Upcoming Virtual Events: Fall/Winter 2021

October 13, 2021

All are welcome at BSA events, which are free and open to the public. These virtual events will be held via Zoom webinar; registration is required. Virtual events are live-captioned in English, with simultaneous, machine-generated Spanish translations. The Collecting, Knowledge, and Power: Perspectives from Latin America speaker series will be captioned in English with simultaneous Spanish/English interpretation (audio).

Bluestockings Bookstore: Empowering Queer and Activist Communities

October 21, 7pm ET (Zoom Webinar) – Registration & Speaker Bios

Malav Kanuga, Emiliano Lemus, and Matilda Sabal – moderated by Elvis Bakaitis
Founded in 1999, Bluestockings Bookstore has served for many years as a cultural hub, activist network, and vibrant community space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Entirely all-volunteer run, there are 80+ volunteers, a rotating weekly schedule, and a worker’s collective at the decision-making core. Home to over 300 events/year, Bluestockings offers poetry open-mics, letter writing to prisoners, zine-making workshops, book launches, reading clubs. Panelists Malav Kanuga, Emiliano Lemus, and Matilda Sabal will share from their personal experiences as former and current members of the Bluestockings collective, offering an in-depth exploration of the space and its pivotal role for queer, transgender, and gender non-conforming individuals. This event is additionally co-sponsored by CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies and the Mina Rees Library at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

 

Black Bestselling Books: An Interview Series on the Essence Book Project

In 1994 Essence Magazine began publishing a list of bestselling fiction and non-fiction books as a response to mounting frustrations Black writers and readers had with the American publishing industry. Beyond luminaries like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker publishing for African American authors was nearly impossible. The EBSL was compiled from sales data shared by Black owned bookstores in the United States and Canada. The Essence Book Project, launched in 2016, uses digital technology to reframe the utility of the EBSL to include a computationally conceptualized view of the Black literary landscape at the turn of the twenty-first century. The project is both a digitized version of the EBSL and a growing archive of electronic copies of each title ranked on the list.

Join the Bibliographical Society of America in a series of conversations on the Essence Book Project. This series is variously co-sponsored by the project on History of Black Writing, the Black Women’s Studies Association, the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, and the Women and Gender Studies program at the University of New Orleans.

October 27, 2021, 4-5:30pm ET (Zoom Webinar)
Black Bestselling Books & Bibliographical Concerns: A Conversation Between Kinohi Nishikawa and Jacinta R. Saffold – Registration & Speaker Bios

In this session, Jacinta R. Saffold, creator of the Essence Book Project, and Kinohi Nishikawa consider the bibliographical pluralities of creating a digital archive derived from a bestsellers’ list.

November 17, 2021, 4-5:30pm ET (Zoom Webinar)
The Toni-Terry Problem with Black Books: A Conversation with Essence Bestsellers’ Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant (Moderated by Jacinta R. Saffold, co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography) – Registration & Speaker Bios

Bestselling co-authors Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant will consider how breakout authors like Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan came to define, and at times constrain, the field of popular African American literature, the impact of resources like the Essence Bestsellers’ List on their work, and the industry’s way forward.

December 8, 2021, 4-5:30pm (Zoom Webinar)
The Magic of Editing Black Bestselling Books: A Conversation with Dawn Davis and Jacinta R. Saffold – Registration & Speaker Bios

Jacinta R. Saffold facilitates Dawn Davis—now Editor-in-Chief at Bon Appetit—sharing her experiences editing numerous titles that went on to dominate the Essence Bestsellers’ List, including how she made editorial decisions amidst the terrain shifting from print to digital books.

Collecting, Knowledge, and Power: Perspectives from Latin America |

Coleccionismo, conocimiento y poder: perspectivas desde América Latina (Lea este texto en español aquí.)

This fall series explores the hemispheric histories and contemporary dynamics of collecting and preserving Latin American library and archival materials. Featuring scholars and library and archive professionals based in Latin America and the U.S., the series aims to promote dialogue among scholars and practitioners while confronting ways in which power dynamics have shaped and continue to shape collecting and stewardship practices today. Spanish/English audio interpretation and live captioning will be available for both events. Habrá interpretación de audio en español / inglés y subtítulos en vivo para ambos eventos.

Cosponsored by the Programa Historia del Patrimonio Documental Mexicano, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

November 1, 2021 at 3pm ET (Zoom Webinar) – Registration & Speaker Bio
Libraries, Collecting, and Area Legibility: Early Latin American Collections in the United States (1880-1945) | Bibliotecas, coleccionismo y legibilidad de áreas: primeras colecciones latinoamericanas en los Estados Unidos (1880-1945)

Ricardo Salvatore, Universidad Torcuato di Tella
During the age of Pan-Americanism (1890-1940), US universities started to build impressive collections of “Latino-Americana.”  They collected books, periodicals, government papers, and manuscripts relating to Latin America. “South America” attracted special attention for, around the time of the First World War, the sub-continent became, in the eyes of North-American businessmen, the new land of opportunity for commerce and investment. Central to this new enterprise of accumulation of knowledge was the understanding of the past. Collectors showed enormous interest in artifacts of ancient Andean cultures, manuscripts of the early Spanish colonial period, and Spanish chronicles of the Conquest. Apparently, there was little connection between the interests of North-American investors (in petroleum, railroads, tramways, meat-packing, land, and financial and commercial services) and those of university archives and libraries. But, as the earlier “Latin-Americanists” acknowledged, the commercial penetration of “South America” required an understanding of the region’s culture, society and politics. And the keys to this understanding were to be found in the colonial period. In addition, collectors of “Latino-Americana” build a strong a recurrent parallel between the commercial conquest of South America and the military and spiritual conquest carried out by the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century.

December 9, 2021 at 3pm ET (Zoom Webinar) – Registration
Collecting and Preserving Colonial Latin America Materials Today: A Roundtable Discussion | Recopilación y conservación de materiales de América Latina colonial hoy: una mesa redonda

Hortensia Calvo, Stella González Cicero, José Montelongo, Mercedes Salomón Salazar – moderated by Corinna Zeltsman and Alex Hidalgo
This virtual roundtable brings together professionals from libraries and archives located in Mexico and the U.S. to reflect on the challenges and opportunities associated with safeguarding, acquiring, and making accessible important collections of colonial Latin American materials. Together, the panelists will discuss how they have navigated the structural constraints, historical legacies, and contemporary pressures that shape stewardship of Latin American printed and archival materials today.

Panelists:

Hortensia Calvo, The Latin American Library, Tulane University

Stella González Cicero, Apoyo al Desarrollo de Archivos y Bibliotecas de México (ADABI)

José Montelongo, The John Carter Brown Library

Mercedes Salomón Salazar, Biblioteca Histórica José María Lafragua, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla

Moderated by Alex Hidalgo and Corinna Zeltsman