Reading Baldwin Using Google Trends

By Kenton Rambsy

My time at the Dallas Institute teaching “Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age” has made me consider how online resources play a vital role in shaping conversations about the late literary figure. In my last class, I discussed Baldwin’s online presence and used Google Trends to track the frequency at which people did internet searches for the writer.

Around February 2016, there was a spike in Google searches on Baldwin. That spike coincided with the release of the film I Am Not Your Negro directed by Raoul Peck that focused on Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, Remember this House, about slain civil rights activists Medger Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

After pointing out this observation, many attendees in the audience noted how after seeing the movie, they were encouraged to go and read Baldwin’s essays. In short, the movie stirred an interest in Baldwin. I was not surprised by this revelation. Movies have played a significant role introducing wider audiences to black writers. The film The Color Purple certainly raised the visibility of Alice Walker and her work, and adaptations of A Lesson Before Dying and Their Eyes Were Watching God prompted additional interest in Ernest Gaines and Zora Neale Hurston, respectively.

I used Google Trends to reveal the top 5 related searches and queries related to Baldwin. Many of the search returns reflect people’s interest in the movie. In the related topics, “Documentary film” is the top searched item and in the related queries, “i am not your negro” ranks as number one.

Some people were surprised to see contemporary writer “Ta-Nehisi Coates” rank second among the most searched topics. I noted to audience, however, that that Toni Morrison had provided a blurb, which circulated widely, for Coates’s Between the World and Me (2015). The blurb linked Coates to Baldwin, as Morrison wrote: “I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.”

Another finding that stood out was the fifth “related query.” The phrase “buckley baldwin debate” references one of Baldwin’s most popular YouTube videos. The 1965 debate has received over 1.2 million views since being posted 5 years ago. This past February, I created a post where I highlighted 10 James Baldwin speeches and interviews on YouTube.

Like many entertainers, celebrity personalities, and politicians, YouTube has also played a pivotal role in bringing attention to writers such as Baldwin. The fact that we have so many videos that showcase Baldwin’s personality contributes to his online popularity. Moreover, these videos have introduced younger generations to Baldwin.

Overall, I used Google Trends to provide a glimpse of how online sources might influence our current conceptions of Baldwin. This last class gave participants an indication of how the internet might influence how we understand, search for, and consume the works of major writers.

Related:
• Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age

James Baldwin & LitCharts

By Kenton Rambsy

My time at the Dallas Institute teaching “Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age” has made me consider how online resources play a vital role in shaping conversations about literature. After my first class, I was moved by how many middle and high school teachers were in the audience. In addition to demonstrating an interest in gaining a deeper perspective on Baldwin, some of the teachers asked questions about online resources that would help them teach Baldwin to high school students.

Among the numerous online resources, one of my favorite sites to use when examining Baldwin is LitCharts . Similar to Cliff’s Notes, Lit Charts provides summaries and plot overviews for over 500 texts and also definitions for over 130 literary devices. Lit Charts provides a different format, though, by focusing on the visual presentation of information and story summaries. Currently, the site has three pages devoted to Baldwin’s work. Two of his essays, Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time as well as his short story Sonny’s Blues”
are covered on the site.

The layout is what makes the site so appealing and useful when studying Baldwin’s work. LitCharts uses “Theme Wheels” to provide a color-coded visual overview of the themes in a given text. In this regard, LitCharts helps readers improve their close reading skills and analytical analysis by tracing the prevalence of themes as they develop throughout the book.

Often times, educators draw on supplementary materials to facilitate their classroom discussions and readings of a particular artist. Over the last decade, the resurgence of interest in Baldwin has been met with the development of many new online pedagogical materials. The sustained interest in Baldwin in literature courses has spurred the development of online sites such as Lit Charts that help guide students, general readers, and even some scholars through his works.

Related:
• Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age

Baldwin’s Paris: a site by Tyechia Lynn Thompson

By Kenton Rambsy

During my last class at the Dallas Institute, we spent time discussing Baldwin as an expatriate. To aid in our conversation I drew on Tyechia Lynn Thompson’s “Baldwin’s Paris.” The website “is a geospatial literary tool made up of over one hundred placemarks” that are “references James Baldwin has made to buildings/monuments, restaurants/cafes, arrondissements/areas/street names, and residences in Paris that appear in three novels, six collections of essays, and one short story collection published during his lifetime.”

