The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian: African American Cultures of Print—The State of the Discipline

“The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian” explores scholarship located at the intersection of African American Studies and the History of the Book. While the two fields have a great deal to offer one another, I argue that there has, until recently, been only fitful dialogue between scholars from each camp, a phenomenon I trace in part to the schism between enumerative and analytic bibliographers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Surveying scholarship on topics ranging from the noetics of orality to Oprah's Book Club, I conclude that scholars of African American culture and of print culture have much to gain from a sustained dialogue and that, increasingly, exchanges are taking place.