650 East Pleasant St. Amherst
'Slavery and the Making of the Early American Book'
As we approach the 200th anniversary of Freedom’s Journal (1827), the first African American periodical, this talk will explore Black labor in the world of books across colonial North America, the British Caribbean, and the early United States. Focusing on three key bibliographical sites—the library, the printing office, and the paper mill—the presentation reimagines expressions of community, expertise, and resistance in these spaces. Free and enslaved communities played a central role in shaping early American print culture, influencing libraries, print shops, and paper mills in often surprising and overlooked ways. John Garcia is the Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships at the American Antiquarian Society. He oversees the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture (PHBAC) and the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) and is responsible for building relationships between AAS, scholars, organizations, and institutions. He served as president of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and is on the editorial board of Commonplace: the journal of early American life. His research has been supported by fellowships from AAS, Library Company of Philadelphia, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the New York Public Library, and the Ford Foundation. He has published essays on a variety of topics related to the history of the book and early American literature. He previously held teaching appointments at California State University, Northridge and Florida State University, and worked briefly in the antiquarian book trade. He holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Critical Theory from the University of California, Berkeley.