When Private Talk Goes Public

Introduction; Kathleen Feeley and Jennifer Frost 1. "They make one very handsome Mirkin amongst them": Gossip and Church Politics in Seventeenth-Century Virginia; Christine Eisel 2. "The Time When There Was So Much Talk of the Witchcraft in this Country": Gossip and the Essex County Witchcