 2016 Programming 
• Notebook on the EBR Collection & EBR Learning Center

Fall 2016 Programming

 • A photo-review of arts & humanities programming (Fall 2016) 

• September 13: An exhibit on slavery references in rap music - EBR Learning Center, 11:00 am - 4:30 pm 
• September 21: "On the matter of Diversity, Pt. 1" (Public Thinking Event) - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
• October 5: Natural Hair exhibit (Public Thinking Event) - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
• October 18: Eugene B. Redmond visits the Eugene B. Redmond class - Friends Corner, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
• October 19: East St. Louis Postcard Exhibit (Public Thinking Event) - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
• November 2: Public Thinking - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
• November 3: Cindy Reed Reps East St. Louis  - Friends Corner, 1:30 – 3:30 pm  
• November 16: Public Thinking - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
• November 30: Untitled: A Gathering of Black Women Artists - Friends Corner, 12:30 – 1:30 pm

Online Reading Groups for Fall 2016:
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing

Related:
• Programming

A reading group discussion of Between and World and Me

Below are discussion prompts and questions for an online reading group I coordinated in the fall of 2015 on Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Prompt & question 1: Between the World and Me, Part I: (3 – 20)
In the first section of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates begins sketching out his views on the state of things in America to his 15-year-old son. He notes, among many other notable points, that "race is the child of racism, not the father" and begins explaining how (7).

Based on what you've read so far (between pages 5 - 20), what particularly caught your attention? Why? Please provide a page number.

Prompt & question 2: Between the World and Me, Part I: (20 – 39)

"The streets transform every ordinary day into a series of trick questions, and every incorrect answer risks a beat-down, a shooting, or a pregnancy. No one survives unscathed" (22).

In the second section of chapter 1 of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates begins talking about violence and fear. He also mentions learning codes of the streets in order to survive. For instance, at one moment, he notes "To survive the neighborhoods and shield my body, I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshakes. I memorized a list of prohibited blocks" (23).

What he was learned and absorbed concerning those codes sounded all too familiar in some respects and really caught my attention. What about you? What did you end up focusing on the most while reading those pages (20 - 39)? Why or how so? Please provide page citations.

Prompt & question 3: Between the World and Me, Part I: (39 – 52)

"My only Mecca was, is, and shall always be Howard University" (39).

In this section of Between the World and Me, Coates discusses Howard University as a Mecca and place where he encountered diverse groups of black people and began to really deepen his knowledge or what we'd call "consciousness."

What scene or idea or description from the section captured your attention most? Why or how so? Provide a page number.

Prompt & question 4: Between the World and Me, Part I: (52 – 71)

"The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this" (70).

In the current section of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates continues mentioning his forma and informal education at the Mecca. He also discusses relationships, and the lessons he gained in those. And as the above quotation reveals, he is still passing along lessons to his son about history and power.

What's something in particular that you found important or useful from the section? Why? Please provide a page number.

Marlee Graser guides us through the EBR Collection

Marlee Graser, EBR Learning Center Librarian, discusses special collections.

Since 2015, Marlee Graser has served as the EBR Learning Center Librarian. She is responsible for arranging, describing, and preserving Lovejoy Library's massive Eugene B. Redmond Collection. Graser has been advancing her efforts on the Collection by collaboration with Lydia Jackson, Lovejoy Library director of Research Commons, and Steve Kerber University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian.

Lovejoy Library now has the finding aid for the Eugene B. Redmond Collection online.

On September 8 and 13, Graser assisted students from our course, "Culture, Politics, and the Redmond Collection" gain more information about working with special collections and the EBR Collection in particular. She covered various topics concerning finding aids, Redmond's materials, and approaches to organizing large bodies of materials.

Related:
• Notebook on the EBR Collection & EBR Learning Center
• Culture, Politics & the Redmond Collection  
• Eugene B. Redmond

Haki Madhubuti donates Third World Press books to EBR Center

This past summer, Haki Madhubuti donated the entire Third World Press catalog to the EBR Learning Center at Lovejoy Library. The collection he donated includes over 200 books published from the 1970s through 2015.

Madhubuti founded Third World Press in 1967, and since that time, he has published a wide range of poets, fiction writers, and scholars. Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Sterling Plumpp, Thabiti Lewis, Geneva Smitherman, Joyce Ann Joyce, Gwendolyn A. Mitchell, Tony Medina, and many others have published with the press.

Madhubuti and Redmond have been friends since the 1970s. Their friendship led Madhubuti to make the donation to the collection. The books, now housed in the EBR Learning Center, are available to check out from Lovejoy Library.

Third World Press published books by and about Gwendolyn Brooks.

Books by and about Gwendolyn Brooks are well-represented in the Third World Press catalog. Brooks was an important mentor for Madhubuti, and in turn, he remained a stronger supporter for her and her work. He continues to facilitate the publication of books highlighting her works.   

The books shelved in the Eugene B. Redmond Learning Center are identified on the Lovejoy Library site.

