The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is soliciting entries for its annual award for the best journalism and mass communication history book of 2015.

The winning author will receive a plaque and a cash prize at the August 2016 AEJMC conference in Minneapolis, where the author will give a short talk about the experience of research and discovery during the book’s composition.

The competition is open to any author of a media history book regardless of whether he or she belongs to AEJMC or the History Division. Only first editions with a 2015 copyright date will be accepted. Edited volumes, articles, and monographs will be excluded because they qualify for the Covert Award, another AEJMC History Division competition

Entries must be received by February 5, 2016. To enter, submit four copies of each book — along with the author’s mailing address, telephone number, and email address — to:

John P. Ferré
AEJMC History Book Award Chair
Department of Communication
310 Strickler Hall
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292

Please contact John Ferré at 502.852.8167 or ferre@louisville.edu with any questions.

The inaugural conference on Transnational Journalism History is seeking papers.

The Transnational Journalism History conference acknowledges the fluid transmission of journalistic practices and technologies across geography and political borders, treating news consumers outside national boundaries as a home audience. A good example of this would be America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic. This paper consisted primarily of English news for an audience who thought of themselves as English men and women but who were living on another continent.

The conference will be held February 25-27, 2016, at Georgia Regents University in Augusta, Ga.

Paper submissions are welcome on any aspect of the subject, but papers that examine the flow of journalistic developments, people and phenomena between Ireland and the United States are of particular interest. The conference is accepting proposals for research sessions (submit a completed paper); work-in-progress sessions (250-word abstract); and panels. Completed papers and panel proposals should be submitted electronically to Debbie van Tuyll (dvantuyl@gru.edu) by Oct. 1, 2015. Abstracts of research in progress may also be submitted. Each submission will be evaluated in a blind review process.

See the paper call for more details of the conference and focus.

The steering committee of the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression is seeking papers for presentation at the 23rd annual conference in November.

Papers are welcome on topics such as U.S. mass media of the 19th century, the Civil War in fiction and history, freedom of expression in the 19th century, presidents and the 19th century press, images of race and gender in the 19th century press, sensationalism and crime in 19th century newspapers, and the press in the Gilded Age. This year the steering committee will pay special attention to papers on the Civil War and the press, presidents and the 19th century press, 19th century concepts of free expression, and the press in the Gilded Age.

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The American Journalism Historians Association has announced submission guidelines for the 2015 Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize. The prize, given for the first time in 1997, is awarded annually for the best doctoral dissertation dealing with mass communication history.

Eligible works shall include both quantitative and qualitative historical dissertations, written in English, which have been completed between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2014. For the purposes of this award, a “completed” work is defined as one which has not only been submitted and defended but also revised and filed in final form at the applicable doctoral-degree-granting university by December 31, 2014.  An honorarium of $500 accompanies the prize, and a $200 honorarium is awarded to each honorable mention.  Continue reading →

The Media 19 Project is completing its first phase. A conference in Paris next year is an opportunity to present ongoing projects and to assess past activities related to the French-Quebecker Media 19 project.

The French-Quebecker Media 19 project, funded by the Agence nationale de la recherche (France) and the Fonds de recherche québécois – Société et culture (2011-2015) is devised around the www.medias19.org digital platform. The project serves as a frame for developing critical thinking on journalistic practices in the 19th century, on the promotion and analysis of corpuses, as well as on the study of media culture development within the Francophone space. This conference is an opportunity to both assess past activities (using the Medias 19 platform data) and to invite researchers to discuss ongoing projects. The conference will last five working days and revolves around five main axes, which have determined scientific research as conducted by Medias 19.

The conference theme is The Press and Journalists in the 19th Century: Identities and Modernities. The conference will be held in Paris June 8-12, 2015,  at the Canadian Cultural Center (5, rue de Constantine, 7th arrondissement). Paper presentations are 20 minutes long. Proposals (250 words, a short bio, full contact addresses, home institution) must be sent to congresM19@gmail.com by January 1, 2015.

A full  Call for Papers can be found at: (http://www.medias19.org/index.php?id=19468). The call is in French but proposals in English are accepted.

Scholars interested in submitting a proposal should know that cross-disciplinary and general studies are encouraged (more than purely monographic subjects).

Papers and panel proposals are being accepted for the third Media & Civil Rights History Symposium.

The symposium brings together civil rights and media historians and welcomes scholars from multiple disciplines.  Papers and panel proposals should focus on the historical relationship between media and civil rights, particularly on the symposium theme of “Black Power, Political Imagination and the Media.”

Complete proposals or papers must include an abstract of no more then 500 words and a one-page cv for each author or panelist. Submissions must also include complete contact information for each author or panelist. Panel proposals should include a title and designation of the panel moderator.

Deadline for submissions is November 1, 2014.

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina will host the symposium April 2-4, 2015, in Columbia, S.C.

The symposium flier has more information.