Early African American Print Culture
in Theory and Practice
Philadelphia – March 18-20, 2010
About This Conference
The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mark both the inauguration of an African American literary tradition and the consolidation of American print culture. Yet these two most vibrant areas for American Studies scholarship are rarely considered in relation to one another. To the extent that scholars understand African American print culture at all, we do so with a dependence on critical models that assume that print is a stabilizing technology that underwrites the establishment of African American identity. But while the technology of print fixes impressions, print culture designates a world in which print both integrates with other practices and assumes a life of its own. Early African American Print Culture in Theory and Practice brings together more than a dozen distinguished and emerging scholars whose research demonstrates that the study of print culture has much to teach us about early African American literature and that early African American literature has the capacity to transform our understanding of print culture.
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The panels on March 19 and 20 will be based on pre-circulated papers. In order to access those papers, please pre-register for the conference using the form below.