The various locations plotted on the map guided our conversation on Baldwin and helped us better assess how Paris existed in the writer’s literary imagination. Even though the country of France is vast, we were able to pinpoint recurring locations and various neighborhoods that Baldwin seemed fond of in his works. The map provided an avenue for us to compare Baldwin’s movements across the country with those of his fictional characters.

Baldwin, like various other writers and artists during the 1940s and 50s, moved to Paris to escape institutional racism in America. Ellery Washington, writing for The New York Times, explains that “During those early years he stayed in France because, as a black man, he perceived that the ruling-class whites there simply left him alone,” and in Baldwin’s assessment “that’s what allowed him to develop as a writer.”

Related:
• Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age

A visual recap of poetry blog entries in 2017

Evie Shockley's books

Here's a recap of some of the blog entries on verse that I published over the last 12 months.

December 5: Eugene B. Redmond meets with first-year collegiate black men

November 22: Adrian Matejka participates in the River Styx Reading Series

October 18: Cindy Reed, black girls, and poetry

September 9: LeRoi Jones, Amiri Baraka, and nicknames of collegiate black women

August 10: Adrian Matejka--sampling a black interstellar history in verse

The year in African American poetry, 2017

Tyehimba Jess's Olio (2016) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. 

Like in years past, I documented news items and publications concerning African American poetry. Here's a partial list of developments that caught my attention.

Select volumes of poetry published in 2017:
• Eve L. Ewing's Electric Arches
• Cortney Lamar Charleston's Telepathologies
• Airea D. Matthews's Simulacra
• Adrian Matejka's Map to the Stars
• Shane McCrae's In the Language of My Captor
• Aja Monet's My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
• Morgan Parker's There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
• Evie Shockley's Semiautomatic
• Danez Smith Don't Call Us Dead
• Patricia Smith's Incendiary Art
• Jerry W. Ward, Jr.'s Fractal Song
• Afaa Michael Weaver's Spirit Boxing

Edited Collections
• The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks Eds. Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar,‎ Patricia Smith
• Bearden's Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden Eds. Kwame Dawes and Matthew Shenoda

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

• February: Vievee Francis is selected as the recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

• February: Phillip B. Williams is selected as recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

• March: Ishion Hutchinson wins National Book Critics Circle award for poetry for House of Lords and Commons.

• March: Simone White and Phillip B. Williams awarded Whiting Writers Awards.

• March: Claudia Rankine wins the 2016 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for Citizen.

• March: Nathaniel Mackey wins the Bobbitt Lifetime Achievement prize.

• April: Ishion Hutchinson, Gregory Pardlo, Claudia Rankine, and Afaa M. Weaver receive Guggenheim fellowships.

• April 10: Tyehimba Jess's Olio is selected for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

• April: Patricia Spears Jones receives the Jackson Poetry Prize.

• April: Robin Coste Lewis named Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

• June: Tracy K. Smith named U.S. Poet Laureate.

• August: Ed Roberson is awarded an Academy of American Poets Fellowship.

• September: Cortney Lamar Charleston receives Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship.

• November: Kevin Young becomes editor for poetry for The New Yorker.

• November: Poet Kevin Young published Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News.

• November: Shane McCrae and Rickey Laurentiis receive Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry.

• December: Adrian Matejka named Poet Laureate of Indiana.

