My key finding was that focusing exclusively on “the field” when referring to African American literary studies was not the best or most accurate move, since that term does not capture the range of topics and competing areas of inquiry that shape the discipline. Rather than concentrate on “the field” as a single entity, it became more productive to think in terms of subfields in African American literary studies in order to understand the varied and sometimes competing areas of study.
Early on, as I considered these ideas, I stumbled onto a 1984 bibliography, "Studies in Afro-American Literature" produced by Blount for Callaloo. Blount’s bibliography was followed by a series of additional bibliographies in Callaloo by other scholars. Blount’s bibliography includes introductory notes where he provides context for what he assembled.
Blount’s bibliography and the subsequent ones gave me a clearer view of developments based on section labels such as “Studies in Poetry,” “Studies in Fiction,” and “Studies in Individual Authors.” These categories indicated distinct areas of study. In the world of criticism that Blount and others highlighted, there were subfields, which offered a more precise way of understanding scholarly activity than the idea of a single unified field.
Without coming across that bibliographic work done by Blount, I would have had a harder time arriving at new realizations about specialization and differentiation in African American literary studies.
Related
Additional:
• Academics Remember Renowned Literary Scholar Marcellus Blount (The EDU Ledger)
• Marcellus Blount clips (Columbia Center for Oral History Research)
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