Current Issue: Summer 2026
Volume 43 Number 3
Summer 2026
EDITORIAL NOTE
Lori Amber Roessner
ARTICLES
“A Friend and Lifeline”: A History of Christian Feminist Magazine Daughters of Sarah, 1974-1996
Karlin Andersen Tuttle (FREE ACCESS ARTICLE)
While the history of women’s magazines is a well-established area of study, minimal scholarship exists on the development and role of Christian women’s magazines. This project chronicles the previously untold history of Daughters of Sarah (1974–1996) through a close reading of seventy-three issues published between 1981 and 1996, an oral history interview with the publication’s longest-sitting editor, and retrospective writings from the magazine’s staff. This Christian feminist magazine tackled the most debated theological and cultural debates of the late twentieth century through a nonhierarchical structure, open conversations across denominations, and research-based pieces that welcomed contradictory viewpoints. The project explores Daughters of Sarah’s impact and relevance to Christian women’s periodicals as a singular voice for Christian feminists in a period of immense cultural change.
“Sepia Queen of Ice”: Black Press Coverage of Pioneering Figure Skater Mabel Fairbanks
Carolina Velloso and Robin Mazyck Sundaramoorthy
Mabel Fairbanks, of African American and Indigenous descent, figure skated professionally for a decade in the mid-twentieth century. She faced numerous obstacles and was largely overlooked by the mainstream press and skating organizations during her lifetime. This study shows that, during her career, Fairbanks was subjected to intersectional discrimination based on race, gender, class, and geography. Denied the chance to compete in official skating events and represent the United States in international competitions, Fairbanks carved out her own opportunities performing locally and in touring ice shows. This study reconstructs Fairbanks’s life and career through the extensive coverage she received from the Black press. Using a rich collection of archival materials, it illuminates the central themes of this news coverage and argues that Fairbanks’s career adds to current knowledge about Black women athletes, intersectional discrimination in sporting bodies, and the Black press’ advocacy news value.
Using Media to Popularize Hate: A Study of Henry Ford and Charles E. Coughlin’s Antisemitic Language
Wendy Melillo
This study examines the antisemitic hate speech and writings of automaker Henry Ford and Radio Priest Charles E. Coughlin between 1920 and 1945. Using a sociohistorical approach and qualitative textual analysis, the study positions Ford’s and Coughlin’s discourse in what scholars call conservative news cultures in journalism history to better understand how the language of hate speech has evolved and to further illuminate the role that mass media plays in disseminating hate speech. Antisemitic speech has a long history in America and should be considered as more than just rhetorical discourse because it can lead to violence.
America@250: “From this Time forward forever more”?
Alexia Little, Jason Guthrie, Lori Amber Roessner, Daniel Max Barth
At the US semiquincentennial, a moment in which public trust in national institutions is at an all-time low, this collaborative of collective memory scholars and media historians turned back the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, in consultation with other media archives, to earlier jubilees to explore the role of journalism and media in reporting the first draft of history, in constructing understandings of the past, and in serving as a contested site of collective memory at key national anniversaries. Though some cultural observers have noted the stark parallels between this year’s semiquincentennial and the 1976 bicentennial, observing a divided nation in a moment of crisis, this collaborative found that across time periods newpapers and other media documented the national mood, highlighting brief moments of national unity, while also chronicling lingering and unfolding national crises, enduring sectionalism and divisions, and battles over who had the authority to narrate the nation’s history and to decide what it means to be a patriotic American.
BOOK REVIEWS
Black and Golden: Fifty Years of the National Association of Black Journalists 1975–2025
Marquita S. Smith (Free access review)
LGBTQ Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imagination and Civil Rights
Rich Shumate
Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press
Kathy Roberts Forde
Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America
Lisa Parcell
Tactical Inclusion: Difference and Vulnerability in U.S. Military Advertising
Charles Sorrie
Reporting the Nuremberg Trials: How Journalists Covered Live Nazi Trials And Executions
Julien Gorbach
Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics
Michael J. Socolow
DIGITAL MEDIA REVIEWS
Albert Gore Research Center, Middle Tennessee State University
Jane Marcellus (Free access review here)
Stewart Media Archives, Mahoning Valley Historical Society
Rekha Sharma
ENDNOTES
Lori Amber Roessner