Sequoia Maner (NHC Fellow, 2023–24)

Fellowship Work Summary, 2023–24

Sequoia Maner conducted extensive research during her time at the National Humanities Center, reading over 200 books, and discovering many lost and understudied poets of the African American tradition along the way. This research transformed her project, In the Mourning Time: A Critical History of Black Elegy, in impactful ways as she outlined her book, drafted the introduction, and drafted a book proposal. Sequoia also completed revisions and proofs for three forthcoming projects: “The Funk Impulse of Rap Music and Hip-Hop Studies,” a chapter in The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Cambridge); “Jayne Cortez,” an extensive bibliographic study of the jazz poet in Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale); and a book review of Delores Phillips’s Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work.