University of Maryland, College Park
College Park, Maryland, October 25-27, 2019

APHA invites you to join us for our first conference expressly devoted to the rich history of printing and publishing in America from diverse groups. Our 2019 annual conference will join the conversation on intersections of printing history, the book arts, bibliography, and print culture studies with gender studies, queer theory, ethnic studies, Black studies, Jewish studies, and Latin@ history. Through lectures, panels, and workshops, participants will have the opportunity to engage with a critical exploration of the history of printing among America’s underrepresented communities.

Registration | Travel | Accommodations | Schedule | Keynotes and Artists | Tours and Activities | Sponsors 

Registration

Registration is currently open to everyone but is limited to 130 participants. We strongly encourage early registration, as previous conferences have sold out quickly. Tours and workshops have limited capacity and tend to fill up fast. The fee includes admission to keynote and panel sessions, Saturday lunch, evening receptions, and eligibility to sign up for local tours and both workshops. 

Secure pay registration can be found here.  Registration fees cannot be refunded for cancellations made within the 30 days prior to the conference.

Travel

The University of Maryland is served by three major airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA), Baltimore Washington International (BWI), and Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). Shuttle and Metro options are available for each airport. The Shuttle UM-104 “College Park Metro” will bring you to campus from the College Park/U of MD station.

From Washington Dulles International:

This airport is located 36 miles southwest of College Park. Public transit options include taking the 5A Express bus to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station. From there you will take the Green Line (toward Greenbelt) and get off at College Park/U of MD station.

Baltimore Washington International:

Baltimore Washington International airport is about 25 miles north of College Park. Metro express bus from BWI to the Greenbelt metro station brings you to one stop from College park. Take the B30 metro bus to the Greenbelt metro and the train to College Park. MARC Train service is available from the BWI Rail Station to College Park.

Reagan Washington National:

This airport is in Arlington, Virginia, approximately 15 miles south of College Park. A Metrorail is accessible from the airport. Take the Yellow Line (toward Mt. Vernon Square), transferring to the Green Line (toward Greenbelt), and get off at College Park/U of MD station.

Sightseeing in Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Museums and other related sites are between 10 and 15 miles from the conference location. Traffic can be heavy during rush hour, but public transit options to the D.C. area are readily available. From College Park Metro Station take the Metro Yellow Line (Reagan National) to Fort Totten. From there take the Red Line (Shady Grove) to your desired destination.

Accommodations

Guests are encouraged to make reservations at The Hotel, as we have a block of rooms reserved for the nights of October 25 through October 27, 2019 at a rate of $149 a night for the single to $169 for the quad.  Included is a discounted rate for self-parking at $7 per day for attendees. Reservations must be made before September 25, 2019 to receive the discount. Please make your reservation through the The Hotel’s Reservation Center, 844-954-6835,  and identify yourself as part of the group. The Hotel is located less than a mile from the University of Maryland, College Park’s main campus at a walking distance of between 15 and 20 minutes to Tawes Hall, or by taking the Metro C2 (to Wheaton Station) at a travel time of 4 minutes. The Metro C2 (Wheaton/Greenbelt Station) runs approximately every 20 to 30 minutes depending on the time of day.

Schedule

Friday, October 25, 2019

Tawes Building

Registration. 8:00am – 4:00pm, Tawes Hall Lobby

APHA Board Meeting. 12:15pm – 1:45pm, Room  2115

University of Maryland, College Park Tours

Special Collections Tour. 11:00am – 12:00pm | Recap

David C. Driskell Center. 2:00pm – 3:00pm | Recap

Workshop Sessions

Tawes Building

BookLab, “Building Bridges through Letterpress Postcards” with Lynette Spencer. 9:30am – 1:30pm | Recap

Open Forum on Diversity in the Field with Jesse Erickson. 2:00pm – 3:00pm, Room 2115 | Recap

Special Screening Sessions

Tawes Building, Room 1100

83M80: Letterpress in the Digital Era, a documentary by Gonzalo Hergueta and MRKA.

