American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
In January 2026, the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) will convene the Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print. Held onsite at AAS, the four-day workshop will assemble a cohort of graduate students and early career scholars specializing in pre-1900 African American history and culture. Participants will hone their skills using primary sources and refine their writing projects (dissertation chapter, book proposal, scholarly article, or other work-in-progress). Designed for scholars new to archival research, the workshop provides opportunities for professional development and pathways to access the AAS’s significant holdings in early African American newspapers, pamphlets, books, and other original sources. The workshop will be led by Tara Bynum (University of Iowa) in collaboration with AAS staff.
More information about the Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print will be available in August, including instructions on how to apply. For questions about the Scholars’ Workshop, contact John J. Garcia, AAS director of scholarly programs and partnerships, at jgarcia [at] mwa.org or 508-471-2134.
Dr. Tara A. Bynum is a scholar of early African American literary histories before 1800 and an assistant professor of English and African American Studies at University of Iowa. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Barnard College. Her book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (2023), is part of a larger, ongoing project that thinks more deeply about how black communities in the early republic made and shaped the very meaning of nation-building in the greater New England area and beyond. Related essays have appeared or are forthcoming in: Early American Literature, Common Place, Legacy, J19, Criticism, American Periodicals, and African American Literature in Transition, Vol. 1, 1750-1800. Dr. Bynum’s work has received and is indebted to generous financial support from: Washington College’s CV Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the John Carter Brown Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History, Rutgers University’s Department of English, and the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Dr. Bynum held a AAS-National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society in 2016. She was elected to AAS membership in 2022.