Archive - History of Black Writing Blog
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Black Literary History Making
The HBW Blog published regularly for ten years from 2011-2021 at the URL https://projecthbw.ku.edu. During that time, it served as a major forum for the exchange of information and ideas, as well as a robust network for scholars, teachers, and students from different disciplines around the world.
Guest contributors include leading scholars and writers, but most of the posts were conceived of, researched, and written by HBW's staff of undergraduate and graduate students. Its content consists of feature editorials, book reviews, memorials, and coverage of HBW programming. Altogether, 95 writers contributed more than 750 posts.
The HBW Blog Archive is searchable by topic, month and year, and contributor name.
| Blog Post/Link | Date |
|---|---|
| This week in ICYMI: Project HBW Remembers Katrina 10 Years Later On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast, displacing hundreds of thousands of people in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. New Orleans, a city with an average elevation 6 feet below sea level, was at a particular risk of flooding. By the time the storm subsided, Katrina had claimed almost 2,000 lives... | |
| William Shakespeare and Amiri Baraka Many years ago at a dinner party I proposed that Shakespeare got too much attention, that commentary on this Elizabethan writer was just so much bardolatry, that Shakespeare’s contemporaries and other writers deserved generous critical attention. The honored guest at dinner happened to be a famous, very erudite Marxist. He fixed his bright dark eyes on me, saying “Young man, Shakespeare has been read and misread, but he can never be read too much nor sufficiently.” The instructive arrow, shot by C. L. R. James, is still lodged in my memory. Bold superficiality is one of the banes of youth... | |
| A Great American Protest Novel “There is in Southern white man, distributed almost as thickly as the dialect,” James Agee wrote in 1936, “an epidemic capability of sadism which you would have to go as far to match and whose chief basis is possibly, but only possibly, and only one among many, a fear of the Negro, deeper and more terrible than any brief accounting can suggest or explain. The flaw of sadism can turn its victims loose into extremities which the gaudiest reports have only begun to suggest.”.. | |
| Robert “Bob” Hemenway (1941-2015), Literary Scholar and Mentor – A Special Tribute from the Project on the History of Black Writing The Project on the History of Black Writing is deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Hemenway. Best known for his work as a biographer of Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Hemenway established himself as a major literary scholar early in his career. His book, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, was named one of the Best Books of 1978 by the New York Times, and was winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award in Biography as well as the Rembert W. Patrick Memorial Prize of the Florida Historical Society.. | |
| The Brain and Literature Dr. Ward writes: David Gooblar’s short article “Narrative in the Classroom” encourages us to think about what we are transmitting to our students when we teach stories. By following links in his article, I was able to discover the important neuroscience report on “Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain.” .. | |
| Asili Ya Nadhiri’s Digital Poetry and Performance After both reading and listening to Nadhiri’s tonal drawing “wandering here in this dark where it eating up the light” (http://wp.me/p3kMgy-fN), I observed: .. | |
| The Project on the History of Black Writing’s 2015 Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement Summer Institute In a matter of days, Project HBW’s Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement NEH Summer Institute will kick off. Beginning Sunday, twenty-five scholars from around the country will join HBW for the two week long celebration of contemporary black poetry. While many of the sessions will be exclusive to the Summer Scholars, the institute will host a series of events open to the public throughout the institute. See the flyer above for dates and times of the public events – we would hate for you to miss out! As these events are open to the public, please spread the word! We look forward to seeing you all soon... | |
| Celebrating the Lives of Norman Jordan and Samuel Allen The world lost two great minds in the month of June: Norman Jordan and Samuel Allen (aka Paul Vesey). .. | |
| ICYMI: The Last 2 Weeks in Black Writing (6/29 – 7/12) – HBW was saddened by the passing of author, journalist, educator and GEMS subject John A. Williams, whose invaluable contributions to African American letters cannot be overlooked. .. | |
| A Reflection on the Life of John A. Williams by Houston Baker John A. Williams was NOT, as anyone who had extensive dealing with him knows, an “easy” person to get along with. Somebody on Creation Day uploaded the “John Model” with seven times the necessary and sufficient supply of surly paranoia. I think few who spent any long time interacting with John would radically dispute this characterization. .. |