About this Event

The ephemeral, or transitory, materials of print culture – newspapers, diaries, scrapbooks and more – are essential historical artifacts today as they often provide insights into what was left out of history books. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the materials of Black print culture were also instrumental in developing community and reflecting the Black experience.

Join doctoral candidate Britney Henry to discover how the editors, publishers, writers and creators of Black print materials drew on this sense of community to understand who they were as a culture, to fight for Black rights and to explore self-expression through print mediums.

Henry curated the exhibition Black Expression in Black and White: A Quest for National Identity to explore this topic with newspapers, scrapbooks, periodicals, books, manuscripts and more that underscore the impact of these print materials and the changes they generated. The exhibition is on view through August 9 in the Lincoln Exhibition Case located outside the Special Collections Gallery.

Britney Henry is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and a graduate certificate student in Museum Studies and Public Engagement. She is also a graduate assistant in Special Collections and an African American Public Humanities Initiatives Fellow. Her research interests include Black popular culture, Black feminism, Black material texts, archives and book history.

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This in-person event is part of our Scholar in the Library series. It is free and open to the public.

Registration is required as seating is limited. This event will not be recorded.