Related:
• The year in African American poetry, 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

Coverage of Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've been tracking the coverage of a variety of writers, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, for some time now. Recently, Cornel West leveled a critique of Coates, and interestingly, West's assessments generated considerable responses. West's critiques of Coates in fact go back much further. Nonetheless, here's a roundup of a recent dust up concerning Coates's We Were Eight Years in Power (2017):

• November 29: Cornel West Doesn’t Want to Be a Neoliberal Darling - Audie Cornish - New York Times
• December 5: Here Is What's Wrong With West Hating on Coates - Charles Mudede - The Stranger
• December 05: Did Cornel West come for Ta-Nehisi Coates - Michael Harriot - The Root
• December 17: Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle - Cornel West - The Guardian
• December 17: Jelani Cobb brings receipts - Twitter Moments
• December 17: West Comes For Coates, Black Twitter Spots The Jig - Hip Hop Wired
• December 17: "...black women...have also all critiqued @tanehisicoates..." Waleed Shahid - Twitter
• December 17: "I dream of black freedom and resistance that isn’t unduly occupied..." Eve Ewing - Twitter
• December 18: Cornel West Hates on Ta-Nehisi Coates. Again. - Charles Mudede - The Stranger
• December 18: West's Sharp Critique of Coates has Internet Choosing Sides - Tanasla Kenney - Atlanta Black Star
• December 18: West Gets Real About His Beef With Coates and Barack Obama - Angela Helm - The Root
• December 18: "...ta-nehisi is required to be an advocate for all other struggles..." - Jamelle Bouie - Twitter
• December 18: West Seems to Believe Coates Is Writing From the Sidelines - Damon Young - Very Smart Brothas
• December 18: Cornel West throws intellectual shade at Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Grio
• December 19: Why Coates Keeps Talking About White Supremacy - Michael Harriot - The Root
• December 19: Ta-Nehisi Coates Deletes Twitter Account Following Dispute With Cornel West - AP - Time
• December 19: Coates Deletes Twitter Account Amid Feud With West - Jennifer Schuessler - New York Times
• December 19: The Issue With Cornel West Criticizing Ta-Nehisi Coates - Dwayne Wong - HuffPost
• December 19: "I’m so angry. Some of y’all forget that we writers are human..." - Nikole Hannah-Jones - Twitter
• December 19: "...thread Ta-Nehisi Coates tweeted in response to attack by West..." - Michael Eric Dyson - Twitter
• December 19: "I’m tired of Black thinkers committing discursive drive-bys..." - Brittney Cooper - Twitter
• December 20: "West either did NOT read the work. Or he did not read it charitably..." - Lester Spence - Twitter
• December 20: "Coates is being dragged by progressive critics as 'neoliberal'..." - Crystal Marie Fleming - Twitter
• December 20: West, Coates, post-Obama black public intellectual - C. Emba & K. Attiah - Washington Post
• December 20: Cornel West’s Reckless Criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ismail Muhammad - Slate
• December 20: West failed to “ether” Coates in the most pointless feud ever - D. Watikins - Salon
• December 20: Cornel West’s attacks on Ta-Nehisi Coates, explained - German Lopez - Vox
• December 20: "OMG this **literally** the most hilarious and enjoyable..." - Melissa Harris-Perry - Twitter
• December 20: Coates quits Twitter after public row with West - Jamiles Lartey - The Guardian
• December 20: Neither West nor Coates is giving us his best - Brando Simeo Starkey - The Undefeated
• December 20: "I take one day off Twitter..." - W. Kamau Bell - Twitter
• December 21: Not Coates’s Fault White Liberals Anointed Him Their Prophet - David Marcus - The Federalist
• December 21: Forget Coates vs. West--Confront U.S. Empire - Naomi Klein, Opal Tometi - The Intercept
• December 21: Coates vs. West: Feud has its roots in long tradition of black intellectuals - Peniel Joseph - CNN
• December 21: West attacks Coates and Black Twitter weighs in - Black Enterprise
• December 21: West-Coates beef is an episode of 'Housewives' - George M. Johnson - The Grio
• December 21: West attacks Coates and black twitter weighs in - Selena Hill - Black Enterprise
• December 22: Coates, West, and the debate over America’s soul - Jane Coaston - Vox
• December 22: Past debates echo in split between West and Coates - John Eligon - New York Times
• December 22: Black academics, activists give their verdict - Rogers, Cullors, Anderson, Patel - The Guardian
• December 22: How Cornel West 'All Lives Mattered’ Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Work - Detrick Manning - Blavity
• December 22: Coates and West in Jackson - Robin D. G. Kelley - Boston Review
• December 23: Cornel West: A lone man arguing with himself - Tre Johnson - The Grio
• December 25: Cornel West: Neoliberalism has failed us - Hope Reese - JSTOR Daily
• December 26: Trial of Black Nationalism in debate between Coates and West - James Livingston - Politics Letters
• December 26: Coates vs. West Hardly Qualifies as Debate - Jason L. Riley - Wall Street Journal
• December 28: Cornel West Has a Jewish Problem - Yishai Schwartz - Haaretz
• January 1: Dr. Cornel West: The Biggest Crab in the Barrel - Nikki Johnson Huston - HuffPost
• January 5: A prophet is rarely welcome in his own village - Wilmer J. Leonard III - Pittsburgh Courier
• January 17: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Cornel West’s One-Sided War - Swati Sharma - The Atlantic

