Comparing Editions of David Walker’s Abolitionist Appeal
Digitization allows researchers to trace editorial and authorial changes in archival content. Both are central to the study of this famous abolitionist pamphlet.
Banning The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 California
The Kern County, CA Board of Supervisors got a lesson in the Streisand Effect back in 1939, when they banned The Grapes of Wrath from their libraries and schools.
Filler Words and Floor Holders: The Sounds Our Thoughts Make
So, well, okay, um, like, you know, right?
Are Video Games Like Novels?
Video games as interactive storytelling? Maybe not at first glance, but as Eric Hayot explains, the interplay between game and narrative is real.
Independent Voices of the Black American Press
The digitized newspapers in this open access collection offer insight into the country’s diverse civil rights movements following the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Words on the Way In: A Retrospective
The first installment of a new column on living language: talking about COVID (talk)
Donald Goines, Detroit’s Crime Writer Par Excellence
The writer used hard-boiled fiction as a wide lens to accurately capture the widescreen disparity of Black life in the 1970s.
Censoring Ulysses
In reviewing the UK Home Office files on James Joyce's Ulysses, a historian found baffled officials afraid to bring more attention to it.
Animal Teachers and Marie de France
The twelfth century poet Marie de France used animals to teach lessons of courtly love.
Why the “Black Playboy” Folded After Just Six Issues
Duke magazine aimed to celebrate the good life for the era’s growing Black middle-class.