Guest Lecture Benjamin Fagan (Auburn University) & Hands-on Workshop

“The Collective Making of Frederick Douglass’ Paper”

This lecture explores the collective production of Frederick Douglass’s newspaper, Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–1860). Building upon scholarship that has explored how collaboration and collectivity manifests in the pages of Black newspapers, this talk focuses on the character of the collective that made the paper in the first place and suggests that looking closely at the men and women who together produced Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and exploring as much as possible the specific work performed by specific people, reveals a central piece of the collective politics that lie at the heart of the newspaper. Specifically, focusing on the collective politics of Frederick Douglass’ Paper in particular shows how Black organizing before the Civil War necessarily involved working through the tension between Black leadership and white support. Ultimately, this lecture considers the ways in which the collective that edited, printed, and managed Frederick Douglass’ Paper embodied the politics of an insistently and incontrovertibly Black institution that was openly supported by, but never subservient to, white allies.

Benjamin Fagan is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University (Auburn, Alabama). A specialist in early African American literature and print culture, his work has appeared in journals such as American Literary History, African American Review, and American Periodicals. He is the author of The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (2016), co-editor (with Kathleen Diffley) of Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image (2019), and editor of African American Literature in Transition, 1830–1850 (2021).

Benjamin Fagan will join the event virtually.

The lecture will be followed by a hands-on workshop in which students will have the opportunity to transcribe some of Douglass’ own writing for use by the United States Library of Congress.

A guest lecture and workshop linked with “Topics in Anglophone Literary Studies (Intermediality in Antebellum American Culture: Intermedial Practice I)” – Scott Zukowski, Ph.D. – and “Genres/Periods of American Literature (Life Writing in the United States and Canada)” – Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nassim W. Balestrini.

Poster