Tag: American Antiquarian Society

CFP: Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print, Jan. 11-15, 2027

The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is accepting applications for the Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print. Led by Dr. Tara Bynum (University of Iowa), this five-day, in-person workshop is open to graduate students and early career scholars specializing in pre-1900 African American history and culture. Participants will work closely with primary sources at AAS and refine works in progress―whether a dissertation or book chapter, journal article, or related scholarly project.

Designed for scholars new to archival research, the workshop includes professional development opportunities and direct access to AAS’s extensive collection of early African American newspapers, pamphlets, books, manuscripts, and other primary sources.

The Scholars’ Workshop will be held January 11-15, 2027. The workshop is tuition-free. Onsite housing and travel stipends will be provided to admitted participants.

For more information about the Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print, including instructions on how to apply, please visit the program webpage: https://www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-events/scholars-workshop-early-african-american-print.

The application deadline is October 15, 2026.

Very best wishes,
John J. Garcia, Ph.D.
Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships
American Antiquarian Society
www.americanantiquarian.org

Race and American Visual Culture seminar @ American Antiquarian Society

2017 Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) Summer Seminar

In Black and White: Race and American Visual Culture

American Antiquarian Society

Dates of Seminar: June 9-13, 2017

Applications Due: March 15, 2017

The 2017 CHAViC Summer Seminar at the American Antiquarian Society will explore how American visual culture expressed ideas about race, specifically blackness and whiteness, across the long nineteenth century. Through lectures, readings, hands-on workshops, and group research, participants will learn how popular forms of visual culture have constructed racial identities in the United States and how looking can function as a racialized practice. The seminar leader will be Tanya Sheehan, associate professor and chair of the Art Department at Colby College and editor of the Archives of American Art Journal at the Smithsonian Institution. Guest faculty will include Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, assistant professor in the History Department at Smith College and Jasmine Nichole Cobb, assistant professor in the Department of African & American Studies at Duke University.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn from the extraordinary collections at AAS, including popular prints, political cartoons, photographs, illustrated books and periodicals, sheet music, and ephemera such as trade cards. Case studies may include: caricatures of African Americans in Edward Clay’s lithographic series Life in Philadelphia (1828-1830), the visual culture of blackface minstrelsy and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), graphics from popular periodicals like Harper’s Weekly that picture racial politics at key moments in U.S. history, efforts to recreate the “image of the black” by African American writer Phillis Wheatley and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, fantasies of racial difference in illustrated children’s books and commercial trade cards, and efforts to visualize raced bodies in early photographic portraiture. There will be a field trip to the Museum of African American History in Boston to view the exhibition Picturing Frederick Douglass.

The seminar will be held from Friday, June 9, through Tuesday, June 13, 2017, at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Participation is intended for college and university faculty as well as graduate students and museum professionals.

For further information, syllabus, and application materials, please consult the AAS website at www.americanantiquarian.org/2017-chavic-summer-seminar