April 24 – Re-Mapping the Canon: Early American Newspaper Printers and Their Transnational Routes

In her recent book Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time, Wai Chee Dimock writes: “For too long, American literature has been seen as a world apart, sufficient unto itself, not burdened by the chronology and geography outside the nation … what we call ‘American’ literature is quite often a shorthand, a simplified name for a much more complex tangle of relations.” In part a response to Dimock’s claim, this talk addresses the transnational routes and roots of colonial era literature with a focus on three extraordinary printers: the English Quaker William Bradford, his German apprentice John Peter Zenger, and “liberty” printer John Holt. The talk incorporates the work of transnational scholars while adding theoretical concerns advocated by periodical scholars to further “thicken” and “lengthen“ our understanding of the American literary canon.