An IRIS Timeline

Here's an abbreviated timeline of SIUE's DH Center, known as IRIS. See fuller history here.

• Fall 2008: Jessica DeSpain and Kristine Hildebrandt join SIUE faculty. 

• 2009–10: CAS Roundtable, led by DeSpain and Hildebrandt, explores digital humanities center feasibility. 

• Spring 2010: IRIS co-founded by DeSpain and Hildebrandt; among first master’s institutions with such a center. 

• 2015: Hires first staff member, Kayla Hays. 

• Spring 2016: The interdisciplinary minor in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences is approved. 

• Spring 2017: Katherine Knowles becomes IRIS Center Project Manager.

• Fall 2017: Ben Ostermeier joins as IRIS Center Technician. 

• Fall 2018: IRIS moves to larger space on Peck Hall’s second floor. 

• Fall 2019: Zachary Riebeling appointed Assistant Research Professor. 

• Spring 2021: Margaret Smith becomes Research Assistant Professor. 

• Fall 2021: Mellon Foundation funds Black Lit Network digital resource. 

• Fall 2022: Community‑Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) program, led by DeSpain, launches.

• Fall 2024: Mellon funds $1M grant to support development of CODES program led by DeSpain.

• December 2024: Dan Schreiber becomes IRIS Center web developer. 

• Fall 2025: Mellon funds $1.6 grant to support extension of the Black Lit Network, led by Rambsy.

Related:

• A Notebook on IRIS

SIUE's DH Center and the Black Lit Network

Jessica DeSpain and Kristine Hildebrandt made visionary moves when they created a DH Center, known as the IRIS Center, at our university. Back in 2009 when they were facilitating discussions about what the center might entail I could hardly have imagined what it's now become. 

[Related: An IRIS Timeline] 

It's worth noting from where I sit that it would've been no way for me to make the case that SIUE serve as the home for this $1.6M Mellon grant for Black Lit Network.

The groundwork for the first proposal for the Black Lit Network started taking shape in practical ways for me in early 2021. That was before we submitted the proposal. But I was brainstorming with DeSpain and Hildebrandt and then working on prototypes with Margaret Smith, the then newly hired Research Professor for IRIS.  

We did some trial and error sites and a few other projects, all of which served as the basis for what I pitched to the larger group applying for the first phase of our Mellon grant. During the three-year grant, we continued building and refining, all of which led us to the point we are now where we're ready to expand and enhance the Black Lit Network project. 

Related: 

• A Notebook on IRIS

A Notebook on IRIS

2025 

• August 11: An IRIS Timeline

• August 11: SIUE's DH Center and the Black Lit Network 

2023

• June 21: A Checklist of Collaborations with DH Scholar, Meg Smith

2022

• May 22: Those weekly IRIS Center meetings

2021

• October 7: Variety of collaborators will work on HBW grant funded by Mellon Foundation

• May 21: Building an African American poetry project with a DH Center, Part 2

• April 5: Building an African American poetry project with a DH Center, Part 1

2017

• December 9: Digital East St. Louis showcase

2016

• November 4: Kristine Hildebrandt & Jessica DeSpain's Digital Motivations

• February 23: Upcoming Digital East St. Louis Exhibit

Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement as A Whole Vibe

By Sequoia Maner

The summer of 2015 was a whole vibe.

I think back to all the small moments of intimacy and connection, moments formative to the shaping of my professor self.

I debuted a contrapuntal poem with Evie Shockley in the room, a flexing of my will toward poetic mastery witnessed by the master herself. I'll never not follow in Shockley's wake. I talked the contours of beingness with Kevin Quashie in our dormitory living room over Chinese takeout. When he dropped Black Aliveness and reoriented an entire discipline of black studies toward alternate worldmaking, I was not surprised; rather, I was humbled to have witnessed a small bloom of his canonicity. I stumbled across trauma yet-to-be-healed during a creative-critical workshop facilitated by Meta DuEwa Jones. Since then, I have dug deep to unearth remnants left by motherlessness and I am working on a full length poetry collection about the child welfare system in the United States, giving voice to those left scarred and bereft.

