The African Poetry Digital Portal’s (APDP) will be holding its Spring Conference from April 27 - April 29 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for scholars, archivists, librarians, digital humanities specialists, and poets from around the world to engage in and expand the work of the APDP. While the group has been meeting and accomplishing its work remotely, this conference is the first time the partners will get together in-person.
“The collaborators attending the Spring Conference will be discussing the collections and archives they’ve identified as well as the development of the database we are creating,” said Rezina Habtemariam the project manager.
The APDP will welcome members from collaborating institutions as well as colleagues from UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and the Libraries. The Spring Conference provides an opportunity to share the collections work and research gathered in the last two years as well as develop the plan for the next iteration of the APDP.
The Spring Conference will also include an exciting panel discussion and reading at the Sheldon Museum of Art on April 28th at 5:30pm, which is free and open to the public. This conversation on contemporary African poetry will feature writers and scholars: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley (Liberia), Tsitsi Jaji (Zimbabwe), and Mahtem Shiferraw (Ethiopia/Eritrea). These acclaimed writers will explore the centrality of gender as well as the intersections of the global and national in their own work, and in African literature today.
The African Poetry Digital Portal is an ongoing initiative dedicated to providing global access to digital collections, projects, and scholarship on African poetry. Launched in 2017, the preliminary research and design for the portal was supported by the Ford Foundation. This included the development of two foundational features: The Index of Contemporary African Poets and African Poets in the News.
The current phase of the project, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, involves expanding the research and scholarship on African poetry. This includes collaborating with institutions to create a digital collections hub that will give access to materials held by institutions worldwide.
The APDP is collaborating with the University of Cape Town in South Africa, University of Lomé in Togo, University of Ghana, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, and the Library of Congress.
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More details at: https://africanpoetics.unl.edu/