Editors’ Note

In this spring 2017 issue, we bring you an exciting and eclectic mix of articles designed to mirror nature’s own effusion of blossoming flowers. The issue features a new Forum contribution on feminist recovery and periodical studies; a stimulating digital humanities article on newspaper poetry (re)circulation; a pedagogy primer focused on historical images; an exciting In the Archive submission featuring two newly recovered short stories by Paul Laurence Dunbar; an article on 1790s pamphlets and the press; and, of course, our book reviews.

Following the launch of the new Forum feature in volume 26, issue 1 (spring 2016) with a roundtable discussion of digital approaches to periodical studies, we dedicate our second Forum in this issue to “Recovering Women’s Writing through the Periodical Archive.” This Forum arose from a series of presentations on feminist recovery projects given at the 2015 Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference. Collated by Desirée Henderson, the Forum features contributions from Mary Chapman, Jacqueline Emery, Lori Harrison-Kahan, Karen Skinazi, Bonnie James Shaker, Angela Gianoglio Pettitt, Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, and Andrea Williams. We think you will find useful and interesting the problems probed and challenges addressed in this Forum.

In our ongoing commitment to featuring the most innovative digital humanities work on American periodicals, we offer in this issue a new piece co-authored by Ryan Cordell (who contributed to our initial “Forum” feature on digital approaches to periodicals) and Abby Mullen, entitled “‘Fugitive Verses’: The Circulation of Poems in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers.” Cordell and Mullen use the term “fugitive verses” to refer to those verses initially published to mark a special occasion, but which were then recirculated and repurposed to suit multiple audiences and contexts.

Bonnie M. Miller’s “A Primer for Using Historical Images in Research” provides scholar-teachers with a methodological approach for incorporating visual images in historical research and classroom instruction. We hope that you will find her general guidelines, as well as her step-by-step approach rewarding for your own research and pedagogical practice.

Thomas Morgan, one of the editors of The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar, offers an In the Archive contribution that brings to our pages two of Dunbar’s previously published, but never collected, short stories: “Sue,” a Western dialect story; and “A Southern Silhouette,” which features white aristocratic characters. Morgan provides additional details on the publishing history of these two stories and connects them thematically to the rest of Dunbar’s oeuvre.

In “John Taylor of Caroline: Pamphlets and the Press in the 1790s,” Arthur Scherr argues that American politicians found pamphlets preferable to newspapers in securing a wider readership for their views. He credits the relatively inexpensive price of pamphlets (when compared to a yearly subscription to a newspaper) to politicians’ preferences for pamphlets, using Virginia politician John Taylor as a case study. Scherr’s piece reminds us that American periodicals work engages with forms beyond the newspaper and magazine.

Last, but certainly not least, we offer an array of reviews which we trust will assist you in keeping up-to-date on the latest in American periodicals research and publication. Enjoy the abundant fruits of spring!