Research resources on American periodicals
American
Periodicals: -Subscribe
-Submit work
-Past
Issues
RSAP Panels at the ALA convention, May 2006 San Francisco
Sign up for the RSAP e-mail discussion list :
Call for papers:
RSAP at the American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco,
May 22-25, 2008.
1)
RESEARCH METHODS IN AMERICAN PERIODICALS:
How
do you do it?
Papers
are sought for a panel on methods for conducting research with
American
periodicals. Papers reflecting on the strategies of teaching
suchresearch methods would also be welcome. How does one deal
withcontemporary publications and burgeoning electronic databases, not
tomention the digital periodicals themselves? How do you handle
theparticular challenges, frustrations, and rewards of research with
historical
periodicals? Reflections upon the larger theoretical issues
posed
by differing research methods are welcome as are tips and approachesfor
the nitty-gritty aspects of periodical scholarship.
Please
submit as an electronic attachment an abstract of fewer than 500 words,
2-3 sentence biographical sketch, and full contact information to
Susanna
Ashton (sashton at clemson.edu) by January 15th. Panelists must
bemembers of RSAP by March 1, 2008 to be included on the panel.
2) IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD Possible
areas of focus include: emerging marketplaces for child
readers
of periodicals; children in advertising; ideologies of discipline
and
rearing; childhood, race, and ethnicity; periodical items authored by
children;
specific periodicals or periodical sections devoted to children.
Please
email a 250-word proposal, 2-3 sentence bio, and full contact
information
by January 15 to Karen Roggenkamp at
<Karen_Roggenkamp
at tamu-commerce.edu> Panelists must be members of RSAP by
March 1, 2008 to be included on the panel.
For information on the American Literature Association convention itself, see the ALA website: http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/ala2/ Past RSAP at ALA sessions: Thursday,
May 24, 2007
5:30
” 6:50pm
Session
7-I Transatlanticism
and Nineteenth-Century PeriodicalsChair: Susan Belasco, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1. ”Littell's Living Age and the Hegemony of British Science, 1845-1860,” Robert J. Scholnick, College of William and Mary 2. ”American Swineburne, English Lanier: The Traffic in Meters,” Mary Loeffelholz, Northeastern University 3. ”From Ephemeral Bibleots to Little Magazines' a Comedy of Errors,” Robert Scholes, Brown University Respondent: Meredith McGill, Rutgers University Friday, May 25, 2007 5:00 -- 6:20 pm Session 15-D Visual Culture in American Periodicals I Chair: Patricia Okker, University of Missouri, Columbia 1. ”Making the Exotic Familiar: Illustrations in Nineteenth Century American Female Missionary Magazines,” Cheryl M. Cassidy, Eastern Michigan University 2. ”Visualizing Women in Public in Early-Nineteenth Century American Periodicals,” Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, University of Pittsburgh 3. ”Whatever were they thinking?: Ambiguity and Visual Messaging in Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazar,” Paula Bernat Bennett, Southern Illinois University Saturday,
May 26, 2007
12:30
” 1:50 pm
Session
19-B
Visual
Culture in American Periodicals IIChair: Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University 1. ”The Local Exotic: Local-Color and Pictorial Photography in National Geographic,” Stephanie Hawkins, University of North Texas 2. ”Writing as Spirit Photography,” Jay Williams, University of Chicago 3. ”Illustrating Fictions: Scribner's Magazine and the Rise of the Author Photograph,” Rachel Ihara, City University of New York 4. ”Fashion Forward: Visual Culture and American Fashion Magazines of the 1930s and 1940s,” Elizabeth Marcus, New York University
A
Mini-Anthology of Neglected, Forgotten, or Underestimated Periodicals
of the
Long Nineteenth-Century: A Roundtable Discussion
In
2004 our panels were: 1)
Globalism
and Twentieth-Century American Periodicals
2) Women, Real and Imagined, in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Periodicals [this panel will include the business meeting for the Research Society for American Periodicals]
