Archive - History of Black Writing Blog
The Banner image for the HBW Blog, which was published from 2011-2021.
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 |
|---|---|
| The Coverage Of… The Radical Martin Luther King In the summer of 2005, I had the privilege to attend the Tennessee American Legion Boys State program where I learned about state government, took part in leadership activities, and became more aware of what role I could play in the American political system. This particular summer stands out to me because during this summer program, I began to think critically about Martin Luther King and understand the radical negotiations he made as one of the leading figureheads of the Civil Rights Movement. .. | |
| The Significance of Novel Time Period Novels, in many ways, serve as historical sketches of black culture as authors re-envision a range of significant moments from the past. The mid-nineteenth century stands out as a recurring focal point for numerous writers with several novels set in the mid-1800s or with flashbacks to the Post-Civil War era .. | |
| The Prominence of NYC, Chicago, and California Given the larger history of slavery in America, the South has always figured prominently into the geographic settings of African American literature since the publication of William Wells Brown’s Clotel in 1853. .. | |
| The Growing Importance of Formal Education Every living author in our study that has published a novel since 1980 has completed a college degree of some sort. Prior to 1980, it was less likely that authors of major African American novels published had attended college. Notably, over half of the novelists who published books after 1980 received advanced graduate degrees. .. | |
| 49 African American Novels on Wikipedia The following list showcases novels in our “100 Novels Project” and their corresponding Wikipedia pages. Out of 100 novels in our project, 49 novels have Wikipedia pages of some sort. .. | |
| The Growing Importance of Authors Awarded Fellowships The Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) have been consistent sources of support for large numbers of critically acclaimed African American novelists. Approximately 54% out of the 63 novelists in our study have received a fellowship of some kind—seven have received the MacArthur Foundation award, thirteen have received a Guggenheim, and eleven have received NEA awards. .. | |
| The Evolution of Novel Covers Since winning the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) has gone on to gain wide attention in both academic and pop culture circles. he 1998 movie adaptation of the novel starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover has even influenced subsequent print editions, particularly, the design of the novel covers. .. | |
| The Color Purple and Wikipedia The 1983 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) has been produced as a major motion picture starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery, and Oprah Winfrey; as a Broadway musical starring Fantasia Barrino, Renee Elise Goldsberry, and Kingsley Leggs; and as a BBC 4 (domestic British Radio) radio broadcast starring Nadine Marshall. Each version–the novel, the movie, and the musical—has fairly developed wiki entries, making The Color Purple one of the more fully developed and diversely covered works on Wikipedia out of the 100 novels in our study. .. | |
| Character Traits of Novel Protagonists A cursory look at the 100 novels in our study reveal that 55% of the protagonists are women; 45% of the novels are narrated from first person point of view, and 56% of the protagonists reside in northern cities. .. | |
| Notable Findings Concerning 100 Black Novels Over the next two weeks, I am providing a series of blog entries that highlight notable findings concerning 100 novels from our collection. The entries seek to provide information on some of the preliminary findings of our research concerning a large number of African American novels published between 1850 and 2010. .. |