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Writing Across the Color Line examines interactions between U.S. writers of color and the predominantly white publishing trade at the turn of the twentieth century. The book considers how a constellation of ethnic authors—Zitkala-Ša, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Charles W. Chesnutt, Finley Peter Dunne, W.E.B. DuBois, and Sui Sin Far— sought commercial publication as a means to influence a national audience.
With research in publishers’ archives, I recover how this body of literature was selected for publication, edited, manufactured, advertised, and distributed—yet faced hostile criticism and backlash from its readers. Writing Across the Color Line thus outlines the turn of the century as a period of experimental possibility. It sheds light on the transformative potential of U.S. ethnic literature and the tenacity of racist attitudes that dominated the literary marketplace.
“‘At the Dawning of the Twentieth Century’: W.E.B. Du Bois, A.C. McClurg & Co., and the Early Circulation of The Souls of Black Folk.”
Book History 20 (2017): 307-329.
“On Commission: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton and the J.B. Lippincott & Co. Job Printing Department.”
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 113.4 (2019): 395-408.
“Chicago Publisher A.C. McClurg & Co: An Interactive Timeline” (2018).
https://www.sharpweb.org/book-history-unbound/2017/dietrich/
American Book Publishers: 1865-1920 is an NEH-Funded project for Framingham State University’s Digital Humanities Center, exploring the history of literary publishers in the late-nineteenth century.
Review of Mary Chapman, Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton. (McGill-Queen’s, 2016).
MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 42.3 (Winter 2017): 218-220.
“Charles W. Chesnutt, Houghton Mifflin, and the Racial Paratext.”
MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 41.4 (2016): 166-195.
Review of Miriam Petty, Stealing the Show: African American Performances and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood (California, 2016).
Reception 9 (2017): 105-108.