Slavery and the Making of the Early American Book

An exploration of Black labor’s influence on early American print culture comes to the Kislak Center at the University of Miami. On Tuesday, September 9, John J. Garcia, director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships at the American Antiquarian Society, presents research from his forthcoming monograph Without Order: Booksellers and the Failures of the Early American Book Trades, 1679–1825. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Framed by the approaching bicentennial of Freedom’s Journal (1827), the first African American periodical, Garcia examines the roles of free and enslaved communities in shaping libraries, print shops and paper mills across colonial North America, the British Caribbean and the early United States. The talk reconsiders how these spaces became sites of community, expertise and resistance.