Library Company Names Director of African American History Program
Philadelphia, PA October 26, 2011. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware, has been named the first Director of the Library Company's Program in African American History. Professor Dunbar specializes in African American life and culture from 1619 to1865. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and a doctoral degree from Columbia University in 2000. Professor Dunbar's book A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (Yale University Press) is based in part on research she conducted in the Library Company's collections as a fellow. Says Library Company Director John Van Horne, "We are genuinely excited to have a distinguished scholar with strong ties to this institution providing leadership for this important Program."
The Program in African American History, established in 2007 with a grant from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, brings together scholars and interested members of the public to explore every aspect of the experience of people of African descent in the Americas from the beginnings of European colonization through 1900. Professor Dunbar will provide direction for the fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, publications, public programming, teacher training, and acquisitions through which the Library Company advances scholarship in African American History and shares this knowledge with the broader public. A new website for the Program that has detailed information about these initiatives is at http://www.librarycompany.org/paah/.
The Program's Director is supported by an Advisory Council whose distinguished members include the Rev. David M. Brown, Murray Dubin, Robert F. Engs, Oliver St. Clair Franklin, Annette Gordon-Reed, Autumn Adkins Graves, Tanya Hall, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Louis Massiah, Randall M. Miller, Barbara Savage, Arthur Sudler, Diane D. Turner, Linn Washington, and William Earl Williams.
Afro-Americana Collection at the Library Company The Library Company houses one of the nation's most important collections of African American literature and history before 1900. Comprising more than 13,500 titles and 1,200 images from the mid-16th to the late-19th centuries, the Afro-Americana holdings include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics documenting slavery and abolitionism in the New World; the printed works of Black individuals and organizations; descriptions of African American life throughout the Americas; and the exploration and colonization of Africa.
For more than forty years, the Afro-Americana collections of the Library Company have helped nurture and sustain rich scholarship that has added dramatically to our knowledge and understanding of that experience. In the late 1960s as scholars and researchers, inspired by the civil rights movement, began to foreground the significant roles played by African Americans in the country's founding and development, they discovered a trea-sure trove of material in the stacks of the Library Company. Beginning as an organic response to the reading interests of the Library Company's earliest patrons-such as members of the Abolitionist Society who wanted to keep up with current anti-slavery discourse the Afro-Americana collections have become an institutional priority for acquisition, conservation, exhibition, and research support.
Curator of African American History Phil Lapsansky, who has served in that capacity since 1971, has made significant contributions to the development of the larger discipline over that time, as well as helping to shape the Library Company's acquisitions, exhibitions, and programming. Mr. Lapsansky will retire in 2012.
Library Company Partnership with the University of Georgia Press
In a significant enhancement to the Program in African American History, the Library Company has formed a partnership with the University of Georgia Press to support Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900, a series of books focused on racial aspects of transatlantic history. The first book under the new partnership will be Eva Sheppard Wolf's Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia, to be published in spring 2012. Professor Dunbar, who will serve on the editorial advisory board for the series, believes that "this partnership provides a critical platform for disseminating the research that will be conducted at the Library Company by our Fellows, and we are very pleased to be associated with such a distinguished press and well-established series."
The Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series was created by the University of Georgia Press in 2006 and is edited by Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Manisha Sinha. Nine books already have been published in the series, including work by established authors such as Philip Morgan, Marcus Wood, Afua Cooper, and Vincent Carretta. The series also has featured first books by an international cohort of emerging scholars including Gale Kenny, Jeannette Jones, and Mischa Honeck.
About the Library Company of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library concentrating on American history and culture from the 17th through 19th centuries. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera and works of art. The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and the nation, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, an online public access catalog, and regular exhibitions and public programs. Located at 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, it is open to the public free of charge from 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Library Company can be found online at www.librarycompany.org.
The Program in African American History, established in 2007 with a grant from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, brings together scholars and interested members of the public to explore every aspect of the experience of people of African descent in the Americas from the beginnings of European colonization through 1900. Professor Dunbar will provide direction for the fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, publications, public programming, teacher training, and acquisitions through which the Library Company advances scholarship in African American History and shares this knowledge with the broader public. A new website for the Program that has detailed information about these initiatives is at http://www.librarycompany.org/paah/.
The Program's Director is supported by an Advisory Council whose distinguished members include the Rev. David M. Brown, Murray Dubin, Robert F. Engs, Oliver St. Clair Franklin, Annette Gordon-Reed, Autumn Adkins Graves, Tanya Hall, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Louis Massiah, Randall M. Miller, Barbara Savage, Arthur Sudler, Diane D. Turner, Linn Washington, and William Earl Williams.
Afro-Americana Collection at the Library Company The Library Company houses one of the nation's most important collections of African American literature and history before 1900. Comprising more than 13,500 titles and 1,200 images from the mid-16th to the late-19th centuries, the Afro-Americana holdings include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics documenting slavery and abolitionism in the New World; the printed works of Black individuals and organizations; descriptions of African American life throughout the Americas; and the exploration and colonization of Africa.
For more than forty years, the Afro-Americana collections of the Library Company have helped nurture and sustain rich scholarship that has added dramatically to our knowledge and understanding of that experience. In the late 1960s as scholars and researchers, inspired by the civil rights movement, began to foreground the significant roles played by African Americans in the country's founding and development, they discovered a trea-sure trove of material in the stacks of the Library Company. Beginning as an organic response to the reading interests of the Library Company's earliest patrons-such as members of the Abolitionist Society who wanted to keep up with current anti-slavery discourse the Afro-Americana collections have become an institutional priority for acquisition, conservation, exhibition, and research support.
Curator of African American History Phil Lapsansky, who has served in that capacity since 1971, has made significant contributions to the development of the larger discipline over that time, as well as helping to shape the Library Company's acquisitions, exhibitions, and programming. Mr. Lapsansky will retire in 2012.
Library Company Partnership with the University of Georgia Press
In a significant enhancement to the Program in African American History, the Library Company has formed a partnership with the University of Georgia Press to support Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900, a series of books focused on racial aspects of transatlantic history. The first book under the new partnership will be Eva Sheppard Wolf's Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia, to be published in spring 2012. Professor Dunbar, who will serve on the editorial advisory board for the series, believes that "this partnership provides a critical platform for disseminating the research that will be conducted at the Library Company by our Fellows, and we are very pleased to be associated with such a distinguished press and well-established series."
The Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series was created by the University of Georgia Press in 2006 and is edited by Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Manisha Sinha. Nine books already have been published in the series, including work by established authors such as Philip Morgan, Marcus Wood, Afua Cooper, and Vincent Carretta. The series also has featured first books by an international cohort of emerging scholars including Gale Kenny, Jeannette Jones, and Mischa Honeck.
About the Library Company of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library concentrating on American history and culture from the 17th through 19th centuries. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera and works of art. The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and the nation, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, an online public access catalog, and regular exhibitions and public programs. Located at 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, it is open to the public free of charge from 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Library Company can be found online at www.librarycompany.org.
