Charlie Gleek, “The Print Network of the National Convention of Colored Freeman, 1848.” Last modified April 2018, https://sites.google.com/fau.edu/cgleek-clev1848printnetwork.

This digital humanities exhibition and accompanying monograph draws on existing book history and print culture methods towards developing the speculative concept of a “print network” as a theoretical intervention into the study of the publication and manufacture of the Report of the Proceedings of the Colored National Convention (1848); part of the corpus of texts that make up the Colored Conventions Project. This analysis points to the unique ways in which personal, professional, and commercial relationships among key participants at the National Convention of Colored Freemen held in Cleveland Ohio on 6-9 September 1848 brought the Report text into existence by drawing on a combination of methodological practices including a close reading of the convention materials, archival readings of African American biographies and historiography, and the use of digital humanities tools to organize and represent these relationships. This analysis has implications for the further exploration, recovery, and amplification of Black activist, print, and material cultures associated with various national, regional, and state-level Colored Conventions, which worked to produce and distribute printed convention materials to a wide range of Black reading audiences and abolitionist allies in the United States between 1830 and 1899.