David Nord
Currently teaching:
Recent News
- Nord, Polsgrove contribute to new volume
of History of the Book in America - Nord to address American Library Association
- Nord to talk on 1793 'citizen journalism'
Past academic positions
Instructor in Journalism and News Director, Bismarck Junior College, 1973-74
Professional positions
General Assignment Reporter, Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 1970; Reporter and Broadcast Writer-Editor, The Associated Press (Minneapolis and Bismarck, N.D.), 1972-73; Researcher and Writer, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976-79; Journal of American History, acting editor, 1997-98, 1999-2000, interim editor, 2004-05, and associate editor, 1993-95, 2003-04.
Professional organizations
Journal of American History, acting editor, 1997-98, 1999-2000, interim editor, 2004-05, and associate editor, 1993-95, 2003-04, 2005-06; Standing Committee on Research of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), chair, 1990-91; Program on the History of the Book in American Culture, American Antiquarian Society, executive committee, 1991-2000; Journalism Monographs, editorial board, 1983-86; Journalism History, editorial board, 1986-98; History Division, AEJMC, chair, 1982-83.
Publicatons
Author of Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (2004), Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspaper and Their Readers (2001), and Newspapers and New Politics: Midwestern Municipal Reform, 1890-1900 (1981); contributing author of Mass Communication Research and Theory (2003) and Three Hundred Years of the American Newspaper (1991); author of articles in Journal of American History, American Quarterly, Journal of Urban History, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Communication, Journalism History, Journalism Quarterly, and other journals.
Awards
Book of the Year Award, American Journalism Historians Association, 2005. Harold L. Nelson Award, University of Wisconsin, 2005. James Russell Wiggins Lectureship, American Antiquarian Society, 1996. Catherine Covert Award, for best article of the year in mass communication history, 1984, 1990, and 2003. Ralph D. Gray Award, for best article of the year, Journal of the Early Republic, 1995.
Teaching and research areas
Writing and reporting, communication history, media and society, American social and intellectual history, history of readers and reading, qualitative research methods.
Research areas
Professor Nord's research interests lie in the history of American publishing, especially journalism history and the history of the religious press. He is the author of three books, several book chapters, and scholarly articles in many journals, including Journal of American History, American Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Urban History, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism Monographs, Journal of Communication, Communication Research, and Journalism History.
For many years, Nord has been involved with the Center for the History of the Book in American Culture at the American Antiquarian Society. He has served on the Center's Board of Overseers and is currently a volume editor on A History of the Book in America, a multi-volume project of the American Antiquarian Society and Cambridge University Press.
He has served as interim editor, acting editor, and associate editor of the Journal of American History through much of the 1990s and 2000s.
Recent work includes:
- Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
- "Religious Readers and Reading in Antebellum America." in Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Edited by Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
- "Benevolent Capital: Financing Evangelical Book Publishing in Early Nineteenth-Century America," in God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860. Edited by Mark A. Noll. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- "The Practice of Historical Research." in Mass Communication Research and Theory. Edited by Guido Stempel III, David H. Weaver, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003.
- Benevolent Books: Printing, Religion, and Reform, 1790-1840. in An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation. Edited by Robert Gross and Mary Kelley. Vol 2 of A History of the Book in America. New York: Cambridge University Press (in press).
On faculty since 1979.