Beyond Electives: Rethinking African American literature courses

Since 2010 at SIUE, my colleagues and I have offered 90 African American literature classes. Or put another way, we've offered 15 African American literature courses each year for the past 6 years. During that time period, we devoted more classes to African American literature than most English departments in the country. While I’m proud of that distinction, I’ve recently began thinking about ways to redirect some of our efforts.

For the most part, the courses we offered counted as “electives” for English majors and Black Studies minors. Only our Toni Morrison course fulfills a major requirement for English, and our Introduction to African American literature course fulfills a requirement for the Black Studies minor. We recently completed the paperwork so now our Intro Af-Am lit course fulfills a lower-level requirement for English.

For a couple of decades now, the seven African American literature courses that we offered on a regular were considered only optional. Moving forward, we’re taking steps to have African American literary studies courses count beyond the level of electives. Would it be possible, for instance, to earn a degree in English while taking primarily African American literature courses? Based on the number of classes we offer, such a possibility is within reach at my university.

Elevating African American literature courses in the curriculum will shift the makeup of the English major. Just as important, I’m hoping we can take this opportunity to rethink the content and roles of African American literature classes. What I’ve learned teaching African American literature as elective courses over the last several years is that students prefer to move beyond the conventional holy trinity of literary texts: novels, short stories, and poems.

I’ve recently taught Af-Am lit courses focusing on blog entries and audio recordings. My courses on rap music have gone well, and I’m often looking for ways to include technology in my classes. We might also consider something else: there are far more potential students to pursue African American literary studies than there are jobs. So why not spend class time highlighting and exploring careers beyond typical teaching jobs in literature?

African American literary studies can’t address all the issues our students face, but we can still rethink or reposition our courses in useful ways.

Related:
• A notebook reflecting on reading and blogging in 2016
• African American Literature @ SIUE

Teaching an African American lit. course with audio recordings of black women reading poetry as the basis

This past semester, I taught an African American literature course concentrating on audio recordings of black women reading poetry. My class was comprised of all first-year collegiate black women, and we listened to recordings by more than 30 different poets and a few rappers. By and large, the students enjoyed the materials, especially works by some of the more dynamic and speculator performers such as Sonia Sanchez, jessica care moore, Patricia Smith, and most notably Mahogany L. Browne.

For years, I've included audio here and there of poets reading their works in literature courses, but this was the first time that I made the recordings central to the class.  Early on in the course, I played a recording of Browne's bold and bodacious recitation of her poem "Black Girl Magic." From there, we worked our way through historically significant poems by Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Walker, and well known works by Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, and others.

Notably, the enthusiasm to which the young sisters responded to dramatic readings and some of the recordings by contemporary performers gave me some sense for why none of them arrived at college with interests in becoming English majors. They've rarely been in classrooms that prioritized the study of black women verbal art like we covered. And unfortunately, it's unlikely that they'll ever take a class during their time in college that presents so many diverse black women voices.

But the good news is what we experienced this past semester. Listening to so many different black women poets was culturally enriching. We spent considerable time talking about the differences between black women poets and black women poets; such discussions were inevitable given the variety of delivery styles the students encountered.

The implementation of this course and the feedback I received from students confirmed my belief that language arts teachers and  literary scholars might raise levels of engagement among under-served demographics by doing more activities and courses utilizing audio recordings of black poets.    


Related:
• A notebook reflecting on reading and blogging in 2016
• Collegiate Students  
• Teaching an African American Literature course on Ta-Nehisi Coates in fall 2016  
• An African American literature course: Recordings of black women reading poetry (Fall 2016) 

Blogging about Amiri Baraka in 2016

image source

In 2016, I produced over 90 blog entries on a variety of poets. It turns out that I blogged about Amiri Baraka more than any other poet this year. Here are images and links to those various entries.

September 9: Amiri Baraka's sonic movement: from reader to performer 

April 25: "Oooowow!": the wonderful wordless phrasings of Amiri Baraka 

April 24: 50 Amiri Baraka poems on YouTube 

April 13: George Packer compliments LeRoi Jones (but derides Amiri Baraka)

Teaching an African American Literature course on Ta-Nehisi Coates in fall 2016

This past semester, I taught an African American literature course focusing on writings by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a figure I've read and blogged about for years now. My class was comprised of first-year collegiate black men, and we had wide-ranging discussions based on a variety of subjects related to our experiences reading Coates. 

We covered several blog entries, "The Case for Reparations," Between The World and Me, and Black Panther...Book 1, along with supplemental writings, poems, and rap music by a number of different related artists.    

