RSVP

HOUGHTON LIBRARY'S 110TH GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP LECTURE

This lecture looks at the design aesthetics of various editions of Ouida’s works across different cultures. There is an emphasis on how publishers share distinctive design features that speak to specific racial and ethnic demographics. Born Maria Louise Ramé (1839-1908) in Suffolk, England, Ouida (known by her pseudonym) was one of the most popular women writers of the nineteenth century. During her long and prolific career, she wrote more than twenty-five novels and over fifty books. This interdisciplinary paper combines descriptive bibliography, design history, ethnic studies, and cultural studies in an ethnobibliographical analysis of her works. It examines the publishing histories of Ouida’s books from the Anglophonic, Romanophonic, Japonic and Koreanic speaking worlds to inform our understanding of the intersections between race, ethnicity, and regional print production. The transnational, comparative ethnobibliographical analysis illuminates how publishers’ design aesthetics shape the ways that we construct our racial and ethnic identities.

About the Speaker

Jesse R. Erickson is the Coordinator of Special Collections and Digital Humanities, Assistant Professor in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware. He previously worked as a bibliographic researcher and archival processor in the Manuscripts Division of the Charles E. Young Research Library and the Center for Oral History Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on ethnobibliography, alternative printing and non-canonical textuality, African American print culture, and the transnational publishing history of the works of Ouida.

Jesse Erickson will also lead two hands-on workshops on "A Brief Introduction to Ethnobibliographic Method," on Tuesday, April 2, at 9:30 am and 1:00 pm.