The Black Press in American Print Culture during the Civil War Era and the AME Church's "Christian Recorder"

FAIN: FB-56231-12

Eric Scott Gardner
Saginaw Valley State University (University Center, MI 48710-0001)

With the support of an NEH Fellowship, I will complete the first comprehensive book on the rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Christian Recorder during the Civil War era. Scholars are beginning to recognize that the nineteenth-century Black press offered the best (and often the only) outlet for many Black authors; similarly, many historians now see Black churches as key sites of some of the most exciting agitation for socio-political change and community-building in the period. As one of the most influential Black press venues in the nation, as the organ of a fast-growing Black denomination, and as one of the most important collections of nineteenth-century Black voices in existence, the Recorder thus offers an ideal case study for rethinking Black participation in American literature and print culture writ broadly, Black places in American religious history, and our larger sense of the Civil War era.

Associated Products

Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (Book)
Title: Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture
Author: Eric Gardner
Abstract: Black Print Unbound explores the development of the Christian Recorder during and just after the American Civil War. As a study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church newspaper and so of a periodical with national reach among free African Americans, Black Print Unbound is at once a massive recovery effort of a publication by African Americans for African Americans, a consideration of the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and print culture studies, and an intervention in the study of literatures of the Civil War, faith communities, and periodicals.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/898717243
Primary URL Description: WorldCat permalink for Black Print Unbound
Secondary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/black-print-unbound-9780190237097?lang=en&cc=us
Secondary URL Description: Oxford University Press page for paperback edition
Publisher: New York: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190237097
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize
Date: 5/27/2017
Organization: Research Society for American Periodicals
Abstract: Prize for best scholarly book on American periodicals published in 2015 and 2016.

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