Washington College’s Lit House Event Features WC Professor’s Research into African American Publishing

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Alisha Knight, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, will discuss her unique research into the African American book publishing trade at the turn of the 20th century during a September 26, 2019 event at the Rose O’ Neill Literary House.

The talk entitled “Agents Wanted: Selling Racial Uplift at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” is part of the Fall Literary House Series and is free and open to the public. It begins at 4:30 p.m. at the Lit House, followed by a catered reception.

Knight will discuss themes from her current research project, which is centered around the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company, a black-owned publisher based in Boston in the early 1900s. Her work examines the peculiar nature of disseminating literature to African Americans at a time when many publishers either took this reading audience for granted or simply assumed it did not exist.

Knight teaches a range of courses in African American literature and print culture at Washington College. Her teaching and scholarship favors interdisciplinary study, as she aims to expand the canon with lesser-known authors and bring new perspectives to well-known ones. Her first book, “Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream,” was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2012. In addition to her second book project, she is co-editing a scholarly edition of Hopkins’s novel, “Hagar’s Daughter,” for Broadview Press.

For more information on this event or the Literary House, visit the website at www.washcoll.edu/centers/lithouse, or view the annual Literary Events Calendar brochure here: www.washcoll.edu/live/files/9229-2019-20-literary-events-brochure.