What Should I Write Next?
On research, teaching, and making intellectual process visible
What do you want to read about?
As this space grows, I want to be more intentional about what I share here—and how. Rather than treating Textual Life as a place only for finished arguments, I’m increasingly interested in using it as a site of intellectual process: where research, teaching, and reflection are visible as they unfold.
To that end, I’d value your input.
What kind of writing would you most like to read here?
1. Inside the research and writing of an academic journal article
Reflections from within the research and writing of an article-in-progress, “The Philological Imagination of Malcolm X.” The piece recovers Malcolm X as a paradigmatic philological thinker in—and for—the tradition of Black thought. Posts in this vein would open up how arguments take shape, how close reading works across traditions, and what it means to write scholarly work for an academic audience.
2. Course design and teaching reflections
Writing from the development and teaching of “Technologies of the Word: From Orality to Generative AI in Africa and Beyond,” including questions of method, form, and how the humanities respond to technological transformation.
3. Ideas from the classroom
Expanded reflections and provocations emerging from my teaching of Introduction to Global Black Studies—concepts, tensions, and frameworks that move between history, theory, and lived experience.
4. A hybrid of these threads
Writing that moves across research, pedagogy, and intellectual formation—showing how scholarship, teaching, and institutional life shape one another in practice.
If you’d like, you can also tell me what formats you tend to enjoy most:
Short essays or fragments
Longer reflective pieces
Lecture-style notes
Annotated readings, texts, or objects
Audio or conversation-based posts
Feel free to leave a brief comment about what drew you to your choice. Your responses will shape what I share next.
Thank you for reading—and for thinking with me.