Hourly screenings from 1:00pm – 3:00pm

Day One Plenary

Ulrich Recital Hall

Opening Remarks. 4:45pm – 5:00pm

2019 Lieberman Lecture and Artist Keynote Address with Colette Gaiter (open to the public) | Recap

5:00pm – 6:20pm.

Reception. 6:30pm – 7:30pm.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Tawes Building

Registration 8:00am – 4:00pm, Tawes Hall Lobby

Concurrent Sessions

Morning Coffee. Available from 8:30am – 11:00am

Labor and Identity Session I

9:30am – 10:45am, Room 2115

Panel – “The Question of Skin/The Problem of Work: Race & the Politics of Printshop Labor” with Andrew Raftery

Charmaine A. Nelson, “‘RUN-AWAY, FROM the Printing-Office’: Slave Labour, Slave Literacy, and Eighteenth-Century Print Culture in Quebec”

Phillip Troutman, “Stipple and Skin Tone: African American Engraver Patrick Henry Reason’s Apprenticeship to Stephen H. Gimber, 1833-1837”

Julia Grummitt, “Making McKenney and Hall: Philadelphia Colorists and the Production of the History of the Indian Tribes of North America, 1836-1844”

Labor and Identity Session II | Recap

9:30am – 10:45am, Room 1107

Special Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship Paper

Jordan Wingate, “The ‘Negro Press-hand’ of the Charleston Courier”

María Helena Barrera-Agarwal, “Lanuza, Mendia & Co.: A Spanish-language Publishing House in Early Nineteenth Century New York”

Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, “The Role of Illustrators, Engravers, and the Printing Press in the Discussion of Race in America”

Break. 10:45am – 11:00am

Concurrent Sessions

Constructions Session

11:00am – 12:15pm, Room 1107

Mallory Haselberger, “‘[Shaping] up before my eyes and in my own loving hands’: Jane Grabhorn’s Jumbo Press and the Feminist Possibilities of Print”

Dylan Lewis, “Graphic ‘Germanness’: Fraktur and German Nationalism in Early-American Print Culture”

Maryland Session | Recap

11:00am –12:00pm, Room 2115

Kadin Henningsen, “Biblionormativity and the Construction of Gender in Nineteenth-Century American Publishers’ Case Bindings”

Douglas P. McElrath, “Moses the News Vendor: Newspapers and African Americans in Ante-Bellum Baltimore”

Lunch (Good Tidings). 12:00pm – 2:00pm, Room 1310

Concurrent Sessions

Networks Session | Recap

2:00pm -3:30pm, Room 2115

Miriam Intrator, “Collecting the Diversity of American Historical and Contemporary Printing: A Librarian’s Perspective”

Dianne L. Roman, “Early Nineteenth Century Boston Weekly Provides Diverse Employment for Women, Supporting an All-Female Communication Circuit”

Jamie Mahoney, “Incarcerated Authors, Activist Poets, Student Designers, Led by Women Printers: Publications of the Bowe House Press are Truly Created by Many Hands”

Frontiers Session | Recap

2:00pm – 3:30pm, Room 1107

Steve Cox, “A Radical Press in Kansas: Haldeman-Julius’s Forgotten Publishing Dynasty”

Jessica Barness and Amy Papaelias, “Radical Scholarship: The Visual Language of Emerging Disciplines in the United States”

Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Kamau Brathwaite’s Printer”

Break. 3:30pm – 4:00pm

Day Two Plenary

Ulrich Recital Hall

3:45pm – 6:00pm

Casey Smith on Kampala, Marakere University Printmaking. 3:45pm – 4:00pm | Recap

Keynote Address with Kinohi Nishikawa, introduced by Edlie Wong. 4:00pm – 5:30pm | Recap

Closing remarks

Reception. 6:00pm – 7:00pm. Tawes Building, BookLab

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Gateway Arts District Galleries and Studios (shuttle pick up and drop off at The Hotel)

