News

Guest Editors Eric Gardner and Joycelyn Moody

The Fall 2015 issue of American Periodicals will be devoted to texts exploring the field of Black periodical studies and/or exploring issues in/of Black periodicals across the centuries, from Freedom’s Journal to Vibe and beyond.  We seek scholarship that considers the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and periodical studies—including, but not limited to, approaches that engage book history studies or center on print culture.  We aim to give a glimpse into the “state of the field” by bringing together samples of diverse work that show clear engagement with key questions in Black periodical studies while simultaneously sharing exciting new subjects and methods.  We hope for diverse approaches—from works that explore specific “cases” that illustrate what scholarship on Black periodicals might be, do, and become, to essays that explore waves, trends, or movements through broad-based approaches that survey wide groups of texts.

In addition to the content and/or “look and feel” of texts, we are interested in manuscripts that explore topics tied to editorial practice and policy, authorship, financing, production, design, illustration, circulation, readership, reception, cultural position, collection/preservation, and a rich range of other subjects tied to Black periodicals.  Strong interdisciplinary work will be welcomed.  Questions explored might include (but certainly need not be limited to):

• What is a “Black periodical”?
• What methods, questions, problems, and duties might “Black periodical studies” engage?
• How might we (re)consider the archive(s) of Black periodicals?
• What historical questions must students of Black periodicals strive to answer about texts, editors and editorial practice, periodical exchange, processes of reprinting, and other issues?
• What areas of consonance and dissonance exist between Black periodical studies and current conceptions of Black literary periods (e.g., the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement) and/or Black literary history?
• How have such issues as gender, class, sexuality, region, religion, ideology, and standpoint figured into Black periodicals and/or Black periodical studies?
• How have print media and other technologies—from broadsides to social media, for example—shaped our sense of Black periodicals?
• How do Black periodicals engage with various forms of visual culture?  What intersections between visual culture studies and periodical studies prove especially useful in considering Black periodicals?
• What form(s) can we expect Black periodicals to take in the near or distant future?
• How do seriality and periodicity shape representations of Blackness?

As our goal is that scholars will use the issue’s discussion of the (various) state(s) of the field of Black periodical studies to chart possible next steps, we expect that some essays will be more speculative than definitive.  We encourage participation representing a wide range of voices, disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, periods, locations, and subjects.  To this end, we seek short essays (4,000-5,000 words including notes, bibliographic and otherwise) that follow the guidelines in the current Chicago Manual of Style.  Authors’ names should not appear in manuscripts.  Figures and illustrations must be provided in black/white or gray scale as high quality .pdfs.  Submissions should be made to Eric Gardner via gardner@svsu.edu by 30 August 2014.

Scholars who plan to submit to this special issue may be eligible for temporary access to two exciting Readex databases of interest to scholars of African American print, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, and African American Periodicals, 1825-1895. More information on the former can be found at http://www.readex.com/content/african-american-newspapers-1827-1998, and more information on the latter can be found at http://www.readex.com/content/african-american-periodicals-1825-1995.  Scholars interested in this possibility should email Readex’s Marketing Director David Loiterstein at dloiterstein[at]readex.com requesting temporary access.

Thursday, May 22, 3:00 – 4:20 p.m

Session 5-E War in American Periodicals After 1914

Organized by the Research Society for American Periodicals (RSAP)

Chair: James Berkey, Duke University

1. “Teaching Little Girls about War: Depiction of Wartime Life in Magazine Paper Dolls and Toys of the First World War,” Rachel Cohen, Samford University

2. “Frost at Midnight: WWI Poetry in the Magazines,” Mark Noonan, New York City College of Technology-CUNY

3. “Politics and Dissent in Winning Hearts and Minds and the GI Underground Press,” Cristina Alsina Risquez, Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)

Friday, May 23, 11:10 am – 12:30 pm

Session 9-D ProQuest and RSAP Article Prize Winners Roundtable

Organized by the Research Society for American Periodicals (RSAP)

Chair: Bill Hardwig, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

1. “No One Who Reads the History of Hayti Can Doubt the Capacity of Colored Men: Racial Formation and Atlantic Rehabilitation in New York City’s Early Black Press, 1827–1841,” Charlton Yingling, University of South Carolina

2. “Beyond the ‘Shingle Factory’: The Armory Show in the Popular Press after 1913,” Melissa Renn, Harvard Art Museums

