research post 2025-11-21
"I'm a man of exquisite tastes."
A good week to do Black digital things.
Still at ASA, but will be back at Office Hours (Wed, 12 noon, EST) next week!!
Meanwhile…
I spent last week in writing ceremony. I cleared my desktop. I reorganized by Scriveners. I discovered a treasure trove of research notes and ideas sitting in an old copy of Google Keep. I found new ways to link my reMarkable up to the other work I am doing. And I dug deep into practice. Practice the work you want to do, practice the work you want to create. I arted, as pierre bennu likes to say.
I found a circle of fairy stones my child left me. I drank tea. And I found so much peace.
I don’t know what this is a prelude to. Life comes in waves and I am grateful for every lesson, but I know that this peace is temporary. Still. I will take the prelude. I’ll take the sweet moments. And I will take the call to make more of them.
Sounds
Reads
Vicky Diaz-Camacho, “Nelson-Atkins Obtains Rare Image of Slaves Working on a Plantation,” Flatland, November 27, 2019, https://flatlandkc.org/arts-culture/nelson-atkins-obtains-extraordinarily-rare-image-of-slaves-working-on-a-plantation/.
John David Smith, “Dubois and Phillips — Symbolic Antagonists of the Progressive Era,” The Centennial Review 24, no. 1 (1980): 88–102.
Brenda E. Stevenson. “The Question of the Slave Female Community and Culture in the American South: Methodological and Ideological Approaches.” Journal of African American History (2007): 74–95.
Sowande M. Mustakeem. Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016).
Hortense J. Spillers. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17, no.2 (1987): 65–81.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall. Africans in Colonial Louisiana the Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992).
Jean Mettas, Serge Daget, and Michelle Daget, eds. Répertoire Des Expéditions Négrières Françaises Au Xviiie Siècle Paris: Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 1984.
Edouard Glissant. Poetics of Relation Translated by Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
Yomaira C. Figueroa. “Faithful Witnessing as Practice: Decolonial Readings of Shadows of Your Black Memory and the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Hypatia 30, no.4 (2015): 641–56.
Rizvana Bradley, “Living in the Absence of a Body: The (Sus)Stain of Black Female (W)Holeness,” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, no. 29 (2016): 1–1, https://doi.org/10.20415/rhiz/029.e13
Evelynn Hammonds, “Black (w) Holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality,” Differences 6, no. 2 (1994): 126.
M. NourbeSe Philip, “Black W/Holes: A History Of Brief Time,” Fuse Magazine, 1998.
Jennifer M Spear. Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
“Night Light Maps Open Up New Applications : Image of the Day,” Text.Article, November 30, 2015, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90008
“Out of the Blue and Into the Black,” Text.Article, NASA Earth Observatory, December 5, 2012, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/IntotheBlack.
Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen the Living Gods of Haiti (Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1983).
“‘Culture First’: An Interview with Jentery Sayers | HASTAC,” February 6, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20180206135315/https://www.hastac.org/blogs/jonheggestad/2018/01/23/culture-first-interview-jentery-sayers
Candice Frederick, “Black Female Representation In AI Is Not Enough,” HuffPost, January 26, 2024, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sundance-black-women-ai-documentaries_n_65b2cce8e4b0749816374cbb.
Jason R. Young, Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery (LSU Press, 2011)
Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire (University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Miriam Posner, Humanities Data: A Necessary Contradiction – Miriam Posner’s Blog, June 25, 2015, https://miriamposner.com/blog/humanities-data-a-necessary-contradiction/
Projects
NASA’s Black Marble https://blackmarble.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Wangechi Mutu, My Cave Call https://artbma.org/exhibition/wangechi-mutu-my-cave-call
Color Oracle - https://www.astro.com/cgi/atxgen.cgi?btyp=cf
Watch
Mendi + Keith Obadike: GuideStar, directed by ObadikeStudio, 2025, 04:19,
.Mendi + Keith Obadike: BookOf Light - Excerpts, directed by ObadikeStudio, 2020, 01:55,