Alumni English & American Studies: Guest lecture Benjamin Fagan

All Alumni were invited to join the guest lecture of Benjamin Fagan about "A Story of Thrilling Interest", from the Auburn University.

This lecture focuses on the serialization of two novels in black newspapers produced before and during the American Civil War. From 1852-53 Frederick Douglass’ Paper serialized Charles Dickens’ mammoth Bleak House in its entirety, and a nearly a decade later the Weekly Anglo-African published Martin Delany’s novel of black revolution, Blake; Or the Huts of America. Reading these two newspapers within the context of the newspapers in which they appeared, this lecture considers the ways in which early black newspapers used literature to explore theories and practices of transnationalism.

Benjamin Fagan is Assistant Professor of English at Auburn University, and currently the Fulbright Professor in American Studies at the University of Graz. His research and teaching focuses on early African American literature and print culture. He has held fellowships from the the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in African American Review, Legacy, Comparative American Studies, and American Periodicals. His first book, The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (Georgia, 2016), examines how the institutional and material forms of black newspapers helped shape ideas of black chosenness in the decades before the Civil War.