3. “‘Taken Possession of’: The Reprinting and Reauthorship of Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’ in the Antebellum Religious Press,” Ryan Cordell, Northeastern University

Saturday, May 24, 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

Session 17-A Graphic Humor in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical

Organized by the American Humor Studies Association and Research Society for American Periodicals

Chair: Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University

1. “Approaching the Study of Graphic Art in 19th Century Periodicals: Gauging Questions of Authorship, Intent, and Reception,” Bonnie M. Miller, UMass Boston

2. “Racism, Bohemianism, and the Dark Face of American Political Humor: The Case of New York’s Vanity Fair, 1859-1863,” Robert J. Scholnick. Coll. of William and Mary

3. “A Different Type of Humor: Francis Hopkinson & Typographical Play in Early American Periodicals,” Kevin A. Wisniewski, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Other panels with one or more papers that may be of interest:

Thursday, May 22, 12:00 – 1:20 pm

Session 3-F Identification as Negotiation in the Works of Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Organized by: Katherine Adams, University of South Carolina

Chair: Paul Lauter, Trinity College

1. “Locating Identity in Alice Moore Dunbar’s New Orleans,” Sandra Zagarell, Oberlin College

2. “Masculinity, Race, and History: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Creole Boy Stories,” Caroline Gebhard, Tuskegee University

3. “Alice Moore Dunbar’s Suffrage Persona,” Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University

4. “Human Things: Commodity Anxiety in Dunbar-Nelson’s New Orleans,” Katherine Adams, University of South Carolina

Thursday, May 22, 2014 1:30 – 2:50 pm

Session 4-D Digital American Women Writers

Organized by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers

Co-Chairs: Kristin Allukian, University of Florida and Kristin Jacobson, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

1. “Digital Writers/Digital Readers: Teaching and Learning With Student-Authored Digital Posters,” Stephanie A. Tingley, Youngstown State University

2. “Digital Resources and the Magazine Context of Edith Wharton’s Short Stories,” Paul J. Ohler, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

3. “Story Paper (AntHeroines: Reading Alcott’s Potboilers in the Digital Archives,” Michael D’Alessandro, Boston University

Thursday, May 22, 3:00 – 4:20 pm

Session 5-A Reevaluating Hemingway’s Nonfiction

Organized by the Ernest Hemingway Society

Chair: Ross K. Tangedal, Kent State University

1. “Hemingway and Authorial Conception: The Hunter and the Hunted in Africa,” Michael DuBose, The University of South Carolina-Beaufort

2. “Hemingway’s Journalism, Journalistic Voices, and Journalistic Philosophy During and in the Wake of Fascism in the 1930’s,” Jean Jespersen Bartholomew, The Carlbrook School

3. “Reconsidering Hemingway on Film: Race, Politics and the Specter of the Cold War,” Peter Lancelot Mallios, The University of Maryland

Thursday, May 22, 3:00 – 4:20 pm

Session 5-H Rebecca Harding Davis, Peterson’s Magazine, and Reform

Sponsored by: The Society for the Study of Rebecca Harding Davis and Her World

Chair: Robin Cadwallader, Saint Francis University

1. “‛I am Awkward in My New Vocation’: Davis’s Resistance to the ‘Disease of Money Getting,’” Arielle Zibrak, Case Western Reserve University

2. “The Sympathetic ‘I’: The Gothic and Civil Commitment in Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Put Out of the Way,’” Sarah Gray-Panesi, Middle Tennessee State University

3. “The Gender Politics of Marital Pursuit in Rebecca Harding Davis’s A Wife, Yet Not a Wife,” Jane E. Rose, Purdue University North Central

Friday, May 23, 8:10 – 9:30 am

Session 7-E Mark Twain’s Readers: Explorations in Reception

Organized by the Reception Study Society

Chair: Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University

1. “Readers Write Back: Mark Twain’s Fan Mail and Eccentric Receptions,” James L. Machor, Kansas State University

2. “The Pistol and the Press: The Reception of Mark Twain, Sensational Reporter,” Jarrod Roark, University of Missouri-Kansas City

3. “Reading Twain’s Mysteries: From Pudd’nhead Wilson to a Double Barrelled Detective Story,” Philip Goldstein, University of Delaware-Wilmington

