Title: Introduction: Dry and Heavy: Or, Another Poetics and Another Writing—<i>of</i> History and the Future
Abstract: For the texts of W. E. B. Du Bois, the 37 volumes of The Complete Published Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, published by Kraus-Thomson, edited and introduced by the late Herbert Aptheker, from 1973 to 1986, remains the best and most comprehensive source. (For specific citations one may consult the bibliography of a recent collection of his early essays [Du Bois 2015].)Several scholars, colleagues, and former students—not otherwise noted in the three CR issues (6.3, 12.1, 15.2)—were essential in making possible the two conferences on W. E. B. Du Bois in Japan at Sendai in 2006 and at Tokyo in 2007. Lisa Brawley, Jonathan Flatley, Fred Moten, Kalpana Seshadri, Masako Nakamura, Reginald Kearney, Aigul Kulnazarova, and Koji Takenaka presented papers, with Moten and Takenaka offering keynote addresses in 2007. Organizational support of colleagues of the School of Global Studies, a division of Tama University—in Fujisawa (at Shonandai), in Kanagawa—Najwa Waheed Naohara, Jennifer Seaman, and Toru Yonekubo, were essential to the event of the 2007 conference; so also for Kazuko Nishimoto, Makoto Miyazaki, and Takahiko Miyasaka as students; and so too for Terry Joyce, Gerald Cipriani, Greg Poole, as faculty, and Kuniko Miyanaga as dean. The generous documentary work of Winifred Shiraishi in 2007, also a colleague, was singular in helping me build the scaffolding by which the special issue of CR 12.1 and the present volume were constructed. Sarah Hamblin performed immense and detailed editorial and curatorial work assisting me in the preparation of CR 12.1. Abdulhamit Arvas has likewise given such essential care and precisely intelligent attention in the preparation of the present volume. My wife, Ayumi Chandler, worked beside me at each stage of this project—rendering for me the essential gift.