A Good Sabbatical by NOVIAN WHITSITT, Professor of Africana Studies and English
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his past spring’s sabbatical proved to be fruitful. I made substantial progress on my latest scholarly project and had time for other side projects, webinars, and workshops. My main scholarly project is the anthology currently titled The Color of Change: Black Intellectual Thought and Social Change in America. It is a project that’s grown out of a Paideia 450 course that I’ve instructed on numerous occasions with Guy Nave. The text will be an edited volume of primary works of African-American intellectuals from varied backgrounds, and they’ll be organized within particular historical epochs: 1) Antebellum Thoughts: Addressing White Notions of Black Identity, 1773 – 1861; 2) Reconstruction and the Black Response: Where Do We Go from Here? 1861 – 1915;
3) Dawn of the New Negro: Envisioning New Identities, 1915 – 1955; 4) Civil Rights and Black Power: The Time Is Now, 1950 – 1975; 5) Post-Civil Rights: Has It Been Solved? 1975 – present. This spring, I was able to research one of those epochs at length with the intention of writing the historical introduction for that particular unit. I read monographs, scholarly articles, autobiographies, and state historical archives. That research allowed me to write and complete the introduction on the Reconstruction period, and I have also finished doing much of the historical research for the final period as well. Culminating and reading the appropriate historical sources has been timeconsuming, but the spring and summer provided me adequate time to make real progress. The spring sabbatical also allowed me more time to work with student researchers, Sam Schillinger and Amelia Morrow, who were writing biographical entries on black intellectuals included in the anthology.
Anthology in which Novian Whitsitt's article appears
In addition to this project, the spring hiatus allowed me to write a lecture for Black History Month in February on James Baldwin, entitled “The Love and Rage of James Baldwin: The Unwavering Witness.” The lecture was published in the spring edition of Luther’s Agora. The lecture provided me with material that I expounded upon in a webinar in April at the University of Southern Indiana, entitled “How Can We Transcend Our Political Divide? Insights from James Baldwin.” I also
Novian Whitsitt had the wonderful opportunity to lead a three-day workshop at the University of Idaho in April, entitled, “Understanding Systems of Power and Oppression through Intersectionality.” It was part of a Diversity and Inclusion certification program offered to all levels of university students. Finally, I was able to complete the finishing revisions and edits to an article that appears in an anthology on Hausa literature. The article, entitled “Northern Nigerian Popular Literature and the Boundaries of Hausa Feminism: The Literature of Balaraba Yakubu and Bilkisu Funtuwa,” is part of Hausa Prose Fiction: A Reader, and the hard copy will be published this academic year. Given the dearth of scholarly work on Hausa fiction, this anthology will certainly expand the terrain of Hausa literary studies, and I’m honored to be a part of the project. Yes, it was a GOOD sabbatical.
Fall 2021/Agora
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