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New Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships Announced
John J. Garcia will be joining the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts as Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships on April 3, 2023. Garcia joins the Society from Donald Heald Rare Books, Prints & Maps in New York, where he has served as director since 2022. Previously, he was assistant professor of English at Florida State University and at California State University, Northridge. Garcia earned his BA and MA from the California State University, San Bernardino, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. While in graduate school, he taught college courses at San Quentin State Prison.
A specialist in the history of the book in America from the colonial era to 1900, Garcia will oversee the Society’s Program in the History of the Book in American Culture and its Center for Historic American Visual Culture, both of which attract groups of scholars to Worcester in the summer to discuss relevant topics in pre-twentieth century American history. He will also build the Society’s relationships with scholars, organizations, and institutions across many fields and disciplines of study.
Garcia is currently at work on two books: Without Order: Booksellers and the Failures of the Early American Book Trade, 1679-1840; and the critical edition Graphic Madness: The Illustrated Diary of Charles A. Beach. Garcia serves as president of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School. A Ford Foundation Fellow at AAS in 2015-16 and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 2019-20, he was elected to membership in the Society in 2022.
(March 3, 2023)
Additional Photos for the Media
Scott E. Casper, President of the American Antiquarian Society
Images from the Collection
Sequoyah (ca. 1770-1843)
Portrait print published by F.W. Greenough, Philadelphia [ca. 1838], after original painting by Charles Bird King, 1828.
Almanac for 1792, by Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)
Manuscript calculations for Benjamin Banneker’s 1792 printed almanac.
Baby Penny Paper Dolls
Published by McLoughlin Bros., New York, N.Y., ca. 1870s.
San Francisco China News
Published by Bogardus & Gordon, San Francisco, CA, 1874-1875.
Phillis Wheatley Peters (1753-1784)
Frontispiece of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, printed for A. Bell, bookseller, Aldgate; and sold by Messrs. Cox and Berry, King-Street, Boston, 1773.
Catalog Record | Enlarge image
Ribbon map of the Father of Waters
Coloney & Fairchild, St. Louis, MO, 1866.
Catalog Record | Enlarge image
The Circulating Library
Lithograph by Endicott & Swett, published by J.N. Toy & W.R. Lucas, Baltimore, MD, [1831].
Catalog Record | Enlarge image
Ludlow’s concentric chart of history AD
Funk & Wagnalls, New York, N.Y., [1885].
Catalog Record | Enlarge image
