Making Mary Ann Waters is a Free Black Woman: Critical Fabrication as Bibliographic Method

Document Type

Open Access Article

Authors

Kadin Henningsen, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignFollow

Author Biography

Kadin Henningsen is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he works on nineteenth-century American literature, book history, and transgender studies. He is also an artist and printer.

Abstract

This article discusses the process of creating an artist’s book on Mary Ann Waters, a Black trans woman and sex worker in Antebellum Baltimore. In addition, informed by the author’s experience of making the artist’s book, he proposes a process of critical fabrication—which brings together Saidiya Hartman’s method of “critical fabulation” with Natalie Loveless’s articulation of “research-creation”—as a method for critical bibliography.

(In the issue section "Bibliographic Knowledge(s)")

Recommended Citation

Henningsen, Kadin (2022) "Making Mary Ann Waters is a Free Black Woman: Critical Fabrication as Bibliographic Method," Criticism: Vol. 64: Iss. 3, Article 22.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol64/iss3/22