The Research Society for American Periodicals is delighted to announce the winners of the annual PROQUEST RSAP Article Prize for 2011. Our thanks to the judges, William J. Hardwig, Ellen Gruber Garvey, and Eric Gardner, who read the submissions carefully to identify essays that represent some of the most innovative and exciting periodical research work of the past year.
First Prize Winner: Benjamin Fagan, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Honorable Mention Winners: Nikhil Bilwakesh, University of Alabama, and Sara Lindey, St. Vincent College
Fagan, Bilwakesh, and Sara Lindey will take part in a roundtable discussion of their scholarship and methodology upcoming 23rd annual Conference of the American Literature Association, May 24-27, 2012, in San Francisco. For more information about the conference, please refer to the ALA’s website. All three authors will receive financial support to cover some of their travel expenses. Congratulations to all three winners.
About Their Work
1. “‘Americans As They Really Are’: The Colored American and the Illustration of National Identity,” Benjamin Fagan, American Academy of Arts and Sciences – American Periodicals 21.2
Judges lauded the innovative archival work in Benjamin Fagan’s essay. That such work focused not simply on periodical content but also modes of production, questions of materiality and illustration, and the interpersonal networks tied to periodical publication make his piece a model for work with nineteenth-century periodicals.
2. “Boys Write Back: Self-Education and Periodical Authorship in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Story Papers,” Sara Lindey, St. Vincent College – American Periodicals 21.1
Judges were excited by Sara Lindey’s close work with story papers and “boy culture” in the nineteenth century. They praised her essay’s archival components and especially her deep attention to questions of readers and communities.
3. “‘Their faces were like so many of the same sort at home’: American Responses to the Indian Rebellion of 1857,” Nikhil Bilwakesh, University of Alabama – American Periodicals 21.1
Judges praised Nikhil Bilwakesh’s essay as a broad, nuanced picture of US responses to Sepoy rebellion—especially responses in the New York Times—and asserted that it points scholars in useful, new directions for using periodical resources.