That is to say, I would not be the writer I am today nor the writer that I am always becoming without the NEH institute "Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement." Following the institute, I published scholarship about Patricia Smith, Kendrick Lamar, Jayne Cortez, funk music, protest in black poetics, and the centrality of elegy in black writing. Organizers can rest assured that the goals of the institute are being met. We made alliances as co-conspirators. We are calibrated to the righteous, liberating, and needful nature of Black poetry. We are moving and we are doing.

Onward.

P.S. Gratitude for carving space to include graduate students in the institute. I am honored to have attended, cloaked in all my naivete and youth.

Related

• Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections

Blogging about poetry in July 2025

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• July 26: Sarah Arbuthnot Lendt and the Invisible Workings of African American Literary Studies

• July 26: When an advanced group of scholars converged to study Black poetry

• July 26: Maryemma Graham, NEH, and African American literary studies

• July 26: You forgot to tell Evie Shockley how she unknowingly sparked all that Black poetry commentary

• July 26: When Joanne Gabbin organizes a Black poetry gathering

• July 26: Jerry W. Ward, Jr. and Black Poetry

•  July 1: Blogging about poetry in June 2025

Black Lit Network in the news

Here's a roundup of news concerning our Black Lit Network project. 

• July 29: $1.6M Grant from Mellon to Support Public Knowledge Digital Project on African American Literary Studies -- SIUE News

• July 29: SIUE Lands Major Mellon Grant, Positioning Regional University as Leader in African American Literary Studies -- Diverse Issues in Higher Education 

• July 31: SIUE receives $1.6 million grant for African American Literary Studies -- Edwardsville Intelligencer 

• August 6: Higher Education Gifts or Grants of Interest to African Americans -- The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 

• August 7: Mellon awards Southern Illinois University Edwardsville $1.6 million -- Philanthropy News Digest

Sarah Arbuthnot Lendt and the Invisible Workings of African American Literary Studies

Sarah Arbuthnot Lendt making announcements at the NEH Black Poetry Institute, July 2015

A few months back, I heard something surprising. Sarah Arbuthnot Lendt, the longtime program coordinator/budget director/planner for the Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW), told me that she didn’t even live in Lawrence, Kansas during the time of all those successful NEH institutes run by Maryemma Graham at the University of Kansas. 

Sarah was commuting from somewhere else.

But whenever we, the participants, arrived for the day’s events, Sarah always was already there. Folks stopped by the table where she sat to ask questions about anything and everything: payments, lodging details, transportation, the room temperature, even (no lie) how to get a particular brand of bubble bath, etc. 

We’d formally refer to Sarah as a program coordinator or administrator, but on a practical level, for our everyday needs, wants, and dilemmas, we viewed her as a... no, we viewed her as the problem-solver extraordinaire.

She played that role for the 2015 institute, and before that the 2013 institute, and before that the 2010 one. She also held lead administrative roles for a program from 2015 to 2019, and then again for a separate program between 2021 and 2024.

For each of those projects, somewhere out there is a final report or white paper. Sarah wrote or co-wrote those documents or gathered the necessary materials to make them happen. She rarely signed her name, instead attributing the reports to “HBW staff” or the broader team of project contributors.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, how much invisible labor supports major African American literary studies projects. Sometimes that labor takes the form of program coordination. Sometimes it’s editorial work. Sometimes, it’s meetings, documentation, or the quiet organizing that holds everything together without ever demanding the spotlight.

It's worth thinking about how this invisible work facilitates African American literary studies.  

Related

• Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections

When an advanced group of scholars converged to study Black poetry

Participants in the NEH Summer Institute on Black Poetry at the University of Kansas, July 2015

One of the great things about Black poetry is that even advanced scholars still feel they have more to learn, especially by gathering with others to deepen and expand their knowledge. Without that shared spirit of curiosity, there’s no way we could’ve brought together so many talented people for the NEH Summer Institute, Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement, in July 2015.

The participants came from across the country and were at various stages in their professional careers. All of them arrived with accomplishments in literary studies. Yet, they chose to be there because they wanted to learn more about the histories and evolving dimensions of Black poetry.

Looking back, it’s striking to remember that room full of intellectuals, artists, researchers, and educators. Everyone was there with a common purpose to develop stronger, more effective ways of understanding and teaching Black poetry, so they could pass those lessons on to their students, readers, and broader communities.

They did it. They're still doing it.

Related: 

• Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections