Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature: "Radical Print Cultures in the Midwest" (East Lansing, June 1-3, 2023)
In recent years, print culture scholars have injected unprecedented focus on print production and circulation in Black, working-class, indigenous, and Latinx reading communities in the U.S. Once a field with a reputation for patrician pursuits, book history has expanded to include previously ignored communities and print forms such as newspapers and popular magazines. However, studies of anticapitalist and antiracist print cultures have tended to focus on urban, northeastern publishing capitals such as New York and Boston at the expense of literary scenes from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains.