The Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW) has been in the forefront of research and inclusion efforts in higher education for twenty-five years. Founded in 1983 at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, HBW has over 900 novels in its collection published by African American authors since William Wells Browns Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter (1853). The ultimate goal of the project is to collect every novel ever published by an African American writer.

This blog serves to extend the efforts of HBW by identifying and highlighting topics related to African American and American literature that various audiences might find interesting. The blog also seeks to shed new light on the holdings in HBW’s novel collection and stimulate more conversations about what we can learn by studying a large number of black artistic compositions produced over 150 years.

Early on, we will focus on black literary history, contemporary developments in the production of black writing, digital humanities, and literary scholarship that pertains to African American writers.

For now, we will publish new entries on Tuesdays and Thursdays