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RSAP Article Prize 2022-23

Research Society for American Periodicals Article Prize 2022-23

Deadline for submissions: December 22, 2023

Contact: James Berkey, jhb5255@psu.edu

To apply, please complete the application form and upload a .pdf version of the article at https://tinyurl.com/RSAParticleprize22-23.

The Research Society for American Periodicals invites submissions for its 2022-23 Article Prize. The prize is awarded to the best article on the subject of American periodicals published in a peer-reviewed academic journal between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2023. RSAP takes an expansive view of “periodicals” and will consider any article that focuses on serial publications in print or digital form in the Americas, broadly construed. We also welcome submissions from any field or discipline.

The Article Prize is designed for early-career scholars. Graduate students and those who received their Ph.D. no earlier than January 1, 2018 are eligible to apply.

The prizewinner will be awarded $1000. The prizewinner and two honorable mentions will be provided with a one-year membership to the Research Society for American Periodicals, which includes a subscription to the society’s journal, American Periodicals.

The winner and two honorable mentions will be invited to participate in an RSAP Article Prize Roundtable held at the 2024 American Literature Association conference, to be held from May 23-26 in Chicago, IL. All roundtable participants will be reimbursed for travel expenses related to the conference (up to $1000).

In order to be considered, all submissions must be received by December 22, 2023.

For more about the Research Society for American Periodicals, visit https://www.periodicalresearch.org/ and follow on Twitter @RSAPeriodicals.

CFP: Race and Ethnicity in Transnational Periodicals of the Americas

Race and Ethnicity in Transnational Periodicals of the Americas

The Research Society for American Periodicals invites submissions for a panel to be held at the American Literature Association conference in Boston, May 25-28, 2023.

In the last half-century, the recovery of ethnic and non-English language periodicals has helped unearth hemispheric exchanges vital to understanding the entanglements of ethnicity, Blackness, and racialization in the Americas. Greater access to collections of Black, Caribbean, Latin American, and U.S. immigrant periodicals has refreshed scholarly conversations and projects that account for the multilingual, multiethnic, and international contexts of periodicals produced in the 19th and early 20th century. 

This panel seeks to gather scholars of race and ethnicity in the transnational press. Papers might discuss historical exchanges across the Americas between ethnic, Spanish-language, and Black periodicals. We would also welcome submissions that explore the potential disciplinary exchanges between US-based periodical studies and scholarship on ethnic and Spanish-language publications. 

Please submit a one-page abstract and a brief c.v. by January 14, 2023 to Joshua Ortiz Baco at jortizba @ utk.edu. Please use the subject line “RSAP/ALA proposal”. 

2021-22 RSAP Book Prize

Call for Submissions

The Research Society of American Periodicals invites submissions for its 2021-2022 Book Prize. The prize is awarded to the best scholarly monograph on the subject of periodicals of the Americas published between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022. We understand “the Americas” as a geopolitical region to encompass more than the fifty US states and we welcome submissions with local, regional, national, international, transnational, transatlantic, and/or hemispheric archives, methodologies, and orientations. We also consider serial publications that might not reflect the conventional form of periodicals like newspapers, scholarly journals, and magazines; therefore, books about publications like zines and comics as well as digital publications may be eligible for this prize. Please note that submissions from all fields and disciplines are welcome, though at this time we are only able to consider books written in English.

The prize winner will be awarded $1000. The prizewinner and two honorable mentions will also be provided with a one-year membership to the Research Society of American Periodicals, which includes a subscription to the society’s journal, American Periodicals. The winner and two honorable mentions will be invited to participate in an RSAP Book Prize Roundtable held at the 2023 American Literature Association conference. If the conference is held in person, all roundtable participants will be reimbursed for travel expenses related to the conference (up to $1000). In order to alleviate costs as much as possible and allow for an international panel of scholars to review submissions, we ask that all monographs be submitted in electronic form. 

To apply, please email Agatha Beins at abeins @ twu.edu with the information listed below as well as an electronic version of the monograph.

  • Author name, institutional affiliation, and program/department, as applicable
  • Book title, publisher, and year of publication

In order to be considered, all submissions must be received by December 31, 2022, 11:59 p.m., and award recipients will be notified by the end of January 2023.

