CFP: American Humor Studies Association at ALA 2025 in Boston, MA (May 21-24, 2025)

ALA 2025

American Humor Studies Association (AHSA) Panel Proposal

Call for papers

Humor and/in Periodicals in the Long 19th Century

On August 28, 1879, the Kenosha [WI] Telegraph ran a poem titled “The Editor and the Poet’s Ghost,” which parodied Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845) while teasing both overworked newspaper editors and poor-devil authors. After the ghost reveals his reason for haunting the editor–i.e. he wants him to print some of his poems, of which he has “a score”–the editor responds,

Much I marveled at this unholy thing to hear discourse so slowly,

And commandingly, as though my trade no other import bore.

“Ghost!” I cried, “O scorn your pleading; I am now no poetry needing,

Better be your exit speeding, ere I pierce your bosom’s core.

Hence! Depart and leave me in my sanctum, lonely as before.”

Quoth the phantom, “Nevermore.”

This is just one of dozens of parodies of “The Raven” that circulated in newspapers and magazines in the nineteenth century. Such works offer unique insight into nineteenth-century editorial practices as they overlap with literary and print cultures. Not only do such examples lay bare connections within networks of authors, editors, and readers, but they also illustrate patterns of reception, recognition, and reuse. On a larger scale, “The Editor and the Poet’s Ghost” also dramatizes the close, symbiotic relationship between three key elements of early American culture: literature, humor, and the periodical press.

This proposed (non-guaranteed) panel for the 2025 American Literature Association in Boston, sponsored by the American Humor Studies Association, will feature presentations that consider the interstices of humor, periodicals and editorial practices, and literature in the American press over the long nineteenth century. Topics may include but are not limited to the following: approaches by and to particular literary humorists, literary parody and satire in periodicals, reprints of jokes and humorous bon mots, comic depictions in periodicals of American authors and the literary scene, “insider” humor about the press and editorial work, editors’ roles, etc. Submissions by graduate students and other early-career scholars are encouraged.

Send a 250-400 word proposal and a brief bio to Wesley McMasters ([email protected]) and Todd Thompson ([email protected]) by Nov. 15.