Related:
• Notebook on the EBR Collection & EBR Learning Center
• Eugene B. Redmond

Notebook on the EBR Collection & EBR Learning Center

One of the typewriters that Eugene B. Redmond used to prepare the manuscript for his book, Drumvoices.

Lovejoy Library opened the Eugene B. Redmond (EBR) Learning Center on October 19, 2015. Prior to that, library staff, led by metadata specialist Mary Z. Rose, had been developing aspects of Redmond's Collection online. 

What follows are entries related to the EBR Collection, the EBR Learning Center, and related projects. 

2016
• October 13: Students view postcards from the Andrew J. Theising Research Collection (Oct. 6 & 11)
• September 19: An exhibit on slavery references in rap music (September 13)  
• September 17: Haki Madhubuti donates Third World Press books to EBR Learning Center
• September 17: Marlee Graser guides us through the EBR Collection (September 8 & 13)
• April 16: Conference attendees visit the EBR Learning Center
• February 29: Students Visiting the EBR Learning Center (Feb. 16)
• February 29: Students Visiting the EBR Learning Center (Feb. 11)

2015
• November  20: Covering Black Panther in the EBR Learning Center 
• November 12: Cindy Lyles gives opening reading at the Eugene B. Redmond Learning Center
• July 2: A select chronology of the EBR Collection 
• June 30: A Notebook on Lovejoy Library's EBR Digital Collection

Related:

• A Notebook on Eugene B. Redmond & the EBR Collection
• Eugene B. Redmond
• Assorted Notebooks 

What Colson Whitehead does after autographing over 100 books

Colson Whitehead autographs books in St. Louis

What does Colson Whitehead do after autographing more than 100 books? Well, he autographs another 100.

I was toward the end of the long, winding autograph line for Colson Whitehead at the St. Louis County Library after his reading on Wednesday night, September 14. More than 100 people had stood in the line and patiently waited for an autograph and brief chat with the author.

I lingered for a bit as he finished signing the last books of the people who had attended his reading. Just as he was completing his task, a few workers rolled in with a cart-load of The Underground Railroad. The books were lifted on the table where Whitehead had been sitting and signing books. He stood and began autographing each book.

The books would then be transported to Left Bank Books, where visitors to the store can now purchase autographed versions of Whitehead's novel.

Related:
• Colson Whitehead 

Colson Whitehead reads from newest novel in St. Louis

Whitehead speaks to audience at the St. Louis County Library before reading.

Wednesday evening, September 14, Colson Whitehead gave a reading at the St. Louis County Library. He read from his new novel The Underground Railroad, a powerful work that has been receiving extensive coverage and glowing praise. 

Nearly 600 people showed up for Whitehead's reading. No doubt, the designation of his book as an Oprah Winfrey book club selection contributed to the widespread attention he has gained, including the large turnout for his reading on Wednesday. The library had initially scheduled the reading for a smaller venue, but changed to the main branch of the library system as interest in Whitehead increased in the weeks following Winfrey's announcement that The Underground Railroad was a book club selection.

Whitehead autographing books after the reading

Whitehead charmed and entertained the audience with his deadpan humor. When he took to podium, he noted that he usually spends Wednesday evenings "weeping over my regrets," so reading for the St. Louis audience was a "nice change of pace."

He explained the process of coming up with the idea for The Underground Railroad; read from two different sections of the novel; and then took questions from the audience. 

Related:
• Colson Whitehead

Culture, Politics & the Redmond Collection

This semester, I'm co-teaching an interdisciplinary course entitled "Culture, Politics, and the Redmond Collection." I'm co-teaching the course with political science professor Andrew Theising. The course focuses on aspects of the Eugene B. Redmond Collection at Lovejoy Library as well as politics and arts  in East St. Louis.

I've worked with Theising on various East St. Louis-related projects over the years, so I'm enjoying finally co-teaching a class with him on a variety of subjects that are dear and near to us both. It's also been useful to think about the ways that political science and literary studies intersect on topics such as "the city," "government," and even research.

During the course of the term, we are visiting the EBR Learning Center and exploring aspects of the Redmond Collection. Professor Redmond will visit the course and give a reading.

I'll produce entries here about what observations from the course.

Entries:
• October 13: Students view postcards from the Andrew J. Theising Research Collection (Oct. 6 & 11)
• October 19: Eugene B. Redmond visits the Redmond class (October 18)

• November 7: Cindy Reed Reps East St. Louis (November 3)

Related:
• Eugene B. Redmond 

I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes bio-documentary

By Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II

We're looking forward to the bio-doc, “I, Too, Sing America” about the life of African American poet and writer Langston Hughes. The project is being produced by Randal Maurice Jelks, Madison Davis Lacy, Darren Canady, Tess Banion, John Edgar Tidwell, Carmaletta M. Williams, and Elena Lacy. The project is funded, in part, by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

What better place than Lawrence, Kansas, for a bio-documentary about Hughes? Even though most people are familiar with Hughes as a Harlem Renaissance writer living in New York City, he spent a considerable amount of his childhood in Lawrence. There are many notable landmarks that still exist in Kansas that are intimately connected to Hughes’s coming of age experiences in Lawrence.