Friday, May 23, 9:40 – 11:00 am

Session 8-A Catharine Maria Sedgwick in/and Washington D.C.: A Roundtable Organized by the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society

Moderator: Jenifer Elmore, Palm Beach Atlantic University

1. “The Personal Becomes Political: Sedgwick’s Early Letters,” Patricia Larson Kalayjian, California State University, Dominguez Hills

2. “Catharine Sedgwick’s Emancipation Proclamations: In the Parlor, the Pulpit, and the Press, 1827-1836,” Lucinda Damon-Bach, Salem State University

3. “Agrarian Law and the Problem of ‘Unsubdued Land’ in Sedgwick’s Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (1841), ” Matthew Wynn Sivils, Iowa State University

4. “‘Wider abuses make rebels’: Sedgwick’s Shifting Stance on Slavery in the 1850s,” Deborah Gussman, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Friday, May 23, 2:10 – 3:30 pm

Session 11-H Culture and Context in Stephen Crane’s Work

Organized by the Stephen Crane Society

Chair: Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi

1. “’A Spector of Reproach’: Revisiting Figures of Shame in The Red Badge of Courage,” Keiko Nitta, Rikkyo University/Yale University

2. “Stephen Crane’s Literary Journalism and the Limits of Liberalism in the Progressive Era,” Clemens Spahr, Mainz University

3. “Structures of Feeling within Stephen Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel,’” Robert Welch, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Friday, May 23, 3:40 – 5:00 pm

Session 12-C Online in the Old Classroom

Organized by the Society of Early Americanists

Chair: Edward Whitley, Lehigh University

1. “Teaching T(homas) Paine through Rap Genius: Early American Literature and Collaborative Literacy,” Kacey Tillman, University of Tampa & Jeremy Dean, PhD, RapGenius.com

2. “ ‘The simple, compact, well join’d scheme’: Creating Multimodal Experiences for Students of Early American Literature Using Webbased Resources,” Jeff Everhart, Longwood University

3. “The New Leviathan: How I Implemented the AAS’s Periodicals Database in My Traditional American Literature Survey Class, and Lived to Tell the Tale,” Joshua Matthews, Dordt College

Saturday, May 24, 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

Session 17-E Publishing Matters in the American Renaissance.

1. “Conversation and Editorial Authority in Transcendentalist Periodicals,” Todd H. Richardson University of Texas of the Permian Basin

2. “Emerson, Greeley, and the Digital Archive,” Lloyd Willis, Lander University

3. “‘A paint mixed by another person’: Hawthorne, Poe, Dickinson, Spofford, and the Plagiarism Issue in Nineteenth-Century American Literature,” David Cody, Hartwick College

4. “Antebellum School Readers, Slavery, and Market Censorship,” Joe Lockard, Arizona State University

Saturday, May 24, 12:30 – 1:50 pm

Session 18-B Melville and the Politics of Print

Organized by the Melville Society

Chair: Anne Baker, North Carolina State University

1. “Teasing the Whale: ‘The Town Ho’s Story’ as Told in Harper’s,” Jarad Krywicki, University of Colorado

2. “‘Quite an Original’: The Reproducibility of Print and the Aesthetics of The Confidence Man,” Katie McGettigan, University of Keele

3. “Whale 2.0: Situating Melville in the Online Reading Renaissance,” David O. Dowling, University of Iowa

Saturday, May 24, 2:00 – 3:20 pm

Session 19-J African American Short Fiction in the 1890s

Organized by the Paul Laurence Dunbar Society

Chair: William Hardwig, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

1. “Charles Chesnutt and the Place of Race in the Regionalist Atlantic Story,” Jill Spivey Caddell, Cornell University

2. “Charles Chesnutt’s Animal Metaphors,” Thomas Morgan, University of Dayton

3. “Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Communities of Debt,” Christine A. Wooley, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Saturday, May 24, 5:00 – 6:20 pm

Session 21-B American Editorial Platforms: From Print to Performance

Organizers: Dr. Cecily Swanson, New York University and Dr. Jane Carr, New York University

Chair: Dr. Allison Wright, Virginia Quarterly Review and University of Virginia

1. “Social Psychology in American Modernist Magazines,” Cecily Swanson, New York University

2. “Mapping the Editorial Networks of Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s The Provincial Freeman,” Jim Casey, University of Delaware

3. “Editorial Failures and Radical Clerks in American Literary History,” Dr. Jane Carr, New York University