2021 RSAP Article Prize Results

2021 RSAP Article Prize Results

We are delighted to announce the results of our 2020-2021 RSAP Article Prize competition. Congratulations to all!

RSAP Article Prize Winners

(alphabetical order)

Jordan Taylor, “Enquire of the Printer: Newspaper Advertising and the Moral Economy of the North American Slave Trade, 1704-1807,” Early American Studies

Scott Zukowski, “Subversive Editing: Rebellious Reprints in Freedom’s Journal,” Atlantic Studies

RSAP Article Prize Honorable Mentions

(alphabetical order)

Leah Budke, “The Definitive Editor: Alfred Kreymborg and the Others Magazine-Anthology Duo,” Modernist Cultures

Juan Carlos Mezo González, “Consuming the Mexican Body: Gender, Race, and the Nation in Macho Tips, 1985-1989,” Hispanic American Historical Review

Browse previous book & article prize winners.

Follow RSAP on Twitter!

CFP – RSAP 2022 Lightning Talks

On May 19-20, 2022, the Research Society for American Periodicals will be holding its annual meeting online. As part of the program, we invite brief proposals for two-minute lightning talks on pedagogy, digital projects, archival collections, or any other developments related to the study of serials and periodicals in the Americas.

Rather than delving deep into any particular topic, we envision these lightning talks as a chance to raise awareness of new ideas, resources, and opportunities for collaboration in the field. While not required, we especially encourage folks to bring something concrete to share: a lesson plan, an assignment, a project website, an archival collection, or any of the many other kinds of vehicles for our research and teaching today. 

To be considered, please submit a title, a 50-100 word description of the proposed lightning talk, and a brief CV via email to Chris LaCasse (Christopher.J.LaCasse@uscga.edu) by May 13, 2022. 


RSAP Online – 2022

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are designed to build community, promote research, and inspire future collaborations.  Each talk is only two minutes in length, but we hope these brief overviews will bring awareness to new scholarship, archives, and resources that may support future work in periodical studies.  Immediately following our last speaker, we will host a social hour, during which these conversations and many others may continue. We sincerely hope this new feature of RSAP Online helps foster new partnerships!

Magdalena Zapędowska, Smith College, Lecturer in English Language and Literature, Smith College

“An 1862 Concert for the Weekly Anglo-African”

I want to highlight a moment of Black organizing during the early Civil War, whose story unfolds through several issues of the Weekly Anglo-African. In March 1862, editor Robert Hamilton organized a concert in New York to aid the newspaper and raise funds for a vocational school for Black youth. This event foregrounds connections among 19th-century Black institutions, the multiple roles Black editors took on to keep the newspaper running, and seriality as a vehicle for mobilizing readers as a live audience.

Sidonia Serafini, ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellow, University of Georgia (sidonia.serafini@uga.edu

“Black (Agri)cultural Periodicals”

Often disregarded as unprogressive, the Hampton-Tuskegee model of industrial education offered an important periodical press platform for rural Black southern communities. The periodicals that emerged out of these Institutes, including Hampton’s Southern Workman (1872-1939) and Tuskegee’s Negro Farmer (1914-18), featured the voices of well-known intellectuals, such as George Washington Carver and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, as well as lesser-known everyday artists, such as farmer John W. Lemon and homemaker Mrs. C. J. Calloway. Reexamining such periodicals makes visible how rural Black southerners of the Jim Crow era reclaimed the land by positioning the natural world not as a site of violence but as a site of cultural vibrancy and communal strength, autonomy, and knowledge.

Cynthia Patterson, Associate Professor, University of South Florida

“The Negro Chautauqua Movement”

As scholars such as Andrew Rieser have noted, “By the turn of the [twentieth] century, Chautauqua had established itself as a crucible of the white public.” Although occasionally mentioning guest appearances by Booker T. Washington and others, most histories of the Chautauqua movement fail to mention the presence of non-white attendees, beyond the wait staff working behind the scenes. However, a vibrant “Negro Chautauqua” movement flourished from 1885 to 1925. Traces of this movement exist in digitized periodicals; however, a treasure trove of materials from sponsoring Black Baptist and A.M.E. church archives promises to reveal more about this important movement.

