With the SGC Philadelphia 2010 Conference just around the corner, it seemed prudent that we mention the other print conference happening in Philadelphia a week prior: The Early African American Print Culture in Theory and Practice Conference, running from March 18th – 20th.
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.
Sounds like an interesting conference with a scholars shedding light onto an often overlooked history of print in American culture.
These images are from the Library Company publicity for the conference.
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