“The Strong Matter of Unknown Names”: Modeling Topics and Cross-Reading Poems in The Crisis

Topic modeling and related computational approaches are used to identify labor, education, and military personnel as central examples of “strong matter” in the early years of The Crisis magazine. Keywords are then derived from these topics and used to locate poems for closer consideration. Through cross-reading practices, these poems are read in relation to one another, other periodical texts, and their larger historical moment at the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance. Such readings reveal deep, shared, ideological commitments that are less evident in more traditional approaches focusing on individual writers and texts.