Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture

by Eric Gardner

Overview

Black Print Unbound explores the development of the Christian Recorder during and just after the American Civil War. As a study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church newspaper and so of a periodical with national reach among free African Americans, Black Print Unbound is at once a massive recovery effort of a publication by African Americans for African Americans, a consideration of the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and print culture studies, and an intervention in the study of literatures of the Civil War, faith communities, and periodicals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190237097
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/28/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Eric Gardner is Professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. He is the author of Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
White Houses and Black Print

Part I:
"Our Church Organ": Toward a Cultural and Material History of the Early Recorder

Chapter 2
"Dense Darkness": Recovering the Recorder's History

Chapter 3
From Pine Street to the Nation (and Back Again): The Business of the Recorder

Chapter 4
"Their Friends at Home with Papers": Recorder Subscription and Subscribers

Part II:
"Would not such a narration be worth reading?": The Christian Recorder and African American Literary History

Chapter 5
"We are in the world": Reading the Recorder in the Civil War Era

Chapter 6
"So Let Us Hear from All the Brethren": The Christian Recorder and Correspondence

Chapter 7
"That Wished Home of Peace": The Personal and the Political in Christian Recorder Elegies

Chapter 8
Black (Women's) Fortunes and The Curse of Caste

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

"With Black Print Unbound, Eric Gardner has significantly advanced the study of African American culture and history while at the same time giving a master class in working across the various methods of inquiry and styles of research gathered under the big tent of print culture studies. ... Black Print Unbound uses bibliography, biography, history, and literary criticism to deliver a field defining and field expanding work." —Jonathan Senchyne, SHARP News

"magisterial vision and imaginative force that will set new standards for periodical scholarship." —Prize Committee, The Research Society for American Periodicals

"Black Print Unbound is an exemplary work of recovery; it not only draws attention to the neglected archive of the Recorder, but it highlights the ways in which its editors, contributors and readers, against the odds, formed extensive textual communities." —The Times Literary Supplement

"This in-depth case study thus makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates surrounding print cultures and their publics in the United States during the nineteenth century. ... Black Print Unbound is a testament to Gardner's commitment to the ongoing project of recovering nineteenth-century black lives and texts. ... This book represents an important contribution to these efforts and provides a model of literary and print culture studies 'unbound' from canonical authors and texts." —MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

"...a valuable resource for those interested in race, media studies, and American history in general. Highly recommended." —CHOICE

"The Christian Recorder was the most important and influential forum for African American writing in the nineteenth century, and Eric Gardner is the best scholar on the subject. A comprehensive study, deeply grounded in archival research, that considers the Christian Recorder as both institution and fluid text, this will be one of those rare books about which one can honestly say, 'This changes everything.'" —John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History

"Black Print Unbound far exceeds the pages of the printed word. Gardner has meticulously reconstituted a textured history of the Christian Recorder that provides deep insight into nineteenth-century African American literary culture-writers and readers, authorship, literary form and genre-yet also opens a wide window onto black society and activism nationwide. His scholarship is impeccable, the book richly rewarding." —Carla L. Peterson, author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City

"Eric Gardner's detailed analysis of the Christian Recorder during the Civil War era demonstrates that scholars must reexamine their assumptions about 19th century African American print culture. This carefully researched volume provides an essential resource for both historians and literary scholars examining print culture or the AME Church in the Civil War era."-Mitch Kachun, author of Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915

"Not only constitutes a significant contribution to the study of African American print but will also likely prove foundational to future research. Gardner has written one of those generous works of scholarship that seeks not to utter the last word on a subject but to open up an archive to new avenues of scholarly activity..." —American Periodicals

"A significant contribution to the study of African American print but will also likely prove foundational to future research. Gardner has written one of those generous works of scholarship that seeks not to utter the last word on a subject but to open up an archive to new avenues of scholarly activity." —-American Periodicals

From the Publisher