06 March 2025
Call For Papers: Twentieth-Century Black Periodicals and Space
Twentieth-Century Black Periodicals and Space Symposium
Thursday 8 May 2025
British Library, St Pancras, London
This symposium is about space and geography in the context of twentieth-century periodicals from across the Black Atlantic. Over the course of the twentieth century, Black periodicals negotiate space at several scales: in their pages, in their interests, in their circulation, and in the ways we conceptualise and archive them. How do Black periodicals occupy and traverse space, and how do the spatial forms of Black periodicals shape their meanings? How have theorists understood periodicals and blackness through spatial metaphors? How do spatial contingencies affect the ways that Black periodicals are collected, archived and accessed?
In December 2024, Elizabeth McHenry gave the 39th Annual Panizzi lectures at the British Library.1 Focusing on Black Bibliography, McHenry identified an overarching question which her three lectures asked of themselves and of the field more broadly: What does it mean to inhabit the space of black print? The symposium takes McHenry’s ending question as its beginning. It invites scholars, librarians and researchers from a variety disciplines whose primary objects of study are Black periodicals (magazines, newspapers, etc) published 1900-2000 in the Americas, Europe, and Africa to submit papers that ask about what it means to traverse the space of 20th Century Black Atlantic periodicals and what spaces these periodicals themselves traverse.
Participants are welcome to submit papers on topics including
- The circulations of specific periodicals
- Black bibliography, in particular its diasporic aspects
- Page layout and print space in Black periodicals
- Internationalism, diaspora and Pan-Africanism in Black periodical cultures
- Reflections on the spatial conceptualisations of Black periodicals
- The space of the Black periodical archive
International scholars, librarians and researchers from beyond the UK are also invited to get in touch. Although the symposium is in-person, there is the possibility of a follow up event held online if there is enough interest.
Please submit proposals for 10-minute work-in-progress papers, 20-minute papers, or 10-minute round table contributions. Proposals should be 300-500 words and sent along with a brief CV or bio to [email protected] by Thursday 17 April 2025. Email enquiries are also welcome.
This symposium is a product of the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship African American short fiction and magazines in the mid-twentieth century with the University of Cambridge and the Eccles Institute for the Americas & Oceania at the British Library. The Eccles Institute builds, cares for and shares the Americas and Oceania collection at the British Library, and champions knowledge and understanding of these regions through a rich programme of fellowships and awards, cultural events, research training, guides to the collections and programmes for schools.
References
1. Lecture One, 5 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: In Search of Black Readers
Lecture Two, 10 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Thinking Bibliographically
Lecture Three, 12 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Spaces of Black Study