The AALCI Crew hard at work

Here's a look at our 2022 AALCI crew hard at work, taking a look at our summer reading materials. 

Related: 

• AALCI 2022

Reading materials for AALCI 2022

Here's a look at our reading materials for the summer. The books: 

• Recitatif  by Toni Morrison 

• Read Until You by Farah Jasmine Griffin

• Flyboy 2 by Greg Tate 

• Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires 

• Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic  

We also have a course packet of various readings I pulled together. 

Related: 

• AALCI 2022

Daily, enriching conversations

This year,  we nearly all of our sessions in the library. We met in a large room, but only used one table. 

We had many, extended enriching conversations. And those discussions were just the tip of the iceberg. 

I could see all the highlighted, markups that the students had on their books and in the course packet. It was clear that we could've kept going and going. 

Related: 

• AALCI 2022

Tara Schmidt's working with the fellows

I took a few snaps of Tara Schmidt working with the fellows on the puzzle activity. They were really involved -- looking at the materials and posing questions. 

Working with the different fragments gave the feel that we were literally putting the pieces together. It was an educational and enjoyable process. 

Related: 

• AALCI 2022

Tara Schmidt's puzzle activity

Tara Schmidt, Coordinator of Information Literacy & Assessment at the UTSA libraries, coordinated a really fascinating activity for our Fellows on June 9. 

She distributed handouts from a single resource on a single figure. The handouts were from an NAACP collection and focused on Claude McKay. Schmidt gave one handout to each student. One document included poems, one included an FBI file on McKay, one included two book reviews, one included correspondence, and another included additional information on McKay. 

[Related: Tara Schmidt's working with the fellows]

Each of the documents had a date on them,

The students had to converse with each other to determine the order, and once they did they discussed out loud what they had. The result was that they pieced together aspects of McKay's life and experienced based on these disparate fragments. 

The activity resembled the practice of a researcher finding various pieces or fragments on a subject and then tying them together to form a narrative.  

Beyond that exercise, Schmidt talked to the group about approaches to doing searches online. Her excitement about her field was infectious and had the Fellows and me interrupting to ask questions about how one becomes a librarian.  

Related:

• AALCI 2022

AALCI 2022

Our activities for the 12th cohort of the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute began on Sunday, June 5, with an opening dinner. The following entries chart our progress, activities, and thinking.

• Kehinde Wiley’s Conspicuous Fraud Series #1 (Eminence) -- Terrie Briggs

• Kehinde Wiley's Support the Rural Population and Serve 500 Million Peasants -- Chaunece Reed

• Kehinde Wiley's Juliette Récamier -- Elizabeth Gowans 

• Kehinde Wiley's Judith and Holofernes - Nicole Dixon 

• Kehinde Wiley's Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew - Yaqkeha Witherspoon

• Kehinde Wiley's Equestrian Portrait of King Phillip II - Tyrone Jones

• D.A.Y. Tyme at AALCI

• More photos from our time with D. A. Y. Tyme

• Vocab at AALCI

• The AALCI Crew hard at work 

• Reading materials for AALCI 2022

• Daily, enriching conversations

• Tara Schmidt's working with the fellows

• Tara Schmidt's puzzle activity 

Related: 

• A Notebook on AALCI, 2010-2021

AALCI at a Glance

Since June 2010, we've coordinated the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute (AALCI) at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The program was created by Joycelyn Moody. I cover the curriculum and teaching. 

During the summer, we discuss a variety of Black studies readings, academic writing, African American visual art, and challenges and opportunities associated with scholarly research. 

The participating summer fellows receive: 

• abundant intellectual nourishment

• extensive feedback on writing 

• a selection of free books 

• guidance on creation or development of research projects 

• assistance on graduate application materials.

• a small stipend ($2,000.00)

• loding at UTSA during the program 

Here's a glance at the fellows, 2016 - 2018:

poster session 2016

Poster session 2017