E. James West, Lecturer in US History, University of York

Building the Black Press

This project focuses on the Black press and the built environment – it explores why Black press buildings matter, their practical and symbolic function, and their importance as a physical extension of the Black press’ role as a “voice for the race.” This project is connected to the publication of my recent book A House for the Struggle, and I’m currently working on a follow-up book about the redevelopment/repurposing of Black media buildings in Chicago.

Samantha Donoso, The University of Texas at Arlington Department of English

“American Spanish Language Newspapers in the Archive: The Culture of Reprinting and the Impact on Female Representation”

In my lightning talk, I will describe my research using The University of Arizona Library Digital Collections periodical archive. This archive supports our understanding of the social, political, and domestic concerns of the Mexican population in the American Southwest. My original query was to explore El Fronterizo, a Spanish language newspaper from Tucson, Arizona, to uncover poetry by female authors, yet what I found was a collection of reprinted poetry which created a new set of questions regarding how gender was represented and how the culture of reprinting was used to promote a specific narrative.

Mary Feeney, The University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, Arizona (mfeeney@arizona.edu

Melissa Jerome, University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries (mmespino@ufl.edu

Ana J. Krahmer, University of North Texas, Library Digital Newspaper Program

“A Sampling of Spanish-Language Historical Newspapers in Chronicling America”

Chronicling America, the digitized historical newspaper database sponsored by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, now includes over sixty Spanish-language newspapers published in eight states and one U.S. territory. The National Digital Newspaper Program awardees in Arizona, Florida, and Texas have contributed about a third of these titles. We will highlight a few Spanish-language newspapers from our states that offer a glimpse of Latinx/Hispanic communities and provide unique perspectives on international events.

Katherine Poland and William A. Schlaack, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC, https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/) are home to dozens of digitized newspapers representing a diverse range of groups from across the state. As the result of a partnership with JSTOR’s project “Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s,” UIUC assisted with the digitization of two Klan-related newspapers. The prospect of putting these on IDNC proved concerning to Library staff. As a result, we developed the Library’s first harmful content statement for a digital collection. This talk will briefly explore the why and how of writing such a statement.

Mark Noonan, Professor of English, New York City College of Technology (CUNY).

“City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press”As Director of the NEH funded summer institute (2015 and 2020), Mark will discuss the rich resources on the recently launched website, of City of Print, City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press

RSAP CFP for ALA 2022

CFP: New Directions for Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Periodical Studies

The Research Society for American Periodicals invites submissions for a panel to be held at the American Literature Association conference in Chicago, May 26-29, 2022.

In their foundational 2006 essay, “The Rise of Periodical Studies,” Sean Latham and Robert Scholes argued that “periodical studies should be constructed as a collaborative scholarly enterprise that cannot be confined to one scholar or even a single discipline.” What collaborative scholarly enterprises are possible today? 

This panel seeks presentations that reflect or raise the full range of collaborations in periodical studies across disciplines, communities, and professions. From the robust community around digitization programs to the popularity of newspapers as research data for computer scientists, how can we take stock of new trends and reimagine the shape of periodicals scholarship? 

We invite proposals on any aspect of these conversations, including but not limited to: 

  • What research coalitions with librarians and archivists might emerge around Chronicling America, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, or other landmark collections? 
  • Given the preponderance of white-identifying periodicals in many of the largest collections, what interventions are needed to ensure fuller access and engagement with Black, Latinx, Native/Indigenous, multilingual, immigrant, or other minoritized periodical cultures?
  • What research questions or projects might engage with computer scientists in areas such as data science, machine learning, or natural language processing? What can we learn from each other? What can we learn from periodical collections as data? 
  • What are the trends in digital projects on periodicals? (see RSAP’s Digital Projects Open List: http://bit.ly/rsap-list)

Please submit a one-page abstract and a brief c.v. by January 10, 2021 to Jim Casey at jccasey AT psu DOT edu. Please use the subject line “RSAP/ALA proposal.” 

Prospective inquiries welcomed. We especially encourage proposals from collaborative teams, graduate students, contingent faculty, independent researchers, museum workers, computational researchers, archivists, librarians, and others within and beyond higher education. 

(Published an article in the last two years on periodicals? Please submit by Dec 15 for the RSAP Article Prize: http://www.periodicalresearch.org/rsap-article-prize-2020-21.)

