American into Periodical Studies Programme

American into Periodical Studies

British Library Conference Centre, 18^th December, 2015

A one-day Periodical and American Studies Symposium, organised by NAPS (Network of American Periodical Studies)

The first NAPS symposium explores and debates some of the theoretical, methodological and practical implications of the rise of periodical studies for American Studies. Papers analyse the publication, production, dissemination and reception of American periodicals from the colonial to the contemporary periods and reflect on how periodical studies might provide new ways of thinking about and interpreting the cultural history of the Americas. To what extent, for instance, does the study of periodicals challenge the boundaries circumscribing ‘America’ as a nation? What is the role of the American periodical in the public sphere and how has it changed? How do periodicals map the spaces of America? In what ways do periodicals reinforce and/or transgress the divide between literature and journalism? How does the material history of print culture offer alternative ways of reading and interpreting the complex and often contradictory identities of America? What is the impact of digitization on research into American periodical studies and to what extent does the study of periodicals offer new pedagogic opportunities for American Studies?

Registration: £20 waged / £5 unwaged. Includes lunch, workshop and refreshments. Click here to register.

Programme

8.45-9.00 Welcome, coffee and pastries (Chaucer Room)

9.00-10.15 Panel 1: Transnational Exchanges, Social Networks and Circulations

Chair: Victoria Bazin

Matthew Shaw, British Library, ‘Putting American Periodicals back on the Shelf’

Jean-Philippe Warren (Concordia University, Québec), French American Periodicals in the 19th Century: Debates and Challenges 

Matthew Pethers (University of Nottingham), “Going Postal: Distribution Networks and the Form of the Nineteenth-Century Magazine”

10.15-10.30 Coffee (Dickens Room)

10.30 -11.45 Panel 2: Highbrow/Lowbrow/Genteel/Kitsch: Magazines and Cultural Value(s) (Chaucer Room)

Chair: Jo Gill

Janet Floyd, (King’s College, London), Richard Gilder, Scribner’s Monthly and Friday evenings in the 1870s

Joanne O’Leary (University of Cambridge), Nabokov, Playboy, and the Politics of the Post-war Glossy

Christine Bianco (Oxford Brookes University), Modern Art in Mass Magazines: Cultural Division and Consensus Building in Post-war America

11.45-12.00 Break

12.00-13.00 British Library Periodicals Workshop (Chaucer room)

· 12.00-12.15 Newsroom tour (group 1) OR Opportunity to talk informally with Eccles Centre and curatorial staff about research questions & share research experience of using the BL collections (session 1)

· 12.15-12.45 Presentation about the British Library’s American holdings & resources

· 12.45-1.00 Newsroom tour (group 2) OR Opportunity to talk informally with Eccles Centre and curatorial staff about research questions & share research experience of using the BL collections (session 2)

1.00 – 1.45 Lunch (Dickens Room)

1.45 – 3.00 Panel 3: Black Print Cultures: Public and Counter-Public Spheres (Chaucer room)

Chair: Sue Currell

Eric White, (Oxford Brookes), ‘Railroad Avenue’: Rail Technologies, Marginal Spaces, and Periodical Print Culture in African American Modernist Writing

Utaukwa Allen (Harvard University) The Student Press and the Desegregation of Higher Education (1954-1970)

James West (Manchester University) The Books You’ve Waited For: Ebony Magazine, the Johnson Book Division, and Black Print Cultures in the 1960s

3.15-5.15 Research Panel Statements and Discussion (Chaucer room)

Chair: Victoria Bazin

• Rachel Alexander (University of Strathclyde): “Nationalism, Consumerism, and Gender in the Canadian and American mass-market magazines of the 1920s”
• Laurel Forster (Portsmouth University): Arena 3 journal and the localised homemade magazines/newsletters of the WLM. 
• Sarah Galletly (James Cook University, Australia): ‘Montgomery as “canny businesswoman”: L.M. Montgomery’s Early Periodical Short Fiction’
• Sarah Garland (University of East Anglia) ‘Aspen, “The Multimedia Magazine in a Box” 1965-1971’.
• Jo Gill (Exeter University) TBA
• Katie McGettigan (Nottingham University): ‘“American” Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain’.
• David Winters, (Cambridge University) “Gordon Lish at Esquire Magazine, 1969-1977″

5.15-5.30 Coffee (Dickens Room)

5.30-6.30 Keynote: Faye Hammill (University of Strathclyde) “Reading Society Magazines” Chair: Sue Currell (Chaucer room)

6.30-7.30 Wine Reception (Dickens Room)

American into Periodical Studies is organised by NAPS (the Network of American Periodical Studies), a research network fostering collaboration and dialogue between American Studies and Periodical Studies. This event is co-hosted and supported by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, the University of Sussex’s Centre for American Studies and Centre for Modernist Studies and Northumbria University. Funding towards postgraduate attendance provided by the British Association for American Studies http://baas.ac.uk

         

The Network of American Periodical Studies (NAPS) is a new research initiative that aims to bring together scholars working on American periodicals (magazines, newspapers and other periodical publications) from any historical period.