Periodicals, Protest, and the South: Periodicals--especially those addressed to regional or other focused communities--have long been credited as potent political forces for organizing social protest movements and collectives. From radical New Orleans abolitionist papers to contemporary university publications, southern periodicals have helped to articulate and circulate protests against racism, economic exploitation, institutionalized inequality, and many other social ills. This panel takes a broad view of what constitutes a “southern” periodical, and welcomes projects that consider publications produced and/or circulating in spaces that could include but are certainly not limited to the states of the former Confederacy, or indeed even the boundaries of the United States. Given the conference location of San Diego, we especially welcome papers that consider the context of southern California and/or the American Southwest, broadly conceived. Ultimately, this panel proposes to study the relationship between periodical formats, circulation strategies, and social protest movements by featuring scholarship on southern serial publications that invoke protest as a purpose and a calling.

Possible topics include:

--the rise or fall of student/university newspapers; students and radical periodical protest

--the contours of multiethnic and multilingual periodical publishing in the region

--transnational/hemispheric communities of protest

--the forms and aesthetics of protest periodicals

--collective power and exchange in serial publications

--histories or genealogies of social protest in regional periodicals

--examples of “breaking the big story” in small regional newspapers

--narratives of success or failure

Please submit a 250-word abstract by January 17, 2020 to Sarah Salter at Sarah.Salter@tamucc.edu.