Syllabus

2017 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book

Other Languages, Other Americas

Sunday, July 9 - Friday, July 14, 2017

 

Location Key:
AH= Antiquarian Hall the main library building at 185 Salisbury Street
CR = Council Room in Antiquarian Hall
GDH= Goddard-Daniels House across the street from Antiquarian Hall at 190 Salisbury Street

 

SUNDAY JULY 9

3:00 Introductions, Tour, and Orientation (AH)

5:00 Fugitive Histories: an introductory archival workshop exploring an array of formats and genres in multiple languages, from which participants will begin to choose as touchstones for the week. (AH)

Categories:
1) Newspapers & periodicals
2) Didactic and religious works
3) Almanacs
4) Popular reading: novels, poetry, drama, albums
5) Travel narratives, political observations

6:00 Drinks and Dinner (GDH)

 

MONDAY JULY 10

9:00-10:30 States of the Field I: “Multilingual America” (GDH)

Readings (all available in Dropbox):
• Werner Sollors, “After the Culture Wars; or, from ‘English Only’ to ‘English Plus’,”
• Claudio Saunt, “Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography”
• Marc Shell, “Babel in America”

10:30 Break (GDH)

11:00 - 12:30 States of the Field II: Hemispheric Studies and Beyond (GDH)

Readings:
• Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Toward a ‘Pan-American’ Atlantic”
• Theresa Toulouse, “Prologomenal Thinking: Some Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Desire”
• Ralph Bauer, “Early American Literature and American Literary History at the ‘Hemispheric Turn”

12:30 Lunch (GDH)

1:30 – 2:30 Cataloging session with Amy Tims and Brenna Bychowski (GDH)

2:30 – 4:45 Hands-on archival session with “Fugitive Histories” materials (CR)

5:00-5:30 End of day check-in (GDH)

 

TUESDAY JULY 11

9 – 10:30 Spaces I:
The Haitian Revolution: Text-Networks of Saint Domingue and Hayti (GDH)

Readings:
• Dubois, excerpts from Avengers of the New World
• Trouillot, excerpts from Silencing the Past
• Constitution of Saint-Domingue (1801) (both French and English docs available)
• Constitution of Hayti (1805) (both French and English docs available)
• New York Evening Post, July 1805 (contains English translation of 1805 Constitution)

Recommended:
• Susan Gillman and Kirsten Silva Gruesz, “The Hemispheric Text-Network”

10:30 Break (GDH)

11:00-12:30 Spaces II: New Orleans, the St. Dominguean diaspora, and the French and Spanish Press (GDH)

Readings:
• Victor Séjour, “The Mulatto” (1837)
• Fabre, Michel. “The New Orleans Press and French-Language Literature by Creoles of Color.”
• Introduction to Les Cenelles (1845) trans. 1979.
• La Tortue and Adams, Translator’s Introduction to Les Cenelles, 1979.
• Lloyd Pratt, “Les Apôtres de la Littérature and Les Cenelles”
Recommended
• Les Cenelles, digital version http://french.centenary.edu/textes/cenelles1.htm
• Ed Piacentino, “Seeds of Rebellion in Plantation Fiction: Victor Séjour’s ‘The Mulatto’,” Southern Spaces 2007 (https://southernspaces.org/2007/seeds-rebellion-plantation-fiction-victor-séjours-mulatto)
• Gruesz, Kirsten Silva. “The Mouth of a New Empire: New Orleans in the Transamerican Print Trade.”
• Brickhouse, “A Francophone View of Comparative American Literature.”

12:30 Lunch (GDH)

1:30-3:00 Hands-on Archival Session with material from the Greater Caribbean (CR)
Rotate among five thematically arranged tables: Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue/Haiti; Antiracism and Antislavery in New Orleans; New Orleans Francophone-Hispanophone Newspapers; Popular Cultures of the Circum-Caribbean; Reconstruction-era New Orleans.

3:00 – 4:45 Research and Consultation on “Fugitive Histories” materials, individually or in pairs (AH)

5:00-5:30 End of day check-in (GDH)

 

WEDNESDAY JULY 12

9:00–10:30 Spaces III: “‘The Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages’: German-Language Print Culture in an Anglo-Colonial World.” Presentation by guest lecturer Patrick Erben, followed by Q&A (GDH)

Readings (in recommended order):
• Roeber, A. Gregg. “German and Dutch Books and Printing.” 298-313; 579-583.
• Erben, Patrick. “(Re)Discovering the German-Language Literature of Colonial America.”
• Wiggin, Bethany. “‘For Each and Every House to Wish for Peace:’ Christoph Saur’s High German American Almanac and the French and Indian War in Pennsylvania.” 154-171; 295-302.
• Dixon, Mark. “German Pietism and the Black Atlantic.” The Junto: A Group Blog on Early
American History. https://earlyamericanists.com/2016/12/13/guest-post-german-pietism-and-t...

10:30 Break (GDH)

11:00-12:30 Archival workshop on German-language materials with Patrick Erben

12:30 Lunch (GDH)

1:30–2:30 Spaces II: Reimagining the Spanish Borderlands:
Early Latino Literary History in Philadelphia and Beyond (GDH)

Readings:
• Rodrigo Lazo, “Hemispheric Americanism”
• Raúl Coronado, “Historicizing Nineteenth-Century Latino Textuality”
• Nancy Vogeley, excerpt from The Bookrunner: A History of Inter-American Relations--Print, Politics, and Commerce in the United States and Mexico, 1800-1830
• José Aranda, “When Archives Collide”
Recommended:
• Excerpts from Jicoténcal and Introduction to the RUSHLH edition

2:30 Break (GDH)

3:00-5:00 Hands-on archival session on Transamerican and Borderlands materials (CR)
Rotate among five thematically arranged tables: Revolutionary “Filadelphia”; Multilingual New England; New York Publishers and the Pan-American Book Market; Dime Novels about Adventuring in Mexico and the Caribbean; Print potpourri.

5:00–8:00 Reading Room open late; time for Individual Research (AH)

 

THURSDAY JULY 13
9:00-10:30 States of the Field III: Rewriting American Contact Stories (GDH)

Readings:
• Hilary Wyss, “Indigenous Literacies: New England and New Spain”
• Jace Weaver, “Literature and the Red Atlantic”
• Philip Round, Early Native Literature as Social Practice”
• Elise Bartosik Vélez, from Legacy of Chistopher Columbus

10:30 Group Photo (AH)

11:00 Overview of AAS Fellowship Program, Nan Wolverton (GDH)

11:30 Board bus for field trip to the John Carter Brown Library
Lunch on bus

12:30-1:30 Arrival, orientation, registration to JCB.

1:30 - 2:45: Split into two groups. Curatorial presentation on indigenous languages of the Americas and Columbus historiography by Ken Ward with one group; other group pursues individual research in satellite reading room.

2:45 – 4:00: Groups switch.

4:00 Return to AAS

5:00 End of day check-in. Consultations as needed. (GDH)

5:30 Picnic Potluck with AAS staff and Fellows (GDH)

FRIDAY JULY 14

9:00-10:30 Short presentations on “fugitive histories” (CR)

10:30 Break (GDH)

11:00-12:30 Presentations continued and closing thoughts (CR)

12:30 Lunch