Book History, Women, and the Canon: Theorizing Feminist Bibliography

This paper revises book history's historiography to account for feminist inquiry

“She writes like a Woman”: Paratextual Marketing in Delarivier Manley’s Early Career

Delarivier Manley has long been discussed as a sensational and successful Tory political satirist of the early eighteenth century. In the late seventeenth century, however, she associated with Whigs, experimented with genres, and tested different techniques for marketing her texts. Mimicking the methods of celebrity actresses, Manley used paratextual addresses to engage public interest in a carefully curated identity, creating a commodity in her persona that she would employ throughout her career. This paper traces her developing persona in her first three publications: Letters Writen by Mrs. Manley, The Lost Lover, and The Royal Mischief. Although these texts are not explicitly political satire, they nevertheless explicate the preliminary and halting machinations of an astute businesswoman and the marketing tactics Manley would employ throughout her career. The result is a more complete and nuanced picture of Manley’s commercial authorship

What Is Critical Bibliography?

This introduction to the special issue, “New Approaches to Critical Bibliography and the Material Text,” defines critical bibliography as a method that, at the intersection of critical theory and bibliographic study, challenges standard histories of the book and bookish objects. Drawing on feminist studies, critical race studies, postcolonialism, Marxism, queer theory, and disability studies, among others, critical bibliography, the authors argue, calls attention to the structures of oppression upholding the circulation, preservation, and organization of material texts—but also the possibilities of liberation therein. Taking up this method from a variety of fields and periods, the essays in this issue take on the very grounds, definitions, and boundaries of traditional bibliography, asking epistemological and ontological questions that interrogate the material and conceptual construction of bibliographic knowledge itself

Online Learning: A Primer

These are slides for a video lecture or independent activity designed to orient students to digital learning. If modeling off of this, you will need to change information to your specific country and institution's policies and adjust to your worldview about communication, lockdown browsers, etc. Please attribute and do not use for commercial purposes. Forgive and correct any typos as necessary

Pandemic Reflections: Write With Aphra in 2021

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Expanding Access: Feminist Scholarship and the Women in Book History Bibliography

Inspired by my work on the Women in Book History Bibliography, this presentation takes a different angle on discussions of women’s texts in digital archives. The WBHB collects secondary sources on women’s writing and labor over a broad range of languages, subjects, geographic locations, and time periods. Because we collect secondary sources, we do not quite fit into the community of digital archives that collect and present women’s texts. Yet, we are intricately connected to these resources; we face comparable challenges of funding and longevity, appeal to similar audiences, and ultimately share a philosophy of increased access and scholarship on the same set of texts. This presentation outlines the bibliographic connection between databases of primary sources on women’s writing and secondary-source databases like the WBHB. I conclude that such projects go beyond forwarding feminist scholarship and in face preserve it

Publishers Marketing Restoration Drama: A Case Study of Paratextual Experimentation

Although we have long discussed the rise of consumer culture and the increase of print in Restoration England (see Birth of a Consumer Society, 1982), comparatively little information exists on specific methods publishers used to advertise to audiences and what role they played in creating new markets. My project fills this gap by examining paratextual marketing tactics used by major publishers. I extend Peter Lindenbaum’s 2010 study of booklists to drama to show how in the 1660s and 1670s, publishers advertised a variety of works, but by the end of the century, they focused these booklists by purpose and audience. Leisure reading such as novels, drama, histories, and the like are marketed together, whereas sermons and religious texts find a different audience, law books another, and scientific texts another. Targeted advertising persisted from the eighteenth century to the present day, indicating publishers’ experimentation had a lasting effect on how we perceive audience tastes and genre. Furthermore, publishers tested new selling points by including actors’ and actresses’ names next to the roles they played. While this was uncommon in the 1660s, by the 1690s it was typical even on reprints. This suggests that the celebrity of performers was a significant boon to publishers who capitalized on audience interest and extended their fascination to printed plays. These case studies demonstrate that publishers not only responded to the desire for leisure activities by creating a sophisticated and adaptable business model, but that these techniques shaped the appetite for luxuries by connecting them to the irresistible aspects of Restoration society: celebrity, conspicuous consumerism, and literary communities

Introduction — talking back to the enlightenment : practicing anti-racist teaching and learning in eighteenth-century British literature (Roundtable)

Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing begins with the story of two eighteenth-century Akan sis-ters—Effia and Esi—as they stand symbolically above and below a grate in a castle in Cape Coast. The women are half-sisters who never meet and are physically joined only in that moment, unknown to one another, before being separated by an ocean. Above the grate, Effia has just married James Collins, the white British governor of the fort. Effia lives in relative comfort but is separated from her family, culture, and practices and must confront the contradictory dehumanization of and attraction to Black Akan women.1 Navigating this precarious world is hazardous for Effia and the other wives, including Eccoah, who notes, “There are women down there [in the dungeons] who look like us, and our husbands must learn to tell the difference.”2 Below the grate, Esi has been sold into slavery and sits in muck and filth. She and the other women are stacked on one another, raped and assaulted, and beaten until they are moved to ships for transport to the Caribbean. While Effia shudders at the fates of the women, termed “cargo,” below,3 Esi is unable to imagine anything other than the horror of her present, which she refers to as the “Now.”4 The destruction of Esi’s con-scious ties to her history dominoes through the generations: her daughter Ness does not learn how to speak Twi or understand its ties to the Akan,5 and Ness’s grandson H does not receive a full name because his mother committed suicide when she was kidnapped and forced into slavery. Yet through the novel, Gyasi explores not only the destruction of the slave system but also the ability of diasporic Akan people to persist, thrive, and eventually come to a place of healing and return.Published versio

ENG 3010 Literary Theory and Cultural Studies Syllabus

This is a zine-style syllabus of an undergraduate literary theory and cultural studies survey at Cal Poly Pomona. The course has two units. The first is a broad orientation to literary theory by touching on formalism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, and historicism briefly before using representative examples to read Shelley's Frankenstein in a roundtable format. The second unit is a deeper dive into intersectional feminism, which students then use to interpret a text of their choice. This course uses a labor-based grading contract based on the work of Asao Inoue. Please message me for a screen-reader-accessible version

Toward Critical Book History

This paper considers the prospect of a “critical book history” that blends critical theory with studies of the book as a material and cultural object. This concept parallels similar efforts in the digital humanities for a critically engaged digital practice, as explored in a 2018 American Quarterly special issue, the #transformdh movement, and Debates in the Digital Humanities. Critical digital humanities argues “that theory can be engaged through practice, that scholarship should be open and accessible to all, and that collaboration is pivotal” (American Quarterly 70.3). This presentation suggests that similar pushes in book history would create a productive dialogue between book history work, the digital humanities, critical theory, and public humanities. I explore: what would be the goal of a critical book history? What changes would be required in how we think about and practice our discipline? And most excitingly, what new inspiration does this provide for studies of materiality and cultural history; political praxis; theoretically informed work on race, ethnicity, gender, and class; technological methodologies that engage with the past and explore the future; and a reflexivity on the limitations of our historical narratives and practices