Speaking on An African American Innovator in the Old Newspaper Business: May 9: 6:30 pm IN PERSON

https://vicsocny.org/calendar/

Robert M. Budd at his business, where he kept millions of copies of newspapers.

If you’ve never been to New York’s Grolier Club, here’s your moment! I’ll be speaking there in person on the innovative African American newsdealer, Robert M. Budd, better known as Back Number Budd. In the business he ran for 50 years, his store was the only place to find thousands of titles of old newspapers, some of which we can no longer find at all. The Metropolitan chapter of the Victorian Society in America invited me, and is keeping attendance to 50 people. I’m hoping some of them will have new leads, since I’m continually thrilled to learn more about Back Number Budd, what it was like to be an African American businessman from the 1880s into the 1930s, and his world.

The elegant Grolier Club is a repository of rare books and printed matter — come see it. Wondering how Mr. Budd would have felt there. Join us.

https://vicsocny.org/calendar/

Speaking in Wilmington, DE – University of Delaware April 27

Thrilled to be heading to the University of Delaware to speak on African American scrapbooks.

April 27 talk

I’m heading there for a meeting of the 19^th century women writers study group, and squeezing on a talk about African American scrapbooks along the way. (Listen for a mention of a slaveholding Gorsuch — an ancestor of the new Supreme Court judge? I wouldn’t be surprised.)

This time we’re discussing Alice Dunbar Nelson’s work (okay, the LONG 19^th century). I wrote about a fascinating scrapbook Dunbar-Nelson made about her suffrage work in 1915, and will be talking about that for the study group on Saturday, too. (I wrote about it in Writing with Scissors, and again in more detail in Legacy’s special issue on Alice Dunbar Nelson. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/645636) She was a woman of remarkable energy, commitment, and political organizing interests.

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? 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!

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.

Scissorizing, and speaking at Boston College Thurs. Oct 15, 4:30

I had just taught a class on Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall where I showed the students some of the charming cartoons about “scissorizing” — Fanny Fern’s word for the 19th century practice of copying from one newspaper or magazine to another, without pay — when Lori Harrison-Kahan sent me the poster for my talk, “Activists Repurpose Media: 19th Century Scrapbooks” at Boston College Thursday, October 15, 4:30. The poster uses one of the great “scissorizing” cartoons. This gives out 21st century use of the term “the cloud” new meaning. This editor seems to be receiving his “siftings” from on high — and bringing his readers the good grain, not the chaff.

Baldwin’s Monthly NY, vol 8 no 2 Feb 1874, p 3

Some of the cartoons were more hostile — it makes me wonder about how the cartoonists felt about those snipping editors. After all, cartoonists had to produce original material in an era before easy photographic reproduction. Take a look at “Involution of an Editor,” from the humor magazine Life.

Involution of News Editor – Life, Oct 25, 1883.

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.

Poof! Harry Houdini’s scrapbooks have been digitized

Would a light seance entail only meeting cheerful dead people? From Houdini’s spiritualism scrapbook at the HRC.

Rebecca Onion reports that the Harry Ransom Center has digitized ten of Harry Houdini’s scrapbooks. They follow his professional interests in spiritualism and magic. As was true for most performers, his scrapbooks were also a repository for clippings on his own career (and in his case, his inspiration Robert Houdin, and various competitors too.)

Evanston history in scrapbooks

Could this photo of Frances Willard show her making scrapbooks? (Frances Willard House Museum)

As I was putting together my talk for the Northwestern University exhibit on scrapbooks coming up Wednesday, November 13, 4 pm, I realized that two of the women whose scrapbooks I’d written about had lived in Evanston. Women’s rights activist, writer, and speaker Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,and Women’s Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard were both great makers and users of strategic scrapbooks,  so of course I’ll talk about them. I’m hoping to get in to see the Frances Willard House, but so far haven’t heard back from the volunteers there.  I’ll be speaking as well on Nov 14, at 12:30 — a somewhat different talk.