Politics, Power, and Practice in Print Culture

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

When it comes to the history of journalism, zine-making, and print ephemera at large, what does it mean to study print cultures under the pressure of crises across empire, capitalism, and imperialism? This panel, which discusses histories of American print culture, explores the fracturing of culture as perpetrated by systems of oppression and fascistic empires as well as constructing a larger story of power through activism, resistance, and cultural movements.
This roundtable draws from a broad span of cultural contexts across the Americas.
Anjali DasSarma (University of Pennsylvania) will excavate narratives of sovereignty and self-determination in Indigenous newspapers during the 1820s genocide of Native people (Removal). Jaakko Dickman (University of Turku) will explore zines and activism in anti-war movements during the 21st century, alongside the aesthetic practice of alternative materials. Laura Smith (University of Oxford and Arizona State University) will examine American press narratives, activism, and Puerto Rican reactions to the threat of a sugar tax during Secretary of State Philander Knox's visit in 1912. Joseph Torres (Media 2070) will explore the Black press throughout the Civil Rights movement, querying questions of futurity, multiracial democracies, and the legacies of the American press and activism. Zaina Ujayli (University of Southern California) will focus on the Syrian press as woven through New York-based intellectual networks and collaborations between Syrian women and South Asian figures like independence activist Syud Hossain.
Together, these woven strands of print culture have negotiated different strategies and practices to adopt and resist hegemonic pressures imposed by dominant/hegemonic powers and cultures. The speakers will cover a wide spectrum across American empire, colonialism, and imperialism through print culture from the 19th century to the present.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Anjali DasSarma, University of Pennsylvania

Panelists

• Zaina Ujayli, The University of Southern California

• Joseph Torres

• Laura E Smith, Arizona State University-Tempe

• Jaakko Dickman, John Morton Center for North American Studies at the University of Turku

Biographical Information

Anjali DasSarma is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies journalism history, race and slavery. She draws from both critical cultural studies and critical political economy to trace the longue durée of structures of power, resistance and memory from colonial American newspapers to the future of journalism. She is invested in projects of dismantling capitalism and colonialism alongside building structures of hope and repair. She is a Steering Committee member at the Center for Media at Risk, the Media, Inequality and Change Center and the Center for Advanced Research for Global Communication.

Jaakko Dickman is a PhD Candidate at the John Morton Center for North American Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. His dissertation studies visual practices and strategies utilized by antiwar activist movements in 21st-century United States. He is currently working on his first article on the visual politics of the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S., using materials collected during fieldwork in Texas and New Mexico in the fall of 2024. Dickman was selected for the 2025-26 Fulbright Program and will be conducting archival research at NYU’s special archives in the fall 2025.

Joseph Torres advises key Free Press staff in setting and evaluating Free Press and Media 2070 policy positions and priorities. He is also the co-creator of the Media 2070 project. Torres writes frequently on media and internet issues and is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media with Juan González. He is the 2015 recipient of the Everett C. Parker Award, which recognizes an individual whose work embodies the principles and values of the public interest. Before joining Free Press, Torres worked as deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Zaina Ujayli is a PhD candidate in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her dissertation, Performing Arab Woman, explores how Syrian women leveraged print culture and public performance to challenge colonial narratives, advocate for their communities, and advance women’s rights. By positioning performance—whether on lecture stages, in films, or through intellectual circles—as a space where identity, race, and resistance were negotiated, her dissertation demonstrates how Arab and other marginalized women used their public personas as tools for both survival and subversion. Her work has been published in American Periodicals and ArabLit Quarterly, and she holds an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Virginia. She is currently on the board of the Arab American Studies Association.

Laura Ellyn Smith is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University where she is a nineteenth century American historian, and a modern American historian and tutorial instructor at the University of Oxford. Her first doctorate, from the University of Mississippi, is the subject of her book manuscript Rhetoric versus Reality: Democratization and the Presidential Election of 1832, under contract. This work reflects her passion in analyzing the development of print culture and its socio-political impact across American history, a central theme in her seven peer-reviewed published journal articles. One such example is her article, “Anti-Jacksonian democratization: The first national political party conventions,” in American Nineteenth Century History in 2020. Her second doctorate, from the University of Oxford, passed without revisions, uncovers William H. Taft’s managerial style approach to US-Caribbean policy as president from 1909-1913. It specifically analyzes Puerto Rican’s reaction and activism, evident through their use of journalism, to a looming sugar tax undercutting public diplomacy, examining race, capitalism, colonialism, and empire. As a result of their co-opting the public narrative in the print culture, the Taft administration failed to cover up existing and deepening racial, socio-cultural, economic, and political tensions within its newly found empire, and Puerto Rico especially. Her research was the recipient of The Philip Davies Fellowship, The British Library. As a historian interested in domestic and foreign policy, she has contributed chapters to two edited books, The Trump Administration: The President’s Legacy Within and Beyond America (Routledge, 2022) and The Obama Administration: Perceptions and Encounters Beyond America, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), analyzing Obama’s Cuban policy. Her interdisciplinary specialism in political history reflects her background with a First Class Honors B.A. degree in American Studies with a Year Abroad from the University of Leicester and an M.A. in Distinction in United States Studies: History and Politics from University College London. Her enjoyment of researching and analyzing American print culture and its impact both within and outside America, includes contributions in public history through the engagement with print culture itself in publishing op-eds on topics ranging from the politicization of the post office, and political communication and rhetoric.