Department of English

• Monday, October 13, 2025 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, sixth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

We are excited to welcome Tajah Ebram (Rutgers University) for a talk titled “Black Print as Prison Praxis”.

Dr. Ebram writes:

“This talk will explore a collection of print works by incarcerated Black writers, which is being curated for the Black Bibliography Project’s forthcoming database. The BBP is creating a database of Black book history using linked data & descriptive bibliography, with the aim of revealing the social networks and aesthetic practices specific to Black print. As part of the database, the  “Black Prison Praxis” corpus of texts will center the print cultures of books authored by incarcerated Black writers and organizers of the late 20th century. This talk will invite attendees to think through some of the ethical and descriptive considerations involved in developing this corpus while also attending to the integral role these print works played in Black prison organizing — challenging, traversing and bearing witness to violent carceral systems.”

Tajah Ebram is currently the Black Studies Librarian at Rutgers University Libraries and the Rutgers lead for the Black Bibliography Project, which is building a linked open database of Black book history. In 2020, she completed her PhD in the English department at Penn. Her research and teaching interests include Black literary and cultural studies where they intersect with Black feminisms, environmentalism, carceral studies and local Philadelphia Black histories.