CFP: Digital Poster Session

Spring Symposium 2018:
Editorship as Collaboration: Patterns of Practice in Multi-Ethnic Periodicals
April 27-28, 2018 at the American Antiquarian Society
Worcester, MA

While scholars increasingly recognize the impact of periodicals on social, political, and aesthetic histories, few have explored the range of editorial and collaborative practices that animate their creation and circulation. Invoking editorship as a conceptual model and an area of inquiry, this symposium will support critical conversations about method, affiliation, and the historical arcs of diverse communities as they are developed and addressed through a range of periodical forms. An emphasis on multi-ethnic perspectives responds to important recent work on immigrant, Latin@, and African American print cultures that intersect in their attention to periodicals. Beginning with theories of archival attention, such as Eric Gardner’s “unexpected places,” Rodrigo Lazo’s “migrant archives,” and Kirsten Silva-Gruesz’s “ambassadorship,” invited panelists will participate in larger discussions structured around what Sianne Ngai has defined as “vernacular aesthetics,” those that, like the rhythms of editorship, “operate across much longer spans of time and across much larger swaths of culture” (Aesthetic Categories, 16). We anticipate that a focus on vernacular aesthetics and cultural producers beyond the author will generate alternative theories of editorial practice and historical forms.

We seek proposals for nineteenth-century newspaper and periodical-based digitization projects to be displayed at the American Antiquarian Society’s Spring Symposium 2018. In this digital poster session, we aim to support scholars from early stages of their careers or lower-resourced institutions. Participants will have the opportunity to select small runs of or selections from important serials in the AAS collections to digitize. Scholars will exhibit these materials at a digital poster session, exploring the promises and challenges of digitizing serial texts into appropriate electronic forms. This session will enable participants to share work around these questions with one another, thus encouraging direct, concrete cross-pollination of expertise and scholarly experience.

To be considered, please submit a short proposal (300-500 words) identifying a serial publication from the American Antiquarian Society collection for digitization. The scope of the digitized materials may be chosen in concert with symposium organizers and AAS staff. Any serial publication held by the American Antiquarian Society is eligible. The presence of your publication in another digital database will not exclude it from consideration. All materials digitized by AAS will be available in their digital asset management system GIGI (http://gigi.mwa.org/), and available for use as stipulated on their website under “Freely Available Images Online”: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/reproductions.htm.

Proposals should include:
1. The title, print run (or selection) and a permanent link to the serial from the AAS Catalog.
2. A brief summary of the publication’s relevance to our focus on multiethnic editorship and collaboration. Proposals might address questions like: How are processes of collaboration illustrated or dramatized in this example? How does this publication focus on external or internal communities, and how does the paper, and its editors, understand the exchanges between such communities? What historical or archival contexts/difficulties/conditions structure your example?
3. A brief description of the purpose of this publication in this context. Why this publication? Why now? What makes this a productive example for a range of users from introductory students to archivists and scholars?

Follow this link to access the AAS digital catalogue: http://catalog.mwa.org
As well as this link to learn more about AAS serials collections: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/newspapers-periodicals

Please send your submission to Jim Casey (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Sarah Salter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) as a Word document along with a short CV. Submissions should be received by Monday, Oct 2. Selected participants will be notified via email by the end of October. Final acceptance will be conditional on membership in RSAP.