H-15. The History of the Book in America: A Survey from Colonial to Modern - Advance Reading List

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  • Required Readings

    Readings are listed in the order that they will be discussed during the seminar.

    Darnton, Robert. Excerpt from “What Is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111 (Summer 1982): 65–69 + notes 81.

    Raven, James. “The Scope of Book History.” In What Is the History of the Book?, 1–16 + notes 145–46. Medford, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2018.

    Casper, Scott and Joan Shelley Rubin. “The History of the Book in America.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez and H.R. Woudhuysen, vol. 1, 425–42. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

    Sencheyne, Jonathan. “Under Pressure: Reading Material Textuality in the Recovery of Early African American Print Work.” Arizona Quarterly 75 (Fall 2019): 109–32.

    Adelman, Joseph M. “The Business and Economic World of the Late Colonial Printing Trade.” In Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789, 19–50 + notes 208–15. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

    Franklin, Benjamin. Excerpts from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Frank Woodworth Pine. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916. Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm.

    Randall, Dudley. “Broadside Press: A Personal Chronicle.” In The Black Seventies, ed. Floyd B. Barbour, 138–48. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970.

    Hall, David D. “The World of Print and Collective Mentality in Seventeenth-Century New England.” Cultures of Print, 79–96. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

    Beales, Ross W. and E. Jennifer Monaghan. “Literacy and Schoolbooks.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, 380–87 + notes 594–600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

    Monaghan, E. Jennifer. “Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free: Reflections on Liberty and Literacy.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 108 (1998): 309–41.

    Round, Phillip H. “Being and Becoming Literate in the Eighteenth-Century Native Northeast.” In Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663–1880, 46–72 + notes 236–39. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

    Remer, Rosalind. “New Modes of Publishing in the Early Republic.” In Printers and Men of Capital, 69–99 + notes 175–80. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

    Abbott, Jacob. Chapters 4–17 of The Harper Establishment: How the Story Books Are Made. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855. https://archive.org/details/harperestablishm00abbo.

    Groves, Jeffrey D. “Trade Communication.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 3: The Industrial Book, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, 130–39 + notes 440–41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

    Sopcak-Joseph, Amy. “Reconstructing and Gendering the Distribution Networks of Godey’s Lady’s Book in the Ninteenth Century.” Book History 22 (2019): 161–95.

    Casper, Scott E. “Other Variations on the Trade.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 3: The Industrial Book, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, 203-223 + notes 450–54. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

    Miller, Sally M. “Distinctive Media: The European Ethnic Press in the United States.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4: Print in Motion, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, 299–311 + notes 584–86. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

    Kanellos, Nicolas. “Exiles, Immigrants, and Natives: Hispanic Print Culture in What Became the Mainland of the United States.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4: Print in Motion, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, 312–38 + notes 586–89. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

    Danky, James P. “Reading, Writing, and Resisting: African American Print Culture.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4: Print in Motion, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, 339–58 + notes 589–93. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

    Luey, Beth. “Modernity and Print III: The United States, 1890–1970.” In A Companion to the History of the Book, 368–80. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

    Matthews, Kristin L. “Making Reading Popular: Cold War Literacy and Classics Illustrated.” Book History 22 (2019): 320–41.

    The Underground Press Syndicate. “How to Publish Your Very Own Underground Newspaper.” New York: Free Ranger Press, 1971.

    West, E. James. “‘The Books You’ve Waited For’: Ebony Magazine, the Johnson Book Division, and Black History in Print.” In Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print, edited by Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne, 62–81. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019.

    Miller, Laura J. “From Dry Goods Merchant to Internet Mogul: Bookselling through American History.” In Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption, 23–54 + notes 241–51. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

    Finkelstein, David and Alistair McCleery. “The Future of the Book.” In An Introduction to Book History, 118–32. New York: Routledge, 2005.