Section III. The walking book / Bryan Sinche. Section I. Infrastructures -- Slavery, black visual culture, and the promises and problems of print in the work of David Drake, Theaster Gates, and Glenn Ligon / P. Gabrielle Foreman -- "The books you've waited for" : Ebony magazine, the Johnson book division, and black history in print / E. James West -- Making lists, keeping time : infrastructures of black inquiry, 1900-1950 / Laura E. Helton -- Parsing the special characters of African American print culture : Mary Ann Shadd and the * limits of search / Jim Casey -- Section II. Paratexts -- Dionne Brand's A Map to the Door of No Return and antiblackness of the book as an object / Beth A. McCoy and Jasmine Y. Montgomery -- Performative paratexts : Postblackness, law, and the periodization of African American literature / Jesse A. Goldberg -- Richard Wright between two fronts : Black Boy in the black metropolis / Kinohi Nishikawa -- Imitation, racialization, and interpretive norms : Nella Larsen's "plagiarized" story in The Forum / Barbara Hochman -- Section III. Formats -- Visionary history : recovering William J. Wilson's "Afric-American Picture Gallery" / John Ernest, Rian Bowie, Leif Eckstrom, and Britt Rusert -- Centering black women in the black Chicago renaissance : Katherine Williams-Irvin, Olive Diggs, and "new negro womanhood" / Aria S. Halliday -- The slave narrative unbound / MichaeĢl Roy -- The walking book / Bryan Sinche.
Summary:
"The work of black writers, editors, publishers, and librarians is deeply embedded in the history of American print culture, from slave narratives to digital databases. While the printed word can seem democratizing, it remains that the infrastructures of print and digital culture can be as limiting as they are enabling. Contributors to this volume explore the relationship between expression and such frameworks, analyzing how different mediums, library catalogs, and search engines shape the production and reception of written and visual culture. Topics include antebellum literature, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement; "post-Black" art, the role of black librarians, and how present-day technologies aid or hinder the discoverability of work by African Americans. Against a Sharp White Background covers elements of production, circulation, and reception of African American writing across a range of genres and contexts. This collection challenges mainstream book history and print culture to understand that race and racialization are inseparable from the study of texts and their technologies."
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.