Speaking on Scrapbooks in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Circle, Oct. 24, Hartford

I first saw a Beecher family-related scrapbook when Minton Brooks asked me to look at one now in the Brooklyn Historical Society, made by his ancestor Henry F. Minton. Henry Minton was Henry Ward Beecher’s parishioner, and had been riveted enough by

Harriet’s daughter Hattie Stowe made a cat scrapbook! (Schlesinger Library)

his minister’s doings in the unfolding Beecher Tilton sex scandal to compile clippings about them in his scrapbook, along with his own interests as a homeopathic doctor. It was the kind of unfolding news story that often inspired newspaper clipping scrapbook making. A scrapbook allowed you to collect all the sidepaths and follow them all across different newspapers.

But the Beechers and

Henry Minton scrapbook

Stowes and their friends themselves had different ideas of what to collect. And old newspapers could be turned into data, abolitionists realized in creating American Slavery as It Is – the book that Harriet Beecher Stowe kept under her pillow when writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

I’m looking forward to speaking about the scrapbooks and newspaper clippings in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, CT, on Thursday, October 24, 5:30. Join me!

Treasure in scrapbooks

This rare, riveting photograph of Harriet Tubman, probably taken around 1911 at her home in Auburn, NY, was in one of the scrapbooks kept by Elizabeth Smith Miller and Anne Fitzhugh Miller. They were ardent suffragists, and the daughter and granddaughter of abolitionist Gerrit Smith.  You can see more of their scrapbooks on the Library of Congress website. I’m looking forward to speaking about all kinds of scrapbooks in Auburn, Monday March 19 at the Seymour Library, 6 pm.

Auburn is not far from Syracuse and Ithaca — come on over.

This will be my last talk for Humanities New York’s Public Scholars Program, which is coming to an end. Audiences have been enthusiastic, and I hope to keep giving talks.

Back Number Budd talk Feb. 18, 1 pm, Astoria, Queens – note corrected time

Back Number Budd

If you didn’t have a scrapbook and didn’t have room for piles of newspapers in your house, how else could you find old news items in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? You could visit a form of offsite storage, flourishing first in a basement in midtown Manhattan, and then in an old horsecar barn in Astoria, Queens.

In the 1870s, an African American man known as Back Number Budd began sorting and organizing back issues of newspapers for sale to researchers, lawyers, and browsers. In a time before library newspaper collections or indexes, his business allowed his clients to find long lost information. Especially because he was black, buyers were suspicious of the high prices he charged for his work of sorting and saving old newspapers elsewhere considered trash. The story of his work offers a view into forgotten moments in African

1891 Astoria Map

American history.

Fire destroyed Robert Budd’s business, but competition from the New York Public Library, which started saving more newspapers, and clipping services, which came into use in the 1890s, also displaced it.

I’m excited to be speaking about Back Number Budd on Feb. 18, 1 pm at the Greater Astoria Historical Society, not far from where Budd had has warehouse, in Ravenswood, Astoria, Long Island City.

I already had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting some of his descendents in Massachusetts, and hope that someone in Astoria will have a lead on a photo of his business – or have other stories to share.

Thanks to the Public Scholars in the Humanities, Humanities New York, for sponsoring this!

Lockport ahead: Speaking at the History Center of Niagara, Thurs May 19

So excited to be giving my first talk on scrapbooks for the Public Scholars in the Humanities program of the New York State Council for the Humanities, which has 31 scholars giving talks around the state. I have been completely wowed by those I met at our workshops last summer — Richard Heyl de Ortiz, who speaks about the foster care system, Sally Roesch Wagner, who speaks on the 19c women’s rights movement, and the cartoonist Robert Sikoryak who graciously shlepped to my university in Jersey City to give a brilliant presentation on the history of cartoons/graphic novels, and two dozen more. Just looking at the list of speakers again is inspiring. If you’re in NY State, your organization can invite one! Or more!

