Entry Category: Organizations and Journals - Starting with A

The Arkansas Historical Quarterly is the official publication of the Arkansas Historical Association (AHA), offering original research on Arkansas history subjects as well as relevant secondary resources. It is housed in the AHA offices in the history department of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The Arkansas Historical Association was organized in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on February 22, 1941. Its first project was “publication of a journal of state history.” David Yancey Thomas, one of the main proponents of creating the AHA, was its first editor. The first issue of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly was published in March 1942 and featured “a ‘Salutory,’ a ‘List of Charter Members,’ four leading articles, ten pages of ‘Documents,’ twelve …

The mission of Arkansas Literacy Councils (ALC), located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is to “Empower Arkansas through Literacy” by supporting local, nonprofit literacy councils throughout the state. The councils recruit and train volunteers from the community to tutor adults who want to improve their basic reading, writing, and math skills. The National Literacy Act (Public Law 102-73 of July 25, 1991) defines literacy as “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak English, and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one’s goals, and develop one’s knowledge and potential.” Exact numbers on illiteracy rates are difficult to calculate because of the extent to which adults consider themselves …

The Arkansas Literary Forum (ALF) was an internet literary journal published each fall by Henderson State University (HSU) in Arkadelphia (Clark County). ALF published short stories, poetry, one-act plays, essays, and artwork exclusively by artists living in, originating from, or with strong ties to Arkansas. Marck Beggs founded the journal in 1999, with support from HSU, where he serves as dean of the graduate school. Beggs, who had worked as an editor with Denver Quarterly and Crazyhorse magazine, thought the work of Arkansas writers lacked recognition. Though Arkansas had a handful of literary journals, none featured Arkansas writers and artists exclusively. Beggs hoped to bolster the prominence of Arkansas writers and artists by presenting work by nationally recognized artists alongside …

The Arkansas Philological Association is a learned society founded in 1974 at Arkansas State University (ASU). It put out Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association, an academic journal that became known as the Philological Review in 2001. The organization holds annual conferences at colleges and universities in Arkansas. These institutions support the Philological Review by offering editors release time and providing stipends for publication. This scholarly journal is indexed in the Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography. According to author James Turner, philology is “the multifaceted study of texts, languages, and the phenomenon of language itself.” Author John Peile wrote that philology “is the science which teaches us what language is.” The word philologia (φιλολογια) is found in the writings …

Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies publishes creative and scholarly works focusing on the seven-state Mississippi Delta. It is assembled and published through the Department of English, Philosophy, and World Languages Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County). Each issue contains articles from several fields of study and offers literary, cultural, historical, geographical, and sociological perspectives on the Delta. It is published three times a year with a circulation of about 500. The Arkansas Review was originally the Kansas Quarterly (KQ), established in 1966 and published through Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas; but the journal ran out of funding in 1996. Kansas Quarterly originally focused on the culture and writing of the Midwest, but it became an …

The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) served as a cultural anchor for Arkansas during the years of the Great Depression by providing work for unemployed and underemployed writers, who observed, recorded, and described the contemporary cultural conditions in their work. These texts serve to this day as the most complete and comprehensive documentation of Arkansas history and culture available from the viewpoint of Arkansans. The FWP was initiated in July 1935 as a component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. The intention of the FWP was to provide employment to out-of-work writers affected by the Depression. The FWP writers were engaged in writing local histories, travelers’ guides, and cultural chronicles, particularly those relating to long-oppressed American groups …

August House, a commercial book publisher founded and run by Arkansans, was a fixture on the national scene for its twenty-five years in the state. Originally a publisher of poetry, it moved into general fiction and eventually folklore and storytelling. In 1978, two young Arkansas poets, Ted Parkhurst and Jon Looney, started a company to publish Arkansas poetry. They called their enterprise August House Publishers. Parkhurst quit his job to run the fledgling company, even selling his poetry door-to-door. Looney soon left Little Rock (Pulaski County), but Parkhurst stayed, and August House Publishers began to grow. By 1979, it became apparent that literary publishing interested writers in Arkansas and the region, and August House published six titles, including poetry by …