American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
In this lecture, Professor Gardner asked how careful consideration of nineteenth-century African American experiences can and should reshape our discussions of early Black print. His talk drew on diverse print material that was produced by, for, or via the African Methodist Episcopal Church between 1840 and 1870. He focused on how and why diverse African Americans came to, conceived of, and used print, with emphasis on the ways such exploration challenges dominant senses of terms like “writer,” “editor,” “reader,” and especially “print,” “history,” and “American culture.”
Professor Gardner is professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University is the author of Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (2015) and the award-winning Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (2009). He has also edited or co-edited three books, as well as a recent special issue of the journal American Periodicals focused on Black periodical studies.