Language Matters II: Reading and Teaching Toni Morrison participants are pictured on the campus of Northern Kentucky University.  July 9-17, 2005.

High school teachers from across the nation were selected to participate in Language Matters II: Reading and Teaching Toni Morrison, an intensive week-long NEH workshop held July 9-17, 2005 at Northern Kentucky University.  As part of the workshop, participants studied all of Morrison’s novels and children’s books under the guidance of leading Morrison scholars and master teachers, visited Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, attended the Cincinnati Opera’s premiere performance of Margaret Garner, and participated in the 4^th Biennial Conference of the Toni Morrison Society, July 14-17, 2005.  Sponsors for Language Matters II include the Toni Morrison Society, Northern Kentucky University, and the University of Kansas.

As we all know, poetry, these days, is extremely popular. With that popularity, the art has found exposure in some of the unlikeliest of places. Practitioners of that art now have a myriad of opportunities to publish, perform, and cultivate their work.

While we celebrate and encourage the current popularity of poetry and the productivity of those involved with its continued growth, these trends are particularly problematic to those doing archival work such as ours, in a field that is so dynamic.

This project began as part of the centennial celebration of Langston Hughes's life and work (1902–2002). It involves a series of public poetry and book discussion programs and an accompanying website.

Targeting diverse audiences and populations, “Speaking of Rivers” proposes to increase interest in and exposure to poetry as a spoken and written art, as a form of participatory democratic activity, and as a means of advancing human understanding. Read more at KUCE's website...

The bibliographic database forms the foundation of the project’s efforts to catalog and make available for research over 1,070 novels written by African American writers. The database continues to be updated as novels are recovered. Project bibliographies are compiled and distributed on various topics.

The project’s collection development is organized around five periods of African American social and cultural history.

1400-1865 -- 1866-1912 -- 1913-1940 --

1941-1968 -- 1969-1980

 Download the most recent Novel Database.

The Cambridge Novel Project is significant not only in terms of the scholarship coming out of this project, but it marks an interesting point in our development.

We have recently released the Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel, edited by our Founder, Dr. Maryemma Graham.