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Decoding Diaspora: Mapping J. A. Rogers' Mythic AfricaMain MenuTable of ContentsExplore and Navigate the Different Facets of the Decoding Diaspora project.ProjectAn Introduction by Dr. Richard NewtonResearchers and Community PartnersParticipants and Partners in Decoding DiasporaInterpretationsUse Digital Tools to Explore How J. A. Rogers Understood "Africa"EssaysExperimental Studies Using the Data and Interpreations Featured HereReferencesProject Bibliography and Recommended ReadingsUse and PermissionsTerms and Conditions Governing the Creation and Use of the ProjectRichard Newtonfb088bedcfb114b3db559719e7c8c878c6a9066b
Data
1media/Title Page- FN- x.jpg2023-02-09T08:57:22-08:00Casey Logan A'Hearn31d1f95271b9e87c22b872032472115927ecaadc4215135Access the Data for Your Own Researchplain2024-12-17T06:55:05-08:00Richard Newtonfb088bedcfb114b3db559719e7c8c878c6a9066bJoel Augustus Rogers’ Facts About the Negro is a fascinating African diasporic "signification." Historian of Religion Charles Long employs the term to highlight “the ways in which names are given to realities and peoples during this period of [post-Enlightenment] conquest; this naming is at the same time an objectification through categories and concepts of those realities which appear as novel and “other” to the cultures of conquest.” Rogers’ response to this scenario of social dispersion is to (re)write its history, a narrative that illustrates Black people as originary yet prescient, dispersed yet pervasive, self-sufficient yet contingent. In addition to investigating the interpretive ends of his efforts, the Decoding Diaspora project thrives on the presentation of the means by which he did so. We have made the data set accessible to you in the manner described below in hopes that you will collaborate with us.
Gallery
The gallery above contains scanned pages from the Facts About the Negro column collected by John Rice and assembled by Lucille Kemp Rice, the uncle and grandmother of Project Director Richard Newton. Each image is denoted as FN-# to note its sequence and to correspond to entries in the metadata and text corpus below. Click each page to see a larger rendering of the page along with source information.
Text Corpus
The text corpus contains a transcription of all the text found in the Facts About the Negro gallery. The text is separated by pages (FN-#), corresponding to the gallery and metadata. The text files may be downloaded from GitHub. The texts is rendered in the .txt file type.
Metadata
This spreadsheet delineates elements noted in the gallery for the purposes of further machine-assisted analysis. Each entry corresponds to the pages in the Facts About the Negro gallery (FN-#) as well as each vignette’s location on the page (A refers to top-left; B, top-right; C, bottom-left; D, bottom-right). Other entries include data pertaining to dates, locations, names, representation ofgenderin the text, and actual artifactsmentioned in the vignettes. The metadata spreadsheet may be downloaded from GitHub. The metadata is rendered in the .xlsx file type.
1media/Txt_Corpus_Snapshot_thumb.jpg2023-02-16T07:48:50-08:00Text Corpus Screenshot1media/Txt_Corpus_Snapshot.jpgplain2023-02-16T07:48:54-08:00
1media/Metadata_Corpus_Snapshot_thumb.jpg2023-02-16T07:51:19-08:00Metadata Text Screenshot1media/Metadata_Corpus_Snapshot.jpgplain2023-02-16T07:51:20-08:00