Coming up on Tuesday, November 12th...
This virtual forum features Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, Trinity Rogers, and Brigitte Fielder of Taught by Literature, a collaborative digital humanities project that re-centers Black women writers, beginning with the work of African American author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The speakers will use Dunbar-Nelson’s short story, “His Heart’s Desire” (1900) to explore the challenges scholars face in recovering little-known African American texts when confronted by multiple textual variants, manuscripts without dates, and a readership unfamiliar with an author’s work. A remarkable short story about a boy who wants a doll, “His Heart’s Desire” is one of twelve short stories Dunbar-Nelson wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about children living in a poor urban neighborhood. The stories were inspired by her work teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in New York City.
Lutes, Burgher, Rogers, and Fielder will discuss Taught by Literature’s comprehensive digital resource for educators based on two different versions of Dunbar-Nelson’s story──the original written during the 1890s and published in a 1900 newspaper and a revision published at a later date──as well as its significance for the histories of boyhood, race, and material culture.
You can learn more and register for this virtual event here.
