CHINED-10 – First Circular and Call for Papers
The Tenth Conference on Historical News Discourse (CHINED-10)
7-9 May 2026, Ragusa Ibla, Italy
The Department of Humanities at the University of Catania and the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations at the University of Milan are pleased to host the Tenth Conference on Historical News Discourse (CHINED-10) on 7-9 May, 2026 at Ragusa Ibla.
The conference will accommodate full papers in general sessions (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion) in addition to three plenaries. We invite you to submit contributions that shed light on the theme of the conference:
Discourses of and about women in the historical press (1600-1920)
At long last, women’s essential role in the development of the historical press is being recognised. Ground-breaking research has underlined the fundamental contributions played by women in the business of periodical print both in Britain (Batchelor and Powell, 2018; Ledbetter, 2020; Shapiro, 2023) and internationally (Rieley, 2024; Smith, 2024).
CHINED-10 aims to develop this research by focusing on both the discourses used in relation to women and women’s own discourses when writing for the press. The time has come to fully investigate not just what is said about women but how they use their own voice in the dissemination of news, opinion and socio-cultural examination and fulfilment.
We invite contributions exploring the discourses of and about women in the historical press, drawing on a wide range of analytical perspectives including (but not limited to):
Discourse-based approaches (Historical and Comparative Discourse Analysis, intertextuality)
Critical and feminist approaches (Critical Discourse Analysis, Feminist Linguistics, intersectionality)
(Socio-)Pragmatics (Corpus Pragmatics, Interpersonal pragmatics, identity construction)
Cultural approaches
Papers should focus on English-written discourses in the British and international press with a time range running from the first occasional news pamphlets at the beginning of the seventeenth century up to and including the emerging tabloidisation of the press in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
As is customary with CHINED conferences, selected papers will be published by an international publisher (e.g. CHINED-8 by John Benjamins, 2025; CHINED-9 by Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming)).
We are very pleased to announce that the following scholars have kindly accepted our invitation to deliver keynote lectures:
- Prof. Rhona Brown, University of Glasgow
- Prof. Nicholas Brownlees, University of Florence
- Prof. Andrew King, University of Greenwich
Envisaged schedule:
- Academic programme:
from Thursday 7th May (2 pm) to Saturday 9th May (finishing at 12.30 pm);
- Social programme:
- Opening reception on Thursday
- Excursion + Conference dinner on Friday
Details concerning the registration fee and social programme costs will be announced at a later date.
Travel information will be made available on the conference website and the CHINED website: https://chinednews.com/
Submission of abstracts for papers:
Abstracts should not exceed 300 words (exclusive of references) and should clearly state research questions, method, data, and (expected) results. Abstracts should be submitted as Word documents; if your abstract contains special characters, please also send a pdf version. Abstracts can be submitted from 15 September 2025 until 30 November 2025. They should be sent as e-mail attachments (docx or pdf) to the following
Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be sent out by 15 December 2025.
The CHINED website can be found here: https://chinednews.com/
The CHINED-10 conference website will shortly become visible.
We look forward to seeing you in Ragusa Ibla in May 2026!
Organising committee
Cristina Arizzi (Catania-Ragusa)
Giovanni Iamartino (Milan)
Giuliana Russo (Catania)
Massimo Sturiale (Milan)
Raffaele Zago (Catania)
Scientific Committee
Cristina Arizzi (Catania-Ragusa)
Birte Bös (Duisburg-Essen)
David Finkelstein (University College London)
Giovanni Iamartino (Milan)
Giuliana Russo (Catania)
Massimo Sturiale (Milan)
Matylda Włodarczyk (Poznan)
Raffaele Zago (Catania)
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