One of the major challenges while preparing for the class was selecting a small sampling of blog entries from such a massive body of work. Coates has produced over 3,000 blog entries since the time he began blogging at The Atlantic in 2008. I went through the tough task of deciding on a notably small amount of entries to cover with my guys, settling in on about 20 entries to begin the course. Moving forward, it's going to take some time to pinpoint the most representative or useful selection of entries since Coates covered so much during that time span. Whatever the case, the students thought 20 entries were more than enough.

The guys were especially drawn to Coates's reflections on his days as an undergraduate at Howard University -- a topic he covered in blog entries and in Between the World and Me. The students were also intrigued by Coates's discussions growing up in a tough neighborhood and reflecting on those experiences from some distance. I suspect Coates's own experiences overlapped with those of the students, which prompted considerable comments. 

25 Variant Covers for Black Panther #1

My most notable special collection project this year was related to comic books. I collected and wrote about the variants for Black Panther #1, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

I managed to get my hands on 25 of the 25 covers. Here's a look at each of them. The link in the captions leads to more information on the covers and artists.

Brian Stelfreeze's regular covers for the first, second, and third printings of Black Panther #1

Stelfreeze's hip hop cover, Sanford Greene's cover, and Stelfreeze's variant cover for Black Panther #1

Skottie Young's cover,  Amos Maldonado's Marvel Collector Corps cover, and Alex Ross's cover for Black Panther #1

KABAM Game/Disney Infinity cover, Mike McKone's Comic Bug cover, Neal Adams's cover, and Dale Keown's cover.

Black Panther #1 variant cover by Dale Keown

The GameStop Exclusive variant cover of Black Panther #1 by Dale Keown shows the Black Panther/T'Challa riding some kind of motorcycle-like vehicle. In the background, we see flames, as if he's leaving an explosion.  His claws are drawn to suggest he is preparing to enter a battle.

It appears that the vehicle is flying or hovering above the ground. The idea that he possesses a transportation machine is a nod to Wakanda's reputation as a technologically-advanced nation.

There's a pencil and ink sketch of Keown's cover here. 

Related:
• List of Black Panther variants and artists  
• A Notebook on Black Panther

Best idea in 2016 African American fiction: A real underground railroad

We probably haven't talked enough about good and fascinating ideas in African American literature. What makes a concept compelling and memorable? Where do good ideas come from? Why do some ideas become sticky and circulate while others fizzle out?

If there was an award for the best idea in African American fiction in 2016, I would of course nominate Colson Whitehead’s novel. A book about the Underground Railroad with a genuine and functional underground railroad. Whitehead actualized one of our most well-known metaphors. His premise was simple and surprising; it was unbelievable and at the same time concrete.

Related: 
• A notebook reflecting on reading and blogging in 2016
• Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad: A Timeline 
• The Coverage of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad  
• Colson Whitehead

A notebook reflecting on reading and blogging in 2016

• Teaching an African American Literature course on Ta-Nehisi Coates in fall 2016 
• Teaching an African American lit. course with audio recordings of black women reading poetry as the basis
• Beyond Electives: Rethinking African American literature courses
• A roundup of 25 Covers for Black Panther #1
• Blogging about Amiri Baraka in 2016 
• Best idea in 2016 African American fiction: A real underground railroad
• The year in African American poetry, 2016
• A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 2016
• 2016 notable books: Alondra Nelson's The Social Life of DNA and André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness

 Related:
• Books noted lists

2016 notable books: Alondra Nelson's The Social Life of DNA and André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness

I haven't really done a full-fledged "best books of 2016" list this year, but if I did, I'm sure I would've mentioned Alondra Nelson's The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome and André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction.

Both books gave me all kinds of "past-future visions," to apply a term used by Nelson back in the earlier Afrofuturism  days. I was prompted to think about past occurrences with technology and science fiction communities and then again consider new developments in those fields based on the books.  

Entries on Carrington's book:

• A Notebook on André M. Carrington's Speculative Blackness  
• André M. Carrington, Mark Anthony Neal, and recovery work 
• Speculative Blackness by André M. Carrington 
• From Afrofuturism to Speculative Blackness

Entries on Nelson's book:

• Alondra Nelson and Root-Seekers
• Poet Marilyn Nelson and scholar Alondra Nelson on Venture Smith  
• Afrofuturists, Black Panthers & Genealogists: Alondra Nelson's Multi-threaded Journeys

Related:
• Books noted lists
• The year in African American poetry, 2016
• A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 2016
• An Afrofuturism-based timeline, 1998 - 2016 

A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 2016

Another enjoyable year of blogging about poetry. Here's a recap of a few of the more than 90 blog entries on verse that I published over the last 12 months.

