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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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TIPS: Recommended Image Sizes and Plugin Tutorials

by Sarah Greene 0 Comments

This post has recommended image sizes as well as tutorials on some of the plug-ins for for the Digital Shange Projects website. For more general information, check out my previous post, below.

TIP: Posting to the Digital Shange Projects site

Recommended Images Sizes

Thumbnail​ image​—

  • Width: 700 pixels
  • Height: 393 pixels
  • 72 ppi (pixels per inch)
  • Reminder: post thumbnails for your Portfolio item by using “Featured Image”

Large image/s—

  • Max width: 1200 pixels
  • 72 ppi
  • Note: if you are posting the image at the top of your Portfolio item, I recommend using the following size: 1200×600 pixels

Plugins

1. To add images with pages that flip, use Booklets.

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Copy/paste the “shortcode” to add your Booklet to your Portfolio item.

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You can choose whether your Booklet has a light or dark background.

Short list of terms:

  • Padding: the margin around your images.
  • Flip speed: how fast your pages flip
  • Automatic flip delay: how long it takes for the page to flip (set to 0 if you don’t want the pages to flip automatically)
  • Show thumbnails: choose “Yes” to show all of you images at the bottom of your Booklet; choose “No” to hide the thumbnails.
  • Booklet cover behavior: add a cover to your Booklet or by choosing “Closable – Centered” or “Closable – Either side.” If you don’t want a cover, choose “Opened always”
 2. To add images in a standard slider, use Soliloquy Slider.

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Soliloquy Slider tutorial:
http://soliloquywp.com/docs/creating-your-first-slider

3. To create have more control over the layout of your Portfolio item, use Visual Composer.
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Visual Composer tutorial:
https://vc.wpbakery.com/video-academy/visual-composer-tutorial-for-beginners

What it takes to heal, Ntozake Shange, and Spoken Word Poetry

by gjs2130 5 Comments

Ntozake, Healing, and Spoken Word Poetry

“somebody/ anybody sing a black girl’s song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she’s been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn’t know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she’s half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.”

The silence that Ntozake Shange speaks about in this post is one that I believe for so many people is combated by dance, movement and/or spoken word poetry.

The idea that action paired with words builds a door that it’s ok to walk through. This is also something that music is capable of providing for people. This door is the portal to the allowance of healing. There are several videos online of Shange reading poems out loud. But, also if you look at certain styles of writing/grammar techniques there are ways to differentiate “spoken word” for “page poetry”… What do you consider your or Shange’s way of telling the audience if the work requires a voice or only eyes to access it full potential.

 

April 25: Class schedule

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

Dear class, tomorrow after we discuss Gabby’s post, we will again be working with the new Word Press theme. Sarah will reinforce some points covered last week and go over the slideshow plugin which a significant portion of you will need.   She’s also made a “tips”post for you.

Please note the Production schedule  in the upper right corner of the blog. Brad suggests that we/you start editing and uploading photos into WordPress  even if you don’t quite have your eventual layout/flow established, so I have listed that as a task for the day in addition to our production meetings, etc.

TIP: Posting to the Digital Shange Projects site

by Sarah Greene 0 Comments

General information

Log-in to the Digital Shange Projects page with the following url:
http://bcrw.barnard.edu/digitalshange/projects/wp-admin

Your username is the same as your UNI. If you have any trouble logging in, or if you lost your password, email me at sgreene@barnard.edu.

Remember to save your work because WordPress will not automatically save it for you. When working with an unpublished item, hit “Save Draft” often. When working with a published item, hit “Update” often. I would also recommend saving your work in another platform (e.g. Word, Google Docs) by copy/pasting.

Production Schedule

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

The production schedule  is on a page in the upper right corner of the blog. Brad suggests that we/you start editing and uploading photos into WordPress  even if you don’t quite have your eventual layout/flow established, so I have listed that as a task for the day in addition to our production meetings, etc.

As you can tell, unexpected glitches happen; I will update the production schedule as needed.

Barnard Teaches funded internships

by Kim Hall 0 Comments
Ntozake on Supersisters Feminist Trading card. (1979)

Ntozake on Supersisters Feminist Trading card. (1979)

With Mellon Foundation funding, the BARNARD TEACHES: REAL PLACE + DIGITAL ACCESS grant is offering two paid internships for the summer of 2016. Each intern will split her time between the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (20-25 hours) and the Barnard College Archives (10-15 hours). This is an opportunity to see the inner workings of the premier archive of black life in the US as well as to work with world-class collections and experts in their respective fields. Each interns will work with either the Communications Division or the Jean Blackwell Hutson Reference and Research Division, occasionally shadow Steven G. Fullwood, Associate Curator of the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, and work with collaboratively with the Barnard Archivists. (See attached description of expected skills & duties.)

You can find complete description and application here and on Courseworks.