Related:
• Coverage of books, authors & special topics
• A Notebook on Ta-Nehisi Coates

The outstanding editorial work of Joseph Illidge in 2017

This week, the comic book publisher Lion Forge will release Summit, another comic book in their Catalyst Prime universe. That book follows other works in the series--Noble, Superb, Accell, Incidentals, Kino, and Astonisher. The outstanding editorial force behind those Catalyst Prime books has been Joseph Illidge, senior editor at Lion Forge.

Illidge has coordinated to get African American, white, Latino, Asian, women, and queer writers and visual artists together on this single comic book universe. As a result, he's orchestrated a really important moment in the push for diversity in comics.

What Illidge has done this year would likely gain even more attention if Marvel and DC Comics did not dominate so much of comic book news. But whatever. I'm glad I've gotten a chance to witness Illidge's efforts, as he's effectively raised the bar on serious efforts concerning diversity in this crucial field of representation.

I had been aware, to a small degree, of some of Illidge's previous editorial work and especially his writings on Comic Book Resources. It was there, while reading his work, that I realized that this was a guy who was really knowledgeable about the histories and politics of comic books.

In many cases, I suppose a knowledgeable black person on comics might keep producing commentary or in some rare cases, as with Ta-Nehisi Coates and now Evan Narcisse, receive opportunities to write a title. Illidge has in fact written comics, but now he was destined for something else as well.

In 2015, he was hired to do freelance work for Lion Forge. Someone there apparently realized the person they had on their hands. In 2016, Illidge was named a senior editor at the company. Somewhere around this time was when he began assisting and likely taking a lead on identifying writers and artists to produce the Catalyst Prime Universe.

In October 2016, at the New York Comic Con, Illidge announced the launch of the project with Lion Forge. Publicity on Catalyst Prime began to appear in subsequent months. A one-shot comic book, Catalyst Prime: The Event, co-written by Illidge and Christopher Priest, was released on free comic day, May 6, 2017.

That one-shot gave glimpses of characters from the various titles in the Catalyst Prime Universe. So throughout 2017, we've been introduced to the characters and narratives from the books.
Noble #1 was released on May 3; Accell #1 on June 14; Superb #1 on July 19; Incidentals #1 on August 23; Astonisher #1 on October 4; and Kino #1 on November 29. I've followed Noble and Superb the closest. I even established a reading/study group on those two books for high school students in East St. Louis.

Other aspects of the Catalyst Prime Universe have caught my attention. The art of Accell is truly captivating. Too, I've noted the remarkable series of variant covers by Khary Randolph and Emilio Lopez.

Variant covers by Khary Randolph and Emilio Lopez

Who assembled the many writers and artists? Who edited their contributions? Who's been responsible for trying to make sure there are loose connections among the titles?

I'm sure there are several folks at Lion Forge helping produce the overall series. And we know that one of central figure is Illidge. The many years he spent working on various projects ended up paying dividends here on the Catalyst Prime Universe.

A lot of times people rightly celebrate diversity in terms of the appearance of a non-white character here or there. We rightly point out the progress of placing a woman or queer lead character or writer for this or that big-time project. All of that is important, really important.

