Course Information

Instructor: Jesse R. Erickson, Ph.D., MLIS
Location: Los Angeles, California
Mode: In-person
Dates: August 12–16, 2024
Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Descriptive bibliography, analytical bibliography, and textual criticism have long been a part of the methods by which literary historians have traced the bibliographical genealogies of textual transmission for a given title or body of work. However, once retooled toward a more expansive and inclusive perspective, bibliography can be implemented in ways that can contribute to deeper understandings of Black print culture. For Black Americans in particular, bibliography has been a pathway to establishing selfhood and fostering a rich intellectual and literary tradition of resistance. Looking at the history of Black American writers, poets, scholars, publishers, and printers from a viewpoint of material culture, this course will apply bibliographical methods to the analysis of Black print culture. From Jupiter Hammon to the Street lit of today, from yesterday’s ephemera to today’s typefaces, we will begin to explore the various ways in which books and periodicals have been both racialized and racially gendered in their material facets.