Inscribing the Institute for the Arts and Humanities' National Black Writers Conference, 1975-1983

FAIN: AB-253407-17

Howard University (Washington, DC 20059-0001)
Dana A. Williams (Project Director: June 2016 to May 2019)

A project to digitize, provide critical commentary on, and develop a series of short films about material from the National Black Writers’ Conference, 1975-1983, for use by scholars and teachers.

Between 1974 and 1983, the Howard University Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH) sponsored the largest single regular convening of African American writers, artists, critics and culture workers as part of its “National Black Writers Conference” series. As part of the ongoing work of documenting and elevating key moments and figures in contemporary African American arts and letters, especially as they emerged at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the “Reading the Oral Archive as an Act of Recovery” project, which we refer to throughout as “ROARR,” has three primary objectives: (1) reformatting/digitizing audio/visual recordings of the National Black Writers Conferences to make them available to researchers/scholars in viewable form; (2) creating critical commentary for each major conference and the contexts out of which the conferences and the writers who participated in them emerge; and (3) generating a ROAAR “Preview” video along with six “Fireside Chats.”

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