In 2001 our panels were: AMERICAN PERIODICALS: CONTENTS AND AUDIENCESChair and comment: Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University and RSAP 1." Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Gilded Age Consumer: The Domestic Woman Enters the Marketplace," Beth Fisher, University of Iowa 2."Dickinson as Child’s Fare: The Author Served Up in The Youth’s Companion and St.Nicholas," Ingrid Satelmajer, University of Maryland, College Park 3."Farm Women, Agrarian Ideals, and Rural Magazines in the Progressive Era," Janet Galligani Casey, Independent Scholar Professor Fisher pushed back the dates we usually think of in relation to the burgeoning of consumer culture in the US, and alerted us to the fact that it wasn’t a straightforward, continuous process, but zig zagged; Godey’s Lady’s Book, even as it promoted this, was full of ambivalence about consumption -- complaining about middle class extravagance even as it advertised goods in ways that promoted it, and worrying about what too-eager participation in the marketplace as buyers might say about women’s character. Professor Satelmejer nicely tossed on its head the usual practice of paying attention to magazine or newspaper publication of poems only if they precede book publication, which is of course understood as the “real” publication.” In examining the posthumous publication ofDickinson’s poems in St. Nicholas she raised new issues of the construction of Dickinson’s reputation in the 19th century Professor Casey, one of the few scholars to delve into farm women’s magazines, focused on The Farmer’s Wife of the 1920s and 30s. These magazines held in tension conservative and progressive ideals for rural women; both sets of ideals were often far from real rural women’s lives, as Casey’s recovery of a wonderful scene of a character reading such a magazine in Edith Summers Kelley’s 1923 farming novel Weeds brought out. AMERICAN IMMIGRANT PERIODICALS: INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS Chair: Werner Sollors, Harvard University and RSAP 1."A Literature of Our Own: Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism, and Literary Culture in a Norwegian-American Magazine," Kristin A. Risley, Ohio State University 2."'His Head in Russia and His Belly in New York': American Writing in Russian, 1880-1924" Rachel L. Rubin, University of Massachusetts, Boston 3."The Publisher of the Foreign-Language Press as an Ethnic Leader? The Case of James V.Donnaruma and Boston’s Italian-American Community in the Interwar Years," Benedicte Deschamps, University of Paris, and Stefano Luconi, University of Florence Professor Risley’s paper discussed a Norwegian annual, whose title in translation is Our Western Home, in relation to its cultural work within the immigrant community, and the ways it both helped maintain a sense of Norwegian identity among its readers while presenting the Norwegian homeland as essentially timeless, and giving no attention to actual events in Norway in the present. Her paper raised issues of how this helped to frame Norway for Norwegian immigrants as existing in the past not only in relation to their personal experience, but historically. Professor Rubin’s paper was fascinating in its focus on the complexities of language choice and readership in different languages for a polyglot readership. She spoke on Jacob Gordin, later better known as a Yiddish playwright, who in the 1890s wrote for Russian language newspapers both in Russia and in New York. Speaking and reading Russian, for Jews in Eastern Europe, had been a way to move beyond the Pale of Settlement and take on a cosmopolitan as well as radical political identity. Professor Rubin’s paper pointed out that in this case language was not a corollary to ethnic identity, and that the choice of language was not a binary one, not old versus new. Professors Deschamps and Luconi’s presentation was more in a social science mode,reminding us through their work that the work of periodicals is done not just in editors’ minds but can have concrete results at the polls. They noted that although literary scholars have started to take an interest in immigrant periodicals, historians have not. They focused on La Gazetta, an Italian American newspaper written in Italian in the interwar years in Massachusetts. The paper both supported Mussolini’s fascism, which played out as ethnic pride, and undermined its own possible political influence by selling its endorsement to the highest bidder. Professor Luconi’s research into voting records demonstrated that the paper had had little influence in this realm, and evidently relied on sources of information beyond the Italian language press. The paper alerted an audience predominantly composed of literary scholars to the possibilities of tracing a periodical’s influence through a wider web. |
|
Contact information:
ellengarvey@earthlink.net