Tomorrow I head upstate to speak about scrapbooks at the History Center of Niagara, hard by the Erie Canal, with stops in Glen Falls along the way. I hope people respond to the invitation to bring their scrapbooks (50 years old or more — the scrapbooks, not the people). I’ll bring some of mine, too. And yes, I’ll talk about how people without much power — African Americans, women’s rights advocates — used scrapbooks to speak back to the media.

Thursday, May 19, 7 pm. Niagara County Historical Society,  215 Niagara Street, Lockport, NY 14094. Looking forward to seeing you!

 

Ink & Electricity lecture Thursday Nov. 12 at Monmouth

Monmouth used the cover of the odd crowd-sourced anthology, Heart Throbs: The Old Scrapbook. The editor asked newspaper readers to send in their favorite poems, etc., with the idea that they were tucked away inside scrapbooks. The white-haired scrapbook

Girl stores up scrapbook wisdom: Youth’s Companion 1906.

user is a figure of wisdom, while  scrapbook makers are usually shown as young people, storing up wisdom to use later. The talk is Thursday, Nov. 12.

 

Ink and Electricity: Speaking at Monmouth University Thursday Nov. 12

Vertical filing cabinet, c. 1890, from the American Library Association: http://www.ala.org/lhrt/popularresources/lhrtnewsletters/spring2011

Monmouth’s great title for their series on print culture, Ink and Electricity, is a reminder of how our perceptions of media are shaped by the technology of the moment. For 19th century scrapbook makers, scrapbooks were a new technology — as were the 1890s file folders and vertical files, that eventually displaced a swath of newspaper clipping scrapbook making. I’ll be speaking on how 19th century activists repurposed media in their scrapbooks. 6-7:30, Wilson Hall, Room 104. Arrive early for refreshments. Thanks to Kristin Bluemel for arranging this.

Speaking at Yale, Friday Jan. 30

Looking forward to joining Laura Wexler and the members of the Yale Photographic Memory Workshop and History of Science people at the Gilder Lehrman Centre’s Seminar room from 4:30-6:30. Open to the public — do come. I leave or Paris the next day, so this is your last chance for 5 months. (I don’t think the Photographic Memory Workshop means they study people with photographic memory, but rather the kind of work Laura has done on photography and memory, and most recently the extraordinary Photogrammar project, for searching and doing much more with FSA photos from the Depression.

Speaking on repurposed books at UMD College Park Friday Nov. 14

I’ll be speaking on repurposed books at the Local Americanists series at UMD College Park on Friday.  I have to find out where the picture on this gorgeous poster came from! Come if you’re in the area. Thanks to Ingrid Satelmajer and Bob Levine for the invitation. This will also give me a chance to revisit the amazing Joseph W. H. Cathcart scrapbooks at Howard University. These are the over 100 scrapbooks made by a 19th century African American janitor who stamped some of his books “GSBM” for the Great Scrapbook Maker.

Heading out to Texas for Making Sense: Handwriting and Print Symposium

Heading out Texas A&M for the symposium Making Sense: Handwriting and Print. It looks like a great program — we’ll start with some hands-on work with a hand press, and then

Hoping to snag a copy of this beautiful poster.

jump from Renaissance to 21st century, graphic novels to British detective novels, film to Japanese best sellers, and OCRing black letter. So cool! My talk, “Cut-and-Paste Pedagogy: Hand, Scissor, Pen, Scrapbook” is an offshoot from my book, and I get to be on a panel with Vera Camden talking about Alison Bechdel’s “autographics” — hmm. I wonder if she means all those meticulously rendered handwritten and printed passages in Bechdel’s memoirs? Will find out.

Writing with Scissors wins Transdisciplinary Book Award

I’m thrilled to officially announce that Writing with Scissors has won the Institute for Humanities Research (Arizona State University)’s Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award. The award honors a nonfiction work that exemplifies transdisciplinary, socially engaged humanities-based scholarship. What an honor to have my book described that way! The award committee writes, “Garvey’s book provides a novel take on our familiar national history, recounting events, both major and minor, as told by the individuals who lived them and recorded them in their scrapbooks.” I’m looking forward to giving a talk at the award ceremony, Oct. 9, 4-5:30.