December 16: Kevin Young's Books: A Visual History

  November 7: Cindy Reed Reps East St. Louis

  October 19: Eugene B. Redmond visits the Redmond class

 September 23: Bro Yao in the mix 

The year in African American poetry, 2016

Over the past year, I documented news items and publications concerning African American poetry. Here's a partial list of developments that I noted.

Select volumes of poetry published in 2016:

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's The Crown Ain't Worth Much
Joshua Bennett's The Sobbing School
Tara Betts's Break the Habit
Rita Dove's Collected Poems: 1974–2004
francine j. harris's Play Dead
Aracelis Girmay's The Black Maria
Hoke Glover's Inheritance
Ishion Hutchinson’s House of Lords and Commons
Tyehimba Jess's Olio
Allison Joseph's Mercurial, Mortal Rewards, Multitudes, Double Identity, The Purpose of Hands
Donika Kelly's Bestiary
Jamaal May's The Big Book of Exit Strategies
Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal
Clint Smith's Counting Descent
Phillip B. Williams's Thief in the Interior
Kevin Young's Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015

Select collections in 2016:

Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky edited by Tony Medina
Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (2016) edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. 

************************

• February: Yolanda Wisher named Philadelphia Poet Laureate.

• March: Ross Gay wins Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

• March: Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015) wins the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry.

• March: Safiya Sinclair and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs win Whiting Awards.

• April: Jericho Brown and Ed Roberson win Guggenheim Fellowships in poetry.

• April: Will Alexander wins the Jackson Poetry Prize.

• April: Sonia Sanchez is recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award.

• May: Ed Roberson awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

• May: Elizabeth Alexander elected to Pulitzer Prize Board.

• May: Claudia Rankine named the Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

• August: Kevin Young named as new director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

• September: Angel Nafis and Alison C. Rollins win Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships.

• November: Tyehimba Jess awarded a Lannan Foundation Literary Award.

• December: Joshua Bennett, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Danez Smith, and Patricia Smith win NEA Fellowships.


Related
• A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 2016
• The year in African American poetry, 2015
• The year in African American poetry, 2014
• The year in African American poetry, 2013
• The year in African American poetry, 2012
• The year in African American poetry, 2011

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

Morgan Hill prepares for art exhibit.

Our Fall 2016 programming included poetry readings, public thinking events, an art exhibit, and more. Here's a photo-review of our activities. The captions below each image contain links to additional write-ups on the projects.

September 13:  An exhibit on slavery references in rap music

September 21: "On the matter of Diversity" (Public Thinking Event)

Fall 2016 Haley Scholars Reading Group project

Untitled: A Gathering of Black Women Artists

On November 30, for our Public Thinking Event, I coordinated an exhibit "Untitled: A Gathering of Black Women Artists," featuring artwork by SIUE students Kiarya Glover and Morgan Hill.

Glover grew up in the south west suburbs of Chicago, IL. Glover uses her art to cast a light on the social issues within the world. Vibrant colors stand as one of her signatures as she uses them to reel the audience in, in hopes that they discover the true underlying meaning of the image. Hill was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri. She majors in Textile and Fiber Arts and minors in Art History. Her artistic thesis revolves around creating ambiguous portraits and conceptual landscapes that juxtapose classical history with contemporary representations of black identity.

Related:
• Fall2016 Programming

Public Thinking Event, re: clubs & teams

On November 16, we held a Public Thinking Event, where we discussed the value of “clubs” or “teams” that might concentrate on hands-on learning activities and academic opportunities. The topic was a result of our previous event on November 2, when we discussed barriers and opportunities for pursuits in sciences and technology.

Related:
• Fall2016 Programming

Public Thinking Event: STEM survey

On November 2, for our Public Thinking Event, we organized short questionnaires to raise questions about student engagements with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, known commonly as STEM. Students highlighted barriers and opportunities for pursuing studies in those fields.

Among other findings, we discovered that many students are interested in the creation of more clubs and teams as potential vehicles to deepen their learning experiences in STEM-related fields. We coordinated a followup concerning clubs and teams for our November 16 Public Thinking Event.

