This panel is part of the 49^th annual Northeast modern language association (NeMLA) convention which will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from the 12^th until the 15^th of April 2018. We wish to examine the active participation of women in the public dialogue through the prism of their periodical publications. By looking into their practices of textual transfer, their editorial strategies and the transnational networks that they established, this panel sheds light on the content, structure, and functions of the periodical press in the long 19^th century. Scholars are encouraged to explore the ways in which women’s journals shaped socio-cultural transitions by conducting comparative research across nations, cultures, and historical periods. 

The convention is organized annually. Next year it will take place in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania from the 12^th until the 15^th of April 2018. The panel with the following title: “The Presence of Women Editors in the Press Industry (1850-1950)” is organized by Christina Bezari who is a PhD candidate at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

Argument

The rise of the periodical press has been recognized as a key factor in the formation of the public sphere in the nineteenth century (Habermas 1962). Studies of twentieth-century editorship, however, tend to take the institutionalization of editorship for granted. Male editors are often known by name, and they are studied in the light of their impact on the socio-political landscape of their time. Historically, however, editorship (and women’s editorship in particular) was often anonymous or pseudonymous and even explicitly staged as performance. Therefore, this panel encourages a thorough study of the common strategies and the cross-cultural networks that women editors developed in order to make their voices heard. More particularly, this panel outlines possible avenues for theoretical reflection on editorship by shedding light on periodical publications across linguistic, socio-cultural and historical boundaries. Transnational perspectives on female editorship are particularly welcome because they offer a comparative viewpoint and a complementary insight into women’s determination to position themselves in the public arena as makers of culture, arbiters of social values and proponents of human rights. Last but not least, this panel draws attention to the influence that female editorship exerted on the political, cultural, and aesthetic evolution which would come to shape and define modernity.

Submission guidelines

Scholars at any stage of their research are welcome to submit their abstracts

before the 30th of September 2017.  

Submissions for this panel can be sent via the convention’s website and not by e-mail to the organizer of the panel. Follow this link, if you wish to submit your abstract for the panel: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16676

“The Presence of Women Editors in the Press Industry (1850-1950)” is not a conference in itself. It is a panel that will take place as part of an international convention organized by the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). For more information, you can access the following website: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html