But Illidge sends our minds somewhere else as well. He responds to the questions: how do you apply expert knowledge about diversity into the production of a major comic book project? What kind of appointments do you make when you are aware of multiple diverse writers and artists? How do you address histories of exclusion and troubling stereotypes?  

Trying to wrap my mind around the creative and critical ways Illidge has responded to these questions as editor for Catalyst Prime has been an exciting, extended intellectual exercise for me in 2017.

Related:
• A Notebook on comic books

Data Mining James Baldwin's Short Fiction

By Kenton Rambsy

In my second class at the Dallas institute, I focused on Baldwin’s only collection of short fiction Going to Meet the Man. In this class, we drew on Franco Moretti’s concept of “distant reading” to discuss our observations about the writer’s overall body of work.

Even though many people in the audience were aware of Baldwin, I suspect that everyone had not spent as much time with his short fiction. We used Voyant Tools to read Baldwin’s work “from a distance” to get a bird’s eye view of the late writer’s work. Where close reading relies on subjective analysis of what a single piece of literature means, distant reading compiles objective data about many, many works. This method facilitated our analysis of recurring word choices and how those words correspond to various metaphors.

[Related: James Baldwin and Google Scholar Citation Rates]

Overall, there is no substitute for actually reading a text and understanding how a writer uses words to craft a narrative. In the case of this class, however, digital tools proved to be beneficial. With only 2 hours in the course, digital tools facilitated our ability to gain a sense of Baldwin’s entire body of short fiction and focus on two specific stories as representative examples.

Voyant is useful for those people who may not have substantial experience in computer programming. We were able to use digitized texts to complete a range of functions such as identifying word concordances in his stories and creating visualizations to graphically model Baldwin’s work. The various interfaces helped us to place a special emphasis on his words. In short, we were able to perform a comparative analysis of all of Baldwin’s short fiction.

We focused on Baldwin’s stories, “Going to Meet the Man,” and “Sonny’s Blues.” In addition to being one of his most frequently anthologized short stories, “Sonny’s Blues,” (13, 723 words) is also one Baldwin’s longest stories, second only to “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” (17,043 words).

We began our discussion by using the correlation functions to assess the relationships with several recurring words throughout Baldwin’s collections. The correlation function is “a measure of how closely term frequencies correlate with scores approaching 1 mean that term frequencies vary in sync and scores approaching -1 mean that terms frequencies vary inversely.” Since “boy” and “man” were the second overall correlations, we had a discussion about the significance of Baldwin’s representations of male characters.

I showed audience members a chart I generated using Voyant. The chart uses bubbles to visually represent Baldwin’s deployment of gender specific terms throughout his stories. I created a visualization that charted words such as “father,” “son,” “brother,” “man,” and “boy.” The bubbleline function shows where the word is used throughout the stories. The larger the bubble, the more frequently the word is used at the particular instance.

Our discussion of “Going to Meet the Man” and “Sonny’s Blues” gave us a chance to contrast his representations of male characters.

In “Going to Meet the Man,” Baldwin narrates a story from the perspective of a white police office. The officer is lying in bed with his wife. He seems frustrated by the growing racial tensions in town, and it’s affecting his ability to be intimate with his wife. He reflects back on a time when he witnessed a lynching of a black man. He recollects on the experience in an eerily manner as he describes his interactions with his father and other town’s people. The experience seemed as if it was a coming of age experience about how witnessing racism and contributing to racialized violence perverts white people’s sense of humanity.

In “Sonny’s Blues,” he follows an unnamed narrator who struggles to accept his younger musician brother, Sonny. Sonny fell victim to drugs and was arrested during a bust in Greenwich Village. After Sonny is released, his older brother reflects on his coming of age experiences with his brother. After attending a live show where Sonny was the featured instrumentalist, only then the older brother is able to understand how the spiritual significance of music.

In this class about Baldwin’s short stories, I wanted to highlight the manner in which Baldwin dealt with gendered interactions. Like Toni Morrison typically focuses on women characters and mother and daughter relationships, Baldwin primarily focuses on intimate relationships between male characters. Voyant Tools enhanced our discussions of Baldwin’s short fiction through the use of visual models.

