University of Illinois GSLIS doctoral student Mikki Smith has received a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) for her project, “Even a boy’s press has ‘a power’: Amateur journalism and youth information culture, 1867-1890,” which will form the basis of her dissertation.

 

The Peterson fellowship is awarded to individuals engaged in scholarly research and writing, including doctoral dissertations, in any field of American history and culture through 1876. Fellows are selected based on the applicant’s scholarly qualifications, the scholarly significance or importance of the project, and the appropriateness of the proposed study to the Society's collections.

 

Smith’s dissertation will explore how young people in the late nineteenth century actively used print—both periodicals created for them and papers created by them—to form peer networks across geographic space and to participate in a youth information culture. This summer, she will spend one month at the AAS in Worcester, Massachusetts, researching the society’s Amateur Newspaper Collection.

 

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Cindy Ashwill
Assistant Dean for Communications
Managing Editor, Library Trends and GSLIS Occasional Papers
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Mailing Address: 501 E. Daniel Street, MC-493
Champaign, IL 61820-6211
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