Pyramid Atlantic Letterpress Studio Tour and Workshop. 11:00am – 2:00pm

Keynotes and Artists

Colette Gaiter

Colette Gaiter—a multimedia artist, graphic designer, and writer—is a Professor of Visual Communications and Visual Studies at the University of Delaware’s Department of Art & Design and the Department of Africana Studies. Her work spans multiple creative practices, including photographic digital prints mixed with other media, artist books, websites, video, and interactive installations. She also writes about artists and designers, particularly the work of Emory Douglas, current activist and former artist and designer for the Black Panther Party. She wrote a new introduction to the second edition of Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, which includes her essay on the messages embedded in his work. Always investigating creative activism, her writing appears in various publications and books. Her talk, “Outside In: Images and Words of Assimilation and Resistance in American Print History,” will explore  how print culture in the United States has worked to represent the voice of diverse communities.

Kinohi Nishikawa

Kinohi Nishikawa is Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton University, where he currently holds the John E. Annan Bicentennial Preceptorship. A specialist in African American book history, Kinohi is the author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground (Chicago, 2018), a study of the commercialization of race in the post-civil rights paperback industry. Kinohi’s other writing has been published in the journals PMLA, MELUS, and American Literary History, and in the collections Against a Sharp White Background and The Blacker the Ink. His major research-in-progress examines the role graphic arts and book design have played in shaping modern African American literature. Nishikawa’s address, “Reading the Fine Print: Frank Marshall Davis at the Black Cat Press,” will discuss the collaboration between the poet Frank Marshall Davis and Norman Forgue’s Black Cat Press in Chicago between the years of 1935 and 1938.

Lynette Spencer

Lynette Spencer is a professional artist and educator that specializes in relief printing and bookmaking. She graduated in 2011 from the Corcoran College of Art & Design with a Masters in Book Arts. She is co-founder of Anchored Compass Studio based in Syracuse, NY and has taught local youth about books and print. Themes present in her work relate to nature, animals, birds, figures and travel inspiration. Lynette has taught workshops at book and print symposiums, and she enjoys sharing her knowledge of book arts.

Tours and Activities

University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections

Friday, October 25, 11:00am – noon, limited to 15 participants. Registration required.

A tour and viewing of the Special Collections in Hornbake Library will be offered to interested conference goers. The University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections are known for their distinctive holdings in mass media and culture, labor history, and women’s history.

Driskell Center

Friday, October 25, 2:00pm – 3:00pm, limited to 15 participants. Registration required.

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park is dedicated to the celebration, promotion, and preservation of the African American experience as expressed in paintings, prints, sculpture, and mixed media. It was established in 2001 to honor the legacy of David C. Driskell, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Art, artist, art historian, collector, curator, and philanthropist. The center features important prints and other artwork by such renowned artists as Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, and Faith Ringgold.

BookLab

Friday, October 25, 9:30am – 4:30pm, limited to 8 participants. Registration required.

“Building Bridges through Letterpress Postcards”

APHA 2019 is proud to collaborate with the University of Maryland, College Park’s newly established BookLab for an exciting workshop on letterpress postcards. This workshop will address how postcard prints can be used to promote unification and acceptance of diverse groups. It looks at how posters made for social causes can be translated into a smaller format to reach more people. Participants will generate phrases and images that could make an impact and reach a wide audience. Each postcard can be created for a different purpose, such as a call to action, invitation for a meetup group or dissemination for educating the receiver on the selected topic. Included will be instructions on layout and design using type and linoleum relief carving.

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center

Sunday, October 27, 11:00am-2:00pm, limited to 24 participants. Registration required. | Recap

Pyramid Atlantic is a nonprofit contemporary art center devoted to paper-making, printmaking, and the book arts within a collaborative community. Located in historic Hyattsville, the Center regularly features workshops and classes on various technical aspects of the book arts including binding, paper-making, letterpress, intaglio illustration, lithography, and photomechanical printing. This activity will feature a tour along with an introductory letterpress workshop with local artists.

Pyramid Atlantic Letterpress Studio Tour and Workshop. 11:00am – 2:00pm

Sponsors

Thank you to our wonderful sponsors and hosts!