At the “Networking Black Print” conference, I gave a presentation, “Your Mind on Black Bibliography,” where I discussed a clear-cut example, for me, of the value of Black bibliography, how a bibliography reshaped my approach to discussing African American literary studies. Rather than relying on the more commonly accepted phrase “the field,” I’m now more inclined to talk about subfields and the broader discipline of African American literary studies.
From Bibliographic Categories to Subfields
I encountered Marcellus Blount’s “Studies in Afro-American Literature: An Annual Annotated Bibliography, 1983,” published in Callaloo. Blount’s bibliography, which includes an introduction, organizes entries into the following categories: “Interviews,” “General Studies,” “Studies in Poetry,” “Studies in Fiction,” “Studies in Drama,” “Studies in Autobiography,” and “Studies in Individual Authors.” I came across the piece while thinking through the limits of the term “field” to describe what appeared to me to be a more diverse and varied set of intellectual practices.
When we refer to African American literary studies as “the field,” we sometimes inadvertently flatten or downplay differences among various areas of study within the discipline. We also risk overlooking the distinct challenges that particular subfields face.
As a now long-time resident of St. Louis, I often compare African American literary studies subfields to neighborhoods. In this city, neighborhoods matter, with some faring better than others. I’ve also heard scholars speak about clusters of neighborhoods, how adjacent areas support and strengthen one another.
From Subfields to Bibliographers
Subfields operate in ways similar to neighborhoods. They have their own histories, their own strengths and weaknesses, and, notably, they receive unequal attention and resources.
As I thought more about subfields, I realized that all of them are, in part, sustained by bibliographers. In Author Studies, we have Richard Wright bibliographers and Toni Morrison bibliographers; in Period Studies, we have Harlem Renaissance bibliographers and Black Arts Movement bibliographers; and in Genre Studies, we have Neo-slave narrative bibliographers and Afrofuturism bibliographers.
A couple of years ago, I spoke with my students about an article I had recently completed on Malcolm X. I brought the books I used for the article to class. The guys were excited to look through them. Many of them, who had only encountered
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, were intrigued to see collections of speeches, biographies, art books, historical studies, and more.
From Bibliographers to Bibliographic Mapping
Moving from bibliographers, we might consider bibliographic mapping, a term I use to describe the work of organizing and tracing bodies of texts across time, genre, and format. These days, I’ve been assembling a bibliography of Black Panther books published between 2016 and 2026. I’m examining individual comic issues, trade paperbacks, hardcover editions, novelizations, and more.
From Bibliographic Mapping to Maps
That work has also led me from bibliographic mapping to actual maps. Early in his run on Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi Coates introduced a new map of Wakanda, which has circulated across multiple publications since 2016. In a sense, we can quite literally engage in bibliographic mapping of his map.
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