The conference “Black Bibliographia: Print/Culture/Art” took place on April 26 and 27 and hosted around one hundred attendants in order to discuss what is a black book.
The first day of the conference started with several workshops:
Amos Kennedy, Jr./Raven Press Printing Workshop (picture) & Bibliography Workshop I, where panelists discussed their current projects to create digital bibliographies of African American and African diasporic literature and print culture: Amy Earhart & Rebecca Hankins (Texas A&M University); Elizabeth Watts Pope (American Antiquarian Society); Johnnnieque B. Love (University of Maryland); Maryemma Graham, Founder of the Project on the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas, will introduce the Black Book Interactive Project, followed by presentations from current and former project staff, Arnab Chakraborty, Alysha Griffin and Shelia Bonner.
Material Culture panel, moderated by Grace Adeneye (Affiliate Assistant Librarian and Pauline A. Young Resident), with speakers Nazera Sadiq Wright (University of Kentucky), Alex Black (Hobart & William Smith College), Marianetta Porter (University of Michigan), Myron M. Beasley (Bates College)
The day continued with several panels in which the presenters discussed topics around “Material Culture,” “Circulation,” and “Print Culture and Publishing.” Jacqueline Goldsby (Professor of English and African American Studies, Yale University), and Meredith L. McGill (Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University) gave the bkeynote lecture “From Lists to Links: Digitizing Descriptive Bibliography to Create New Literary Histories of Black Print”. Twitter became the forum for ideas expressed during the presentations:
April 27 started with a breakfast workshop presented by Sarah C. Carter (Indiana University), Courtney Becks (University of Illinois), and Vaughn Hennen (Dakota State University)
“The Future is Ephemeral: The Importance of Connecting Librarians and Cultural Heritage Workers to Build Ephemeral Collections.” Saturday’s keynote presentation, introduced by Colette Gaiter (Associate Professor of Art & Design and Africana Studies), consisted on Tia Blassingame (Director, Scripps College Press and Owner, Primrose Press) presenting “Printing Race: Printmaking, Poetry, Memorialization and Social Justice/Practice in Artist’s Books”
Tia Blassingame giving the keynote presentation
Panels on “Theorizing the Black Book,” Print Laborers,” and “Literary Lineages,” and Twitter received the attendants’ feedback in several posts:
The conference ended with poet Robin Coste Lewis reading several of the poems she published in her book Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems
