University of Kansas: Black Book Interactive Project Aims to Close African-American Literature’s ‘Digital Divide’ with Help From $150,000 Grant

From the Lawrence Journal-World:

Scholars at the University of Kansas are now one step closer to realizing their goal of making African-American literature accessible to all, thanks to a recent grant from the American Council of Learned Societies.
The digital extension grant, totaling $150,000, will help fund the development of what KU calls “the first searchable digital collection” of previously unavailable and understudied novels by African-American authors. Led by Maryemma Graham, a University Distinguished Professor of English at KU, the Black Book Interactive Project’s new database aims to narrow the gap between the upward trend in digital, data-driven research and scholarship of African-American literature.
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The Black Book Interactive Project: Extending the Reach is a creation of the much larger, much older Project on the History of Black Writing, which Graham helped establish 35 years ago while a graduate student at KU. The newer project, launched during the 2014-2015 school year, received initial funding from KU and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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See Also: ACLS Award Will Help Make More African-American Novels Available for Digital Research (July 9, 2018; via U. of Kansas)
See Also: University of Kansas: Metadata Project to Seek Trends, Themes in African-American Literature (September 15, 2016)

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