Archive Find, A letter addressed to Shange from her mother

by Dania 1 Comment

” i sat up one nite walkin a boardin housescreamin/ cryin/ the ghost of another womanwho waz missin what i waz missini wanted to jump up outta my bones& be done wit myselfleave me alone& go on in the windit waz too muchi fell into a numbnesstil the only tree i cd seetook me up in her branchesheld me in the breezemade me dawn dewthat chill at daybreakthe sun wrapped me up swingin rose light everywherethe sky laid over me like a million meni waz cold/ i waz burnin up/ a child & endlessly weavin garments for the moonwit my tearsi found god in myself& i loved her/ i loved her fiercely

All of the ladies repeat to themselves softly the lines ‘i found god in myself & i loved her.’ It soon becomes a song of joy, started by the lady in blue. The ladies sing first to each other, then gradually to the audience. After the song peaks the ladies enter into a closed tight circle.” (62/)

–For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf

 

Since my last archival find, I have been focusing on letters and the intimacy and the truth they hold and  how it relates to  Shange’s life and work I am engaging with. This has been instrumental to my focus on self-portraiture and black girlhood as it allows me to gain insight on the intimacies and the key individuals who have been instrumental in her creative processes and personal growth. I also feel confident in saying that in the works of Shange, they are not separate entities.

In the letter addressed to Shange, her mother states “You have brains, talent, education, money and a pretty face. Please take care of all these gifts. Acting as if they are not there will not make them go away. Please, please think about yourself. Find God, in yourself. Don’t add insult to injury!” This sentence takes me back to Shange’s  For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide Considered When The Rainbow is Enuf  and her encouragement to herself and women beyond to find god in herself is coming from a place that is saturated with love and care. This letter is affirming as it solidifies my argument. Black girls self-portraiture is relational to representations that are resonant in their daily lives. That is not to say that black girls are not able to create people who they want to be outside of the “home” or their place of “belonging”. It is evident that Shange’s mother was instrumental in her processes of healing and of growth. Here we see Shange’s mother is earnest in asking her to find wellness and having gratitude for herself  and her fruitfulness.

 Screenshot 2016-04-19 12.41.58      Screenshot 2016-04-19 12.41.58

 

“As beginning dancers we have no ego problems” … a call to move!

by Melissa 0 Comments

Dancing Shange copy (1)

If we are drawn for a number of reasons/ to the lives & times of black people who conquered their environments/ or at least their pain/ with their art, & if these people are mostly musicians & singers & dancers/ then what is a writer to do to draw the most from human & revealing moments from lives spent in nonverbal activity.

(Shange, Ntozake. Lost in Language & Sound 14)

 

From there, Shange calls upon us to syncretize all of our forms of creation. Writing and dancing are indispensable to each other as form of making, breathing with, moving to, listening to rhythm. Writing itself is a rhythmic effort that calls upon the body to breathe and move through sets of unrecognizable grammars until we can form our own language. Dance is a polysyllabic, multi-form, amalgamation of syncopated heartbeats – an effortful, physical calligraphy etched onto the living landscape of breath. Music somehow conveys all that we have always known about ourselves, the world, and each other.

Ntozake Shange has always insisted on calling upon all of her capacities to stir up joy to write, dance, and make music with her breath and body. I respond to Shange’s call to move and invite my fellow lovers of Shange to join me for a workshop on collaborative dance and writing through collective writing, reading, and movement. I hope this workshop will fit into the context of my peers’ work, picking up from where Michelle Loo started in her collaborative zine happenin’ Time to Greez.
My hope is that through movement, we will put together the fragmented pieces of our memories to create an embodied narrative that continues the legacy of Shange, and countless Black women writers, dancers, movers, and thinkers through the timelessness of the choreopoem.

 

Saturday April 30, 2016 

Studio 1, Basement of Barnard Hall 

10am-12pm

7pm-9pm

bring hydrated bodies, bare feet, and kind spirits 

Reading Zake: The Sacred Never Runs Out

by Amanda 8 Comments

–MUSIC– This is a really long youtube video of David Murray/Black Saint Quartet performing live in Berlin, but the energy shared between the musicians makes it well worth watching.

“There’s no music I hear without sensing you.”

This line is written in a letter Zake addresses to and in memory of her father–later to be used/edited for inclusion in Gloria Wade-Gayles anthology Father Songs. The quote made a circle in my mind that brought me to my first post rewriting Fanon, in which I talked about how laying claim to history and looking to the past as a way of informing one’s future is an important healing practice. This quote brings forth that feeling as truth. It brings forward the feeling that music is an art form capable of being inhabited (by soul/reality/existence/being/life) for healing. & to listen to music//really//listen to the music/ is to open oneself up to the voices & presence of the sacred.

Zake and Zakettes in the New York Times (Update re class)

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

Hello Zakettes, yesterday the New York Times arts blog announced Zake’s contribution of her collection to the college. You now have official recognition that you are the first scholars to access this archive! Please do share this news in your social media outlets.

Monday’s class schedule (Meet at ICP)

Discussion of Amanda’s blogpost

Introduction of ICON WordPress theme we will use for the class (Sarah)

Discussion of remaining schedule (including team meetings), final project criteria (please review).  Design team  (SG, KFH, Amanda, Danielle,  Dania or Melissa); Text team: (BT, TR, Nicole, Sophia, Dania or Melissa)

Open time for editing projects