Related:
• Reading James Baldwin in the Digital Age

Courses on the Black Arts Movement

The other day on Facebook, poet and scholar Kathy Lou Schultz was mentioning that she'll teach a course on the Black Arts Movement in the upcoming semester at the University of Memphis, where she's a professor. Some years back, I taught courses on the Black Arts Movement. Over the years though, I have pursed other classes, while including aspects of Black Arts--most notably units on Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka in most of my classes.

I decided to provide a brief round-up of some Black Arts courses and who they were taught by that I noticed online.

• Spring 2018: Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement - Kathy Lou Schultz - University of Memphis
• Fall 2017: The Black Arts Movement - Nagueyalti Warren - Emory
• 2017-2018: The Black Arts Movement - Julia Rabig - Darmouth
• 2017-2018: The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement - Margo Crawford - Cornell

• Summer 2016: The Black Arts Movement and the Black Aesthetic - Mike Sell - Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Spring 2016: The New Black Arts Movement - Asali Solomon - Haverford College

• Fall 2015: The Black Arts Movement - Hank Williams - Hunter College
• Spring 2013: The Black Arts Movement - John Keene - Rutgers-Newark

Related:
• A Notebook on the Black Arts Era

Scenes from the East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club: Weeks 9 - 12

A collection of images from weeks 9 - 12 of our after-school digital humanities club.

[Related: Scenes from the East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club: Weeks 1 - 8]

Week #9: November 8

Week #10: November 15

Week #11: November 29

Week #12: December 6

Related:
• The East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club

A photo-review of arts & humanities programming (Fall 2017)

This semester, our Fall 2017 programming included poetry readings, a conference for high school black girls, various Public Thinking events, an online reading group, various exhibits, and an after-school digital humanities club. Here's a photo-review of our activities. (Click on the captions below each image for additional information about the projects).

Public Thinking Event: How universities respond to racial incidents (September 20)

Black Student Union Demonstration (September 21)

A Digital look at postcards from the Andrew J. Theising Collection (September 26)

William J. Harris discusses Amiri Baraka for the St. Louis Book Club

Phil Dunlap, Director of Education and Community Outreach for Jazz St. Louis and Gerald Early prepare for presentation by William J. Harris. 

Last night, I sat in on the Jazz St. Louis Book Club, a monthly discussion group hosted by Gerald Early, Merle King Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University. The group was discussing Amiri Baraka's Blues People (1963), but I was mainly attending because I heard at the last minute that my former professor William J. Harris would be the special guest. The group arranged to have Professor Harris, who lives in Brooklyn, offer comments via Skype.

I've known Professor Harris for about 18 years now, and we've talked about a wide range of subjects, like jazz, poetry, various books, and black history and culture in general. The subject of Baraka and his work has persisted through all of that. So how could I pass up a chance to hear him discussing one of Baraka's many key works here in St. Louis?

The discussion went really well. Before calling Professor Harris, there were some general comments about the book. Professor Early said that he first read Blues People in high school, and he noted that he remembered seeing the book advertised in the back pages of the magazines Liberator and Freedomways. He noted that his older sisters were involved with SNCC, so he was aware that everyone "in the Civil Rights crowd" had read the book as well.

I was fascinated by the idea that a common couple of African American magazines were where people heard of new books. I wondered what the presence or absence of such sources might mean for the high school and college students I work with now. I also wondered what "crowd" might influence what those young people are reading and thinking about these days. And too, I wondered what books they might look back on published 50 and 30 and 15 years ago.

Digital Humanities Club: Week 12

On December 6, we wrapped up our semester of activities with our East St. Louis Digital Humanities club. We closed the session by having the students reflect on their experiences. We also gifted the students with books.

Over the course of the semester, we've had a good time talking about and working with technology, especially utilizing Audacity. The high school students were really invested in producing audio mixes. We concentrated on blending excerpts of poetry with instrumentals.

Each of the college student team leaders spent some time talking with one or two of the high school students about their thoughts about the first semester. The team leaders reported to me later that the conversations went well and that the high school students expressed really enjoying themselves during the program.

