James Danky (born 1947) is an American historian, bibliographer, and culture critic. He is currently a faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Danky advocated for collecting alternative and small-press publications during his tenure at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
He served as the Newspapers and Periodicals Librarian for the Wisconsin Historical Society from 1976-2007. Danky is also a co-founder of the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America and served as its director from 1992-2006.[1]
From 1999 to 2009 Danky taught for the School of Journalism with a focus on race and media. Danky edited the series "Print Culture History in Modern America" for the University of Wisconsin Press from 2002 to 2022.[2]
Danky believed that “collecting contemporary alternative and small-press publications was key to providing an in-depth picture of current social, cultural, and political issues and debates.” [3]
He is currently adjunct curator of comics at the Museum of Wisconsin Art which published his Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics.[4]
Honors and awards
James Danky
Danky is the recipient of the American Library Association’s Bowker/Ulrich’s Serials Librarianship award (1987) and the Isadore Gilbert Mudge-R.R. Bowker Award (2002). In 1991, Danky was a Fulbright Scholar at the British Library, where his research focused on the alternative press in Britain, especially Afro-British publications.
In 1998 Danky returned to London to teach American History at University College. He was named a Media Hero at the Institute for Alternative Journalism (1991), was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society (1996), and was a fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African-American Research at Harvard from 1997-1998.[5]
In 2007 friends and colleagues put on a two-day conference, "Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries," the results of which were published in Library Trends, v.56, n.3; Winter, 2008.[6] This conference celebrated Danky’s contributions and collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Danky was honored with the Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award in 2019.[7]
Selected bibliography
Danky, James P., "Studies on the Right with Chip Berlet," Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy, Celebrating Chip Berlet as a Journalist and Scholar, edited by Pam Chamberlain, Matthew N. Lyons, Abby Scher, and Spencer Sunshine. London and New York, Routledge 2022.
Danky, James P. and Denis Kitchen, Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics. West Bend, Museum of Wisconsin Art, 2020.
Danky, James P. and Denis Kitchen. Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix. New York: Abrams; Madison, WI: Chazen Museum of Art, 2009. ISBN0-8109-0598-1
Danky, James P. “The Oppositional Press.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 5, edited by Michael Schudson, David Paul Nord, and Joan Shelly Rubin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN0-8078-3285-5
Danky, James P., “Reading, Writing and Resistance: African-American Print Culture, 1880-1940.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4, edited by Carl Kaestle and Janice Radway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN0-8078-3186-7
Danky, James P., and Wayne A. Wiegand. Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.*
Danky, James P. “Newspapers and Selected Periodicals.” In The Harvard Guide to African-American History, edited by Evelyn Brooks Higginbothum. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN0-674-00276-8
Danky, James African-American Newspapers and Periodicals, A National Bibliography. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998.
Danky, James P., and John Cherney. “Beyond Limbaugh: The Far Right’s Publishing Spectrum” Reference Services Review 24(1) (1996): 43-56.
Danky, James P., Ken Fones-Wolf, and Elliott Shore, eds. The German-American Radical Press: From the 1840s to the 1930s. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992. ISBN0-252-01830-3
Danky, James P., and Wayne A Wiegand, eds. Print Culture in a Diverse America. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998. ISBN0-252-02398-6 (Carey McWilliams Prize Winner, 1988)
Danky, James P., ed. Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982: Bibliography, Publishing Record, and Holdings. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. ISBN0-313-23773-5
Danky, James P., and Sanford Berman, eds. Alternative Library Literature: A Biennial Anthology (Ten Volumes). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1982-2000. ISBN0-7864-1313-1 (2000/2001 ed.)
Danky, James P., ed. Women’s Periodicals and Newspapers from the 18th Century to 1982: A Union List of the Holdings of Madison, Wisconsin Libraries. Boston: GK Hall, 1982. ISBN0-8161-8107-1
Danky, James P., and Elliott Shore, eds. Alternative Materials in Libraries. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982. ISBN0-8108-1508-7
Danky, James P., Neil Strache, et al. Black Periodicals and Newspapers: A Union List of Holdings in Libraries of the University of Wisconsin and the Library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 2nd ed. Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1979. ISBN0-87020-178-6
Danky, James P., ed. Undergrounds: A Union List of Alternative Periodicals in Libraries of the United States and Canada. Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1974. ISBN0-87020-142-5
↑ Tkach, D., & Hank, C. (2014). Before Blogs, There Were Zines: Berman, Danky, and the Political Case for Zine Collecting in North American Academic Libraries. Serials Review, 40(1), 12–20.
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