American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) and The Program in the History of the Book in American Culture (PHBAC) at the American Antiquarian Society conference will explore the relationship between images and words in early American printed materials. Papers will consider the rise of the image in print media not only as a result of technological developments but also cultural change. The interpretation of a wide variety of printed material will be considered including illustrated novels, periodical illustrations, pictorial weeklies, literary annuals, gift books, prints, broadsides, handbills, posters, maps and atlases, trade cards, political cartoons, children's picture books, paper currency, and scientific medical treatises. We invite participation and dialog among scholars from a variety of disciplines including literary studies, history, art history, American studies, and social and cultural history.
Friday Afternoon
Antiquarian Hall, AAS
1:00-3:00 p.m.
Session 1: Publishing Strategies
- Megan Walsh, Assistant Professor, Department of English, St. Bonaventure University—“Isaiah Thomas’s First American Illustrated Novel”
- Gigi Barnhill, Curator Emerita of Graphic Arts, American Antiquarian Society—“Shifting Meanings: Texts and Images in Literary Annuals and Periodicals”
- Marie-Stephanie Delamaire, Core Lecturer, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University—“The Preacher and the publisher’s ‘Man-of-War’: An Illustrated Bible Conquers the American Book Market in the Early Republic”
- Wendy Woloson, Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers University—“Lightning Sausages, Sensation Finger Traps, and Resurrection Plants: The Aesthetics of Novelty in the late 19th Century”
Break
Selections from the AAS collections available for viewing in the Council Room
4:00-5:30
Session 2: Remediation of Race
- Peter Betjemann, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, School of Writing, Literature, and Film, Oregon State University—“The (Illustrated) Book of Revelation: Picturing and Depicturing Textual Authority in Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
- Maurie McInnis, Professor, Department of Art and Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, University of Virginia—“Selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
- Kristine Ronan, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan—“Mato-Tópe’s Knives: Print and the Making of Race in the Nineteenth Century”
5:30 Cocktail Reception at the Goddard-Daniel House
7:00 p.m.
Keynote address: Christopher Lukasik, Associate Professor of English & American Studies, Purdue University, Irving’s Medium
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Atwater Kent Labs, WPI Campus
9:00-10:30 a.m.
Session 3: Representation/Reading of Art
- Beverly Lyon Clark, Professor, English Department and Women’s Studies Program, Wheaton College—“The Writer or the Family? Illustrating Little Women in the Nineteenth Century”
- Samuel Otter, Professor, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley—“’Out from Behind This Mask’: Word and Image in Whitman’s Two Rivulets and Leaves of Grass”
- Erika Schneider, Associate Professor, Department of Art, Framingham State University—“Lost in Translation, Found in Print: American Gift Books”
Break
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Session 4: Didactic Motives
- John Thomas, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, Rutgers University—“The Word Made Flesh: Seeing Scripture in The History of the Holy Jesus, 1745-1814”
- Ruthie Dibble, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art Department, Yale University—“’Too trivial to be Inserted into historical works’: Printed Ephemera and John Warner Barber’s History and Antiquities of New Haven”
- Nancy Siegel, Professor and Department Chair, Art History, Towson University—“Help Yourself: The Role of Illustrations in the Culinary language of Cookbooks”
Lunch 12:30-2:00
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Session 5: Intersections of Photography and Text
- Jessie Morgan-Owens, Academic Director, Bard Early College New Orleans—“The History of Ida May”
- Amy E. Johnson, Associate Professor, Department of Art, Otterbein University—“'Picturesque Notes': A Guide to Envisioning the Modern City'”
- Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor, Art Department, Colby College—“Inscribing Difference: American Postcards in Black and White”
3:30-5:00 p.m.
Session 5: Cartographic Discourses
- Leila Mansouri, Ph.D. Candidate, English, University of California, Berkeley—“Thomas Jefferson and ‘The Natural and Political History of the Gerry-Mander’”
- Nora Slonimsky, Ph.D. Candidate, History, CUNY Graduate Center—“Literary Property and the ‘Imperfection of Maps’ in The American [partial] Geography”
- David Weimer, Ph.D. Candidate, English, Harvard University—“Visual Knowledge and the Difficulties of Tactile Atlases in the Nineteenth Century”