CFP: Network of American Periodical Studies symposium at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, September 20th, 2019. Plenary speaker: Professor Mary Chapman, University of British Columbia, author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism(2014),
Serial [Gendered] Subjects: Periodicals, Identities, Communities
What is the relationship between gender and the serial form of the magazine? To what extent are gendered ‘stereotypes’, a term first deployed to refer to new print technologies, reproduced and/or contested in periodicals? How might the affordances of the magazine, its seriality, heterogeneity and periodicity be understood in terms of gender? What is the effect of what Ann Ardis describes as the ‘complexly performative authorial environment’ of magazines, the play of signed, pseudonymous and anonymous texts in circulation that often obscures authorial or artistic origins? How does this complicate recovery projects by making it difficult to identify an historical, gendered subject available for recovery? How does gender intersect with race, social class, sexuality and nation and to what extent is it possible or even helpful to examine gender as a distinct category? How are identities and communities attached to magazines and in what ways do they mobilise political subjects within the public and counter-public spheres? Do particular patterns, rhythms and structures persist to create gendered boundaries within the textual space of the magazine? Does gender play a role in the relationships between verbal and visual media? How useful is W.J.T. Mitchell’s assertion that the laws of genre relate to the laws of gender and sexual economies of power, knowledge and desire, that pictures are gendered as the feminised ‘other’ to the word? To what extent are particular affects circulated within magazines and how are those affects related to questions of gender?
These are some of the questions we would like to address in the next Network of American Periodical Studies symposium at Northumbria University on September 20th, 2019. We invite submissions from colleagues working on any aspect of periodical culture, from within or across any disciplinary boundaries and historical periods. While the network focuses on research on American periodicals, given the transnational nature of magazine and newspaper circulation, we encourage scholars working on periodicals from around the world to identify synergies and connections between America and non-American print cultures. The network defines ‘America’ not simply as the United States but to include the nations that form that continent.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Mary Chapman of the University of British Columbia will be giving the plenary lecture at the symposium. Professor Chapman is the author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism(2014), co-editor of Treacherous Texts: US Suffrage Literature, 1846-1946 (2011) and Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton (2017).
Please send 300 word abstracts and accompanying one-page CVs to the symposium organizers, Dr Victoria Bazin Victoria.Bazin@northumbria.ac.ukand Dr Sue Currell S.Currell@sussex.ac.ukby July 15th2019.
Network of American Periodical Studies 