I want to push a little harder though. I'm glad that the students like the program, but I still see areas for improvement that I hope to address moving forward. Having said that, we've come a long way from where the program began. There's been steady development and incremental growth.

I was pleased to be in a position to give away books to the students. I allowed them to choose a couple of books, and I asked them to discuss with our group why they chose what they chose.

The most important part of the session was listening to them reveal that they rarely have quiet moments during the day to discuss their interests and ideas concerning reading materials. I took a note to my self that I'll make sure quiet moments for reflections are embedded in our weekly meetings next semester.

Week #12 reflection from graduate student, Rae'Jean Spears:

Twelve weeks of the East St. Louis project have come and gone. Throughout all of the changes with the Digital Humanities Club over the semester, the experience has proved to be a great one. From working with students who thought technology was “boring” or “only for men” during week one of the club to having students excited about coming back from winter break to continue working with audio editing speaks volumes within itself. From the excitement conveyed through the students, I can only wonder if we’ve begun to cultivate one of the creative geniuses of the future.

Related:
• The East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club

James Baldwin and Google Scholar Citation Rates

By Kenton Rambsy

On Wednesday, December 6, I led the first of a 3-part class on James Baldwin at the Dallas Institute. In this first course, I gave participants an overview of the life and works of James Baldwin and also focused on numerical data related to citations in order to demonstrate the importance of literary criticism and the extent to which we can track references in a digital world.

I introduced attendees to Nathaniel Conroy’s Metacanon, which is an interactive canon generator that acts as an alternative to the “Greatest Books of All Time” lists by measuring “the extent to which a particular work has been the object of scrutiny by scholars and awards committees.” On the first day, I also shared some findings with class attendees from Google Scholar about citation rates.

Even though Metacanon takes more factors into consideration with its rankings, Google Scholar still acts as a central repository that collects a large amount of data on the citations of a given work. We used the information from the site to identify which of Baldwin’s works have received the most citations and to guide our conversation about his life’s works. Similar to Metacanon, we used Google Scholar to approximate his literary significance and gauge the extent to which critics engage his work.

Rae’Jean Spears: Notes on the first semester

Graduate student Rae'Jean Spears facilitates conversation at conference for high school black girls, October 2017.

My lead graduate student Rae’Jean Spears has just finished her first semester here in the department of English. In addition to pursuing her formal studies, she’s been an integral contributor to various programming projects.

Rae’Jean is a 2017 graduate of Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, where she majored in English and was a UNCF/Mellon Fellow. This semester, she has taken three graduate courses: "Modern Literary Theory" with Professor Heather Johnson, "Black Diasporic Feminisms" with Professor Elizabeth Cali, and "Gender, Language, and Pedagogy" with Anushiya Ramaswamy.

Rae’Jean explained that her first semester of graduate school "has been one of the most academically challenging semesters of my life; but, I've learned more about myself as a scholar than ever before. I'm excited to see how I'll grow over the next few years."

Rae'Jean discusses writing and tutoring with class of first-year black men, August 2017

As part of her graduate assistantship, Rae’Jean has served as the writing tutor for students in a program at the university for first-year black men and black women. Of course, she has offered the students advice well beyond writing instruction. In many cases, she has served as a big sister of sorts, hence we refer to as “the” sister-scholar.

"While my academic studies are fulfilling,” Rae’Jean said, “getting to mentor the students, especially the young women, is an added bonus. Being one of the only black women they see at a PWI, I realize how important my presence is and take pride in being afforded the opportunity to build relationships with them."

The other part of Rae’Jean’s GA has involved her assisting me with various projects this semester. For one, she was a chaperon for undergraduates on a trip to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. She also served as a facilitator during a conference for high school black girls. Working with the high school students, she said, "reminded me why I am in graduate school and why my voice will be an important one."