Born in Missouri in 1902, Hughes moved to Lawrence as a small child. He lived with his grandmother at 736 Alabama Street until he was thirteen. In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Hughes mentioned having to go to church every Sunday with Auntie Reed. St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1910, still stands at 900 New York St. Also, as a child, Hughes attended the Pinckney Elementary School at 801 West 6th Street. The school renamed its library Langston Hughes Library for Children in 1991.

When asked about the significance of the project, executive producer, Randall Jelks said, “What is known about Hughes remains reduced to his years as an emerging youthful poet during from the 1920s in Harlem. Hughes's life and his life of writing, however, unfurls the American experience like a flag to tell the story of the 20th century struggle for democracy at home and abroad.”

Amiri Baraka's sonic movement: from reader to performer

The dramatic shift in Amiri Baraka's style of delivery is arguably one of the great movements in the histories of American and African American poetry. Rarely has an individual poet's sound changed in such spectacular fashion.

Earlier this week, I was having my students listen to a recording of Baraka reading "Snake Eyes" in 1964. Then, I played some of his  readings from the album It's Nation Time (1972).

"Can you believe that's the same poet?" I asked. They couldn't.

Scholar James Smethurst has mentioned Baraka's shift in delivery style as well. In one piece, Smethurst wrote: “To my ears at least, Baraka’s reading on a 1959 recording of 'Freedom Suite (For Sonny Rollins and Franz Kline)' is relatively tentative; his reading of 'Black Art' on the 1965 Jihad Productions album Sonny’s Time Now captures his emergence as one of the great performers of poetry in our time.”

The Black Arts Movement remains a defining moment in literary history, and so too was Baraka's sonic movement. 

Related:
• Amiri Baraka

Three Principles for Digital Literary Studies

By Kenton Rambsy

This semester, I’m teaching two African American literary survey courses at the University of Texas at Arlington. “From Slavery to Hip Hop” and “Greatest Beefs” are also “unofficially” designated as digital humanities courses.

Many people often ask about the structure of my courses and how I fuse a traditional field like English with the emerging digital humanities discourses. Some have even wondered how I teach students how to use digital tools while also making students aware of major authors, literary periods, and theories in the field of African American literature.

Because the landscape of DH is still emerging and technology is changing at such a rapid pace, I focus more on a conceptual framework as a means of creating new points of entry for academic inquiry. Specifically, I emphasize three general principles proposed by Ted Underwood in “Distant Reading and Recent Intellectual History”:

1. Don’t Over estimate our understanding of literary history:
• "First, a negative principle: there’s simply a lot we don’t know about literary history above the scale of (say) a hundred volumes. We’ve become so used to ignorance at this scale, and so good at bluffing our way around it, that we tend to overestimate our actual knowledge" (Underwood).

2. Borrow from other disciplines:
• "Second, the theoretical foundation for macroscopic research isn’t something we have to invent from scratch; we can learn a lot from computational social science. (The notion of a statistical model, for instance, is a good place to start.)" (Underwood).

3. Create and Develop (and share) accessible data sources:
• "The third thing that matters, of course, is getting at the texts themselves, on a scale that can generate new perspectives. This is probably where our collaborative energies could most fruitfully be focused. The tools we’re going to need are not usually specific to the humanities. But the corpora often are" (Underwood).

In my digital humanities literature courses, we consider how metadata can be used to understand literary history and engage in interdisciplinary research. We collect data related to publishing histories, thematic content, and geography in order to assess relationships between various black authors, genres, and historical periods.

I would love to teach students how to use advanced topic modeling software like Mallet in my classes to explore connections between black slave narratives and novels. I would also enjoy demonstrating how to use GIS mapping software to examine migration patterns in African American literature; however, time constraints prevent me from doing so effectively at the moment.

It would be difficult for me to teach my students how to master the use of text-mining, topic modeling, and mapping programs while at the same time adequately exposing the students to African American literature produced over more than a century. Emphasizing these three general principles, however, facilitates my students gaining insight into African American literature, while also developing tangible skills and methods related to data collection and analysis.

Related:
• Some Free Digital Software Programs and tools   

Greatest Beefs (Fall 2016)

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By Kenton Rambsy

This semester, I’m teaching a literature survey course that examines the intellectual history surrounding creative conflicts in African American artistic history—specifically hip-hop. This course is framed around the legendary hip hop rivalry between Jay Z and Nas. Also in this course, though, we will track creative conflicts ranging from W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as well as among rap figures such as Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj, and the Notorious BIG and Tupac.

In this class, we will use digital tools to uncover the underlying features of signifying and public debates by analyzing linguistic features and thematic characteristics of select figures. Specifically, we will analyze speeches, essays, and short compositions using text-mining software in order to extract information and create datasets about black literary figures.

Related:
• From Slavery to Hip Hop (Fall 2016)
• Geo-coding black short stories & Jay Z -- Spring 2016 courses at UT