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Call for PapersKnowledge Networks: American Periodicals, Print Cultures, and CommunitiesOne-day SymposiumSchool of American and Canadian StudiesUniversity of Nottingham, UKFriday May 27, 2011Plenary speaker:Leon Jackson, Associate Professor of English, University of South CarolinaAuthor of: The Business of Letters: Authorial Economies in AntebellumAmerica (2008)The recent turn to the study of print culture in American literary andcultural histories has increasingly focused scholarly attention on thedynamic interaction between writing, reading, and publishing. This hasopened up a range of new perspectives on the networks of communicationthat shape and define creative, political, and intellectualcommunities. The "Knowledge Networks" symposium will explore theseperspectives through the particular example of the American periodicalas a public site of debate and exchange.How have American periodicals made broader social, political, andintellectual trends and patterns visible? What role hasprofessionalization played in the development of periodicalpublication? In what ways have readers engaged with American printculture through magazines? What communities have been created andshaped by American periodicals at different moments in the country'shistory?This one-day symposium seeks to address such questions through theanalysis and interpretation of periodical content, while alsoexploring the status, influence, and interrelation of authors,illustrators, publishers, printers, and editors. We welcome proposalsfor individual papers and/or panels that engage with Americanperiodicals from a wide range of disciplinary angles, includingliterary and intellectual history, literary studies, cultural history,visual culture, the history of science, and Victorian studies. Inparticular, we encourage papers looking at the nineteenth century,although submissions on American print culture in all periods arewelcome.We hope that this interdisciplinary conversation will also prompt somereflection on the various methodological approaches to the study ofprint culture currently in use, and suggest new ways of mapping andvisualising the social networks in which periodical literature isembedded. For further details about the symposium and the larger"Knowledge Networks" research project, please visithttp://knowledgenetworks.wordpress.com.Proposals for papers (20 minutes), with a 300-word abstract andone-page CV, should be submitted to Dr Matthew Pethers and Dr RobinVandome, School of American and Canadian Studies, University ofNottingham, by Monday 31 January 2011 at the symposium email address:knowledgenetworksproject@gmail.com. There will be no delegate fee andlimited funds are available to help some panellists with travelexpenses.