RSAP Article Prize 2020-21

Download RSAP Article Prize 2021 Registration Form

Deadline for submissions: December 15, 2021

Contact: Tim Lanzendörfer – tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de

The Research Society for American Periodicals invites submissions for its 2020-21 Article Prize.

The prize is awarded to the best article on the subject of American periodicals published in a peer-reviewed academic journal between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021. RSAP takes an expansive view of “periodicals” and will consider any article that focuses on serial publications in print or digital form in the Americas, broadly construed. We also welcome submissions from any field or discipline.

The Article Prize is designed for early-career scholars. Graduate students and those who received their Ph.D. no earlier than January 1, 2016 are eligible to apply.

The prizewinner will be awarded $1000. The prizewinner and two honorable mentions will be provided with a one-year membership to the Research Society for American Periodicals, which includes a subscription to the society’s journal, American Periodicals.

The winner and two honorable mentions will be invited to participate in an RSAP Article Prize Roundtable held at the 2022 American Literature Association conference, to be held from May 26-29 in Chicago, IL. All roundtable participants will be reimbursed for travel expenses related to the conference (up to $1000).

To apply, please email a .pdf version of the article and a completed registration form to Tim Lanzendörfer (Heisenberg Research Professor, Goethe University, Frankfurt) at tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de.

The registration form can be found here: http://www.periodicalresearch.org/rsap-article-prize-2020-21/

In order to be considered, all submissions must be received by December 15, 2021.

For more about the Research Society for American Periodicals, visit https://www.periodicalresearch.org/ and follow on Twitter @RSAPeriodicals.

Download RSAP Article Prize 2021 Registration Form

2019-2020 RSAP Book Prize Results

We are delighted to announce the results of our 2019-2020 RSAP Book Prize competition. Congratulations to all!

RSAP Book Prize Winner

Victoria Bazin, Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine

RSAP Book Prize Honorable Mentions

(listed in alphabetical order)

Jean Lee Cole, How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895-1920

Samuel Graber, Twice-Divided Nation: National Memory, Transatlantic News, and American Literature in the Civil War Era

James West, Ebony Magazine and Leroy Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America

Paul Williams, Dreaming the Graphic Novel: The Novelization of Comics

Browse previous book & article prize winners.

Follow RSAP on Twitter!

City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press

City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press

(NEH SUMMER INSTITUTE)

(June 21 – July 3, 2020)

New York City College of Technology-CUNY will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for college and university faculty in the summer of 2020 (June 21 – July 3).

For more information visit:

http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/cityofprint/

Applications to participate will be accepted via our online application system until March 1, 2020.

 

The Institute will focus on periodicals, place, and the history of publishing in New York.  As an institute participant, you will take part in discussions led by cultural historians, archivists, and experts in the fields of American literature, art and urban history, and periodical studies; participate in hands-on sessions in the periodicals collection of the New-York Historical Society; visit sites important to the rise of New York’s periodical press, such as Newspaper Row, Gramercy Park, the New York Seaport, the East Village, and the Algonquin Hotel; and attend Digital Humanities workshops.

 

You will also be asked to read a rich body of scholarship and consider new interdisciplinary approaches for researching and teaching periodicals that take into account the important site of their production, as well as relevant cultural, technological, aesthetic, and historical considerations. Sessions will be held across New York City including New York City College of Technology, the Brooklyn Historical Society, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Pace University, and the New-York Historical Society.

 

We encourage applicants from any field who are interested in the subject matter. Scholars and teachers specializing in periodical studies, journalism, urban history, art history, American studies, literature, and/or cultural studies will find the Institute especially attractive.

 

Independent scholars, scholars engaged in museum work or full-time graduate studies are also urged to apply.

RSAP 2017-2018 Book Prize Winners

Winner:

Kirsten MacLeod, American Little Magazines of the Fin de Siecle: Art, Protest, and Cultural Transformation

 

Honorable Mentions:

Graham Thompson, Herman Melville among the Magazines

Thomas Aiello, The Grapevine of the Black South: The Scott Newspaper Syndicate in the Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement

Agatha Beins, Liberation in Print: Feminist Periodicals and Social Movement Identity