Related:
• Fall2016 Programming

Kevin Young's Books: A Visual History

Kevin Young has been one of our most productive poets and editors over the course of the last 20 years.
He's published 9 volumes of poetry; he's edited 6 books featuring various poets; he edited a collection of poems by John Berryman and co-edited Lucille Clifton's collected poems; he produced an expansive study of African American literature and culture; and he edited a catalog  of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, arguably the world's largest collection of American poetry.

In short, Kevin Young is a creativity machine, producing publication after publication after publication. Perhaps we have not given enough attention to the overall significance of his publishing record.

[Related: A list of Kevin Young's hardcover and paperback books]

In 1995, William Morrow and Company published Young's first volume Most Way Home. The book was a National Poetry Series Winner, selected by Lucille Clifton. In 1998, Zoland Books published the paperback version of Young's volume.

Multiple versions of Kevin Young's To Repel Ghosts 

Slavery, Black Writers, and creativity

If you haven't noticed, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad has received a considerable amount of attention since its publication in August. In addition to individual accolades deservedly bestowed on Whitehead for his new novel, we might consider the ways that his book signals the continued achievements of neo-slave narratives and more broadly the practice of various kinds of modern and contemporary black writers producing compositions about slavery.

In interviews with Whitehead and in commentary on The Underground Railroad, there are mentions here and there of Toni Morrison's award-winning novel Beloved (1987). Yet the interest among novelists in taking up the subject of slavery is far more extensive. Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966), Alex Haley's Roots (1976), Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada (1976), Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979), and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990) are a sample of modern works that address slavery. Those and other works comprise the creative context from which a novel like Whitehead's The Underground Railroad emerges. 

Among creative writers, novelists generally receive the most attention for their books about slavery. However, poets have collectively produced the largest body of works on slavery. For more than a century and a half, black poets produced poems about slavery.

Whitehead consulted slave narratives, most notably The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) by Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs while writing his book. He read interviews from the WPA Slave Narrative Collection, and he also read or re-read scholarly books on slavery such as Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (2005) by Fergus M. Bordewich and The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism (2014) by Edward E. Baptist.

Oh, and then consider all the films and television shows showcasing slavery. 12 Years a Slave (2013), Amistad (1997), Django Unchained (2012), Beloved (1998), the television series Underground on WGN, the television miniseries Roots (2016, 1977), the list goes on and on.

Representations of slavery constitute an expansive creative domain that provided Whitehead and many others with a wealth of artistic options, not just historical ones.

Related:
• Poems about slavery and struggles for liberation
• Colson Whitehead

Homecoming podcast: the art & consequence of conversations

I've been listening to podcasts for some time now, and recently, I've been especially tuned in to Homecoming, a fictional narrative described as "a psychological thriller." The show is produced by Gimlet Media. Among other qualities, what makes the show particularly captivating concerns the uses of conversations -- specifically, dialogue between two people -- to advance and intensify the narrative.

The story is about Heidi Bergman (actress Catherine Keener), a caseworker for a mysterious program known as the Homecoming Initiative that is designed to reintegrate soldiers into American society after returning from war. We listen in on Heidi as she's speaks with a program participant Walter Cruz (portrayed by Oscar Isaac). We also listen in on snippets of conversations as Heidi speaks with her boss, with her mother, with her boyfriend, and with her coworker.

The story is not linear, and there's no narrator to provide overall context. Instead, we must rely on what we overhear from the brief conversations that Heidi has with others in order to piece together what is taking place with this Homecoming Initiative.

Walter is told, which means listeners are also led to believe, that the facility for the Initiative is in Tampa, Florida. Yet, one fellow solider and patient raises questions about whether he, Walter, and other participants are being misled to believe they are in Tampa, when in fact they are somewhere else that the organizers for the Homecoming Initiative choose to keep secret. The soldier's skepticism and paranoia prompts us to question the reliability of the facts as well.

As we listen to phone conversations between Heidi and her overbearing boss Colin (David Schwimmer), we sense that Heidi cares about the well-being of Walter. Yet, we are not yet fully aware of what experimental practices are being used to treat the soldiers in the Homecoming Initiative. Our strong feeling that there's something important, maybe even sinister, just out of view (or earshot) is what makes this story a thriller.

What interests me is that the thrill results from the act of listening to conversations.  So many of the thrillers that we are exposed to take place on the big screen and on television. There are explosions and car chases and other modes of visually stimulating action.

But here with Homecoming, the narrative's writers -- Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg -- as well as the sound designer -- Mark Phillips -- are telling a story, or more precisely, letting us listen in on conversations as we construct our understanding of a story that is slowly, week-by-week being revealed to us.

