CFP: American Literature and the Transnational Marketplace / Deadline: 1 August, 2015

The last fifteen years have seen substantial changes in the way scholars have engaged with US literature and culture. In particular, the rise of two methodological paradigms, TRANSNATIONALISM and PRINT CULTURE STUDIES, have paved the way for exciting new approaches to key questions that have always been at the heart of the discipline: the relationship between literature and nationhood, the role of writing in international circuits of knowledge and commodity exchange, and the artistic labour of the author.

The Open Library of Humanities is a unique platform for interdisciplinary work, and provides us with an opportunity to collect together a more diverse range of new work in this area than would be possible within more traditional publishing outlets. The aim of this special curated collection is to reflect on the history of international markets, copyright, and the book trade as shaping forces in American literature and culture. We seek work representing the entire history of the United States from the earliest instances of print culture in the colonies, to the market revolution of the nineteenth century and contemporary digital media and new publishing or distribution formats. Essays may be literary-historical in nature, focus on issues of academic methodology, or adopt forms of close reading informed by transnationalism and print culture studies. The American Literature Section Editor, Dr. Michael Collins, will then curate a special collection from work that passes the peer review process. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• American Literature and Copyright
• Literary “Nationalism” and the International Marketplace
• The Book as “Commodity”
• Literature and Digital Media/ Digital Humanities/ Open Access
• Representations of the Literary Marketplace in Fiction
• Transnationalism and Literary Form
• US Print Culture and Transnationalism (Magazines, Newspapers, Pamphlets, Chapbooks, “Little Magazines”, Broadsides)
• Literary Labour in the Marketplace
• The Politics of the Transnational Marketplace
• American Studies, Transnationalism and The Academic Job Market
• Review Essays

The special collection, edited by Michael Collins, is to be published in the Open Library of Humanities (ISSN 2056-6700). The OLH is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded open-access journal with a strong emphasis on quality peer review and a prestigious academic steering board. Unlike some open-access publications, the OLH has no author-facing charges and is instead financially supported by an international consortium of libraries. Work appearing in the Open Library of Humanities is compliant with funder audits, such as the UK's Research Excellence Framework.

Submissions should be made online at: https://submit.openlibhums.org in accordance with the author guidelines and clearly marked for the AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THE TRANSNATIONAL MARKETPLACE CFP. Submissions will then undergo a double-blind peer-review process. Authors will be notified of the outcome as soon as reports are received. As per the Author Guidelines of the OLH, submissions should be no longer than 8,000 words. The publishing format of OLH allows for a uniquely expansive approach to publishing research. Consequently, shorter pieces, creative works, or hyperlinked article formats are encouraged. For advice, please contact the Editor.

To learn more about the OLH, visit: https://blog.openlibhums.org.