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A biannual publication offering insights into the use of digital historical collections

American History

Black Women in the Women’s Era, 1890-1920: Course Assignments Using Readings from Afro-Americana Imprints

“With all the wrongs and neglects of her past, with all the weakness, the debasement, the moral thralldom of her present, the black woman of to-day stands mute and wondering at the Herculean task devolving upon her. But the cycles wait for her. No other hand can move the lever...

Antebellum Arithmetic and Abolitionist Newspapers

To gain insight into the connections between antebellum school mathematics, on the one hand, and the debates on how most speedily to abolish slavery, on the other, it is invaluable to research databases of antebellum publications. This includes, for instance, Readex’s Early American Newspapers, African American Newspapers, and Caribbean Newspapers...

Resisting Repression: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Age of Global Surveillance

To commemorate the 50-year anniversary of W. E. B. Du Bois’s death in 2013, New York City artist Ann Messner created an installation at UMass Amherst titled “ DuBois: The FBI Files.” Messner’s work addressed federal surveillance of the black radical scholar in the McCarthy era of ferocious anticommunism. She...

Womanhood, Religion, and Slavery: Dialogues from the Readex African American Newspapers Series

Nineteenth-century African American newspapers attracted black writers, subscription agents, printers, and readers eager to imbibe news and opinions from their own heterogeneous, diverse communities. They considered the impact of American slavery on global trade and commerce and global appropriations of African American culture and ideas. They ranged from commercial publications...

Archives of Freedom: Fugitive Science in Antebellum Black Newspapers

Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press, 2017) traces a forgotten history of black resistance to the ascendency of racial science in the nineteenth century. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, naturalists, medical doctors, comparative anatomists, and a variety of gentleman scientists became increasingly interested...

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