"I wanted a whole plot where the actual meat of the story was the conversation,” Horowitz informed a reporter for the Times. Horowitz have accomplished that. Homecoming has had me thinking about the art and consequence of conversations. 

A set of books for Black Girls from East St. Louis

This semester, 4 high school girls from East St. Louis audited one of my college literature courses. They blended in and interacted with the college students -- all first-year black women -- in the class really well.  

Yesterday, on the last day of class, I gave each of the students a set of five books:

the new black by Evie Shockley
Crave Radiance by Elizabeth Alexander
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
A photo book by Deborah Willis

The students appreciated the books, and I was pleased that I was in a position to pass the selections along to them.

I've thought and blogged about Shockley's and Alexander's poetry fairly regularly over the last few years, so I'm always interested in passing along their works to students when I can. Collectively, they cover a wide range of works and adapt multiple  

 Reading, Viewing & Sharing Deborah Willis's books

I gave two students Willis's Black: A Celebration of a Culture; another student Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present; and another student Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. I also gave each of the students Wilkerson's award-winning The Warmth of Other Suns in case they are interested in becoming more aware of the major migrations of African Americans from the early to mid-20th century.   

Haley Reading Group: Reflections

[Best American Science and Nature Writing]

Alright readers, we've reached the end of our assignments on The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015. What's one idea you encountered over the course of the semester from the readings that you found most memorable, challenging, or surprising? Why?

A Checklist of Digital Humanities projects

By Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II

As we research and create digital humanities projects, we continually find inspiration and guidance from a range of sources. What follows are some of the projects that we’ve studied.

Black Press Research Collective
Founder/Director: Kim Gallon

Description: This project serves as an archive for the storage, analysis, digitization and distribution of material on the study of a global black press. The collective, comprised of an interdisciplinary group of scholars, produces scholarship and data visualizations on a variety of subjects related to black newspapers.

Black Quotidian
Curator: Matt Delmont

Description: Black Quotidian "is designed to highlight everyday moments and lives in African-American history" drawn from the pages of black newspapers. The site presents articles decades past in newspapers to correspond to the current date.

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop
Creator: Matt Daniels

Description: This project compares the lexical density of Jay Z, Outkast, Nas, Lil Kim, Drake, and 80 other rappers among each other and to William Shakespeare. Daniels examines the first 35,000 lyrics of each rapper alongside 28,829 words that comprises William Shakespeare’s entire body of work. The infograph charts the number of unique words of each artist and ranks them accordingly.

Colored Conventions
Director: P. Gabrielle Foreman

The Colored Conventions Project examines the series of national, regional, and state conventions held from 1830 until after the Civil War. The digital exhibits examine the lives of the male delegates and the broader social networks that made these conventions possible.

Mapping American Social Movements 
Director: James N. Gregory

Description: Mapping American Social Movements uses various data sources to construction visualizations on a range of social movements that took place in America during the 20th century. The site pays particular attention to 4 black social movements in America: NAACP, CORE, the Black Panther Party, Civil Rights Congress.

Blogging about Poetry in November

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• November 19: The growth of hip hop studies 
• November 7: Cindy Reed Reps East St. Louis
• November 1: Blogging about Poetry in October

Notations on the Vijay Iyer Trio's first set at Jazz at the Bistro

Vijay Iyer introduces Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums at the beginning of the show.

Last night, I caught the Vijay Iyer Trio at Jazz at the Bistro. The music was full of exciting ideas and rhythmic, improvisational movements. The trio, which includes Iyer on piano, Stephan Crump on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums, is playing at the Bistro through December 3.

In their first set, the trio moved through various works, including songs from their award-winning Accelerando. At many moments during the performance, the music was "free," which is to say, what they played was not constrained by conventional melodies and patterns we might hear with pop tunes on the radio. Instead, Iyer, Crump, and Gilmore explored an expansive body of phrasings, as they improvised and interacted with each other.

I've followed Iyer's career for some time now, and I began blogging about his music a few years ago. So, I was pleased to witness the trio live here in a show produced by Jazz St. Louis, an organization that coordinates jazz programming in the city and larger region.

Jazz at the Bistro, where the show took place, went through major renovations two years ago. It's a marvelous space, large enough to accommodate two hundred or so people, and yet arranged in a way where you feel close and connected to the musicians.

I sat up front off to the right of the stage closest to Gilmore. Crump was in the center, and Iyer was on the other side. The whole time, I felt like I was in close proximity to all of them. Maybe some of that closeness I felt was a result of the music. 

Related:
• A Notebook on Vijay Iyer