For most students, English is a rudimentary subject that only covers sentence structure
and forms of writing. For Lori Leavell though, it is a passion allowing her to study books
and their history through the sub-field of English called book history.
Leavell, former Ouachita alum, will present her research over book history in a feature
lecture titled “What Archives Reveal about Antebellum White Readerships of African
American Texts.” The lecture is designed to educate students on the interactions between
African Americans and Caucasian texts in integrated literary history. This will explore
how African American authors may have had influence on white writers before the
American Civil War.
“There is an argument that others have made before and it has a tendency to treat African
American literature as resistant, always responding to something else previously written,”
said Leavell. “In some ways this does make sense in early forms of African American
writing. Some of these were texts protesting slavery, but this form of thinking can also be
a trap. In various ways, it is resistive but their writing can also be generative in that they
can be texts that other people respond to. I wanted to think about who was reading these
texts in this period, especially white authors.”
Leavell conducted her research over African American text influences during the past
two summers as part of her graduate dissertation. After being influenced by David
Walker's appeal to the colored citizens of the world, Leavell dove into the subject to
discover the literary impact it created amid the influence it was creating on Southern
laws. “The pamphlet (David Walker’s appeal) was written by a free African American
living in Boston,” said Leavell. “This pamphlet was considered radical in its call for
enslaved and free African Americans to strike for freedom and it its warning to white
America of the consequences of maintaining slavery and racial oppression. Several
southern states passed laws banning this pamphlet, labeling it seditious.”
Students attending will gain knowledge about the value of archival research through
Leavell’s studies. Periodicals and fleeting sources were often the sources Leavell used,
presenting her with a challenge that she overcame.
“It's important to keep in mind that lots of early African American print appeared in
temporary sources, such as newspapers,” said Leavell. “Often these sources were not
preserved by institutions because they did not value them. Some of the important work of
the field, then, involves digging around in archival collections to patch together a lost
literary history. African Americans have a long history of reading, writing and publishing
and we have much work to do to reconstruct that history.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree at Ouachita in 2001, Leavell went on to earn her
masters degree from the University of Arkansas in 2003 and her doctorate from Emory
University in Atlanta, Georgia in 2011. Leavell worked as a teaching assistant for her
former schools, the University of Arkansas and Emory University, before becoming an
assistant professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway where she
teaches on African American literature and her passion of book history, the history of the
book and print culture.
“This is a historically informed area of study that pays attention to where texts move
from and where they are originally published, who they influence and what the readership
was. This sub-field ties into my research because it looks at the rare documents I found
and compares the impact of them onto other cultures and worlds,” Leavell said.
Leavell has since been featured in several publications on this subject including, “Review
of Michael A. Chaney’s Fugitive Vision: Slave Image and Black Identity in Antebellum
Narritave,” “The Year in Confrences: Report on the American Studies Association
Convention” and Beloved by Toni Morrison. She has also given various presentations on
book history including “Printed and reprinted in a thousand forms: Recirculation and the
Broader Readerships of Antebellum African American Texts” at the American
Antiquarian Society Panel at the Northeast Modern Language Association in Boston,
Mass.
This lecture will take place at 2 p.m. on Feb. 8 in Lile 200. A second lecture "How to get
in, survive, and thrive in graduate school,” which will be an open forum for students
curious about the inner workings of Graduate school, take place at 4 in the same location.
Admission is free and is open to the public.