“Imperfectly Known”: Nicholas Said and the Routes of African American Narrative

During his fellowship year, Ira Dworkin RI '21 is writing “‘Imperfectly Known’: Nicholas Said and the Routes of African American Narrative,” a book that examines the ways that the intellectual and political culture of Borno, in northeast Nigeria, shaped Black literary culture in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Focusing on the writings of Said, who came to the United States after his manumission in Europe and who soon thereafter fought in the Civil War, Dworkin’s book broadly considers the relationship of African and Islamic intellectual networks to Black knowledge production in North America. 

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