SS: Can you tell us about the History of Black Writing (HBW) project and its origins?

AH: HBW started as a literary recovery and digital humanities project. It was inspired by my predecessor’s experience in graduate school, where she was taught canonical works but felt there was more to the tradition. She also grew up around a prolific, but understudied, writer in her hometown, which drove her to interrogate the tradition. It began as a bibliography, a catalog of African American literature, and then shifted into a digital archive. It’s about using big data to explore the tradition more broadly, not just by the way scholarship typically defines it.

 

SS: What has been the main focus of HBW over the years?

AH: Over its 40-year history, HBW has highlighted writers, supported professional development through workshops, and focused on training graduate students. Early on, we held institutes for high school teachers to teach Toni Morrison when her work wasn’t being taught much in high schools. Since then, we've expanded to faculty institutes and training for graduate students in both traditional literary research and digital humanities methods.

 

SS: How do you decide what goes into the archive?

AH: The goal is comprehensiveness, so there are no distinctions in terms of literature, just African American fiction. We exclude serialized texts and short story collections, but anything published as a novel [goes]. We [used to] catalog everything, but in 2023, we stopped cataloging because it was becoming too much to keep up with. The literature is constantly evolving with new publications, and it’s exciting, but we had to set limits for practicality.

 

SS: What’s a significant moment for you in HBW?

AH: One of the highlights has been creating intellectual spaces for scholars. For example, the Hurston Institute and a collaboration with Afro-PWW, a digital publishing program at the University of Illinois. It was incredible to see one of the scholars from the institute publish a project on Hurston, focusing on a small town outside of New Orleans. Those moments, seeing scholars grow and get their work out there, are really fulfilling.

 

SS: How could graduate students get involved in HBW?

AH: HBW has an SAA each year, and with external funding, we hire additional students. This past summer, we also hired a graduate student for specific summer projects.