High school student (left), Rae'Jean Spears (center), and undergraduate student Amelia Williams talk during East St. Louis Digital Humanities club, September 2017  

Each Wednesday during the course of the semester, Rae’Jean worked with an after-school program -- the East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club -- on technology for high school students. She collaborated with undergraduates, and she produced a series of weekly reflections. Furthermore, Rae’Jean assisted me with a reading/study group for high school students focusing on comic books. We read Noble #1 - #4 with some of the students and Superb #1 - #4 with another group.

"I would use one word to describe my semester at SIUE," said Rae’Jean, "growth." She went on to explain that, "Everything from being in a class as the only black person to working in an office for all black students, has challenged me and encouraged me to grow in both my own scholarly ideas and overall life goals. I'm convinced that the things that I have learned in just 4 months couldn't have been learned elsewhere, and I look forward to see what the rest of my time here will bring."

Rae'Jean discusses technology with high student during East St. Louis Digital Humanities club, November 2017

Related:
• Rae'Jean Spears: the critical facilitator and conversationalist

Digital East St. Louis showcase

Today was the closing event for "Digital East St. Louis" (well, at least one version of the program, which began with middle school students). “Digital East St. Louis” was a three-year National Science Foundation-funded project designed to implement place-based learning with the purpose of increasing interest in STEM among African American students.

[Related: Project website]

The showcase gave the middle school students opportunities to discuss the projects that they have been working on for a few years now. Various people attended, including several students from some of my college courses.

Black Graduation Ceremony Fall 2017

On December 4, my colleagues Kelly Jo Karnes, Earleen Patterson, and I organized the black graduation fall ceremony for upcoming graduates at SIUE. Similar to the spring 2017 event and the spring 2016 one, the event went really well.

Undergraduate Derric Roberts gave student remarks. Kathryn Bentley, for Theater and Dance, gave a lively and powerful keynote address.

The photos are by SIUE university photographer Howard Ash.

Coverage on another, different run of the Black Panther

Like almost everyone else, I'm looking forward to the Black Panther film in February. But I have to say that I am just as excited about another, different run of the title. Writer Evan Narcisse is going to have a run on the early years of T'Challa, who's widely known now as Black Panther. I've followed Narcisse's commentary for some time now, so I'm intrigued, actually, excited to see his work in an alternative context.

How often do you get to read the artistic work of a knowledgeable black comic book critic? Rarely, if ever. And as an added bonus, he's writing on Black Panther?

The artwork is by Paul Renaud.

Here's a roundup of some of the coverage on the lead up to his debut. More to come, of course.

2017
• December 8: Rise of the Black Panther: Rise and Shine - Dominic Griffin - Marvel
• December 5: T'Challa 101: A Rise of the Black Panther Sketchbook - TJ Dietsch - Marvel
• November 6: Evan Narcisse Speaks On Rise Of The Black Panther - FanBros TV - YouTube
• November 6: Black Panther Prequel teases tension with Captain America - Steve Cherkassky - The Real Stan Lee
• October 11: Rise of the Black Panther - Justin Snyder - Marvel
• October 4: Evan Narcisee is writing Rise of the Black Panther for Marvel - Heidi MacDonald - Comics Beat
• October 4: Marvel Reveals Secrets of Black Panther's Origin in New Comic - Justin Carter - Comic Book Resource
• October 4: Black Panther's Origins Will Be Explored in a New Comic - Rob Bricken - io9
• October 4: Black Panther Prequel Coming From Marvel - Jim Dandy - Den of Geek

2016
• December 5: A Note to Readers - Evan Narcisse - io9

Related:
• A Notebook on comic books

Haley Reading Group - reflections

[The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2015)]

Haley scholar online readers, we've arrived at the end of our activities for the semester. Thanks for participating.

Over the last few months, we read and commented on Rebecca Boyle’s “The Health Effects of a World Without Darkness," Elizabeth Kolbert’s "The Big Kill," Amy Maxmen’s "Digging Through the World’s Oldest Graveyard," Kim Todd’s "Curious," Sarah Schweitzer’s "Chasing Bayla," and Barry Yeoman’s "From Billions to None."

What article most challenged your thinking? That is, which article, among those we read, prompted you to re-think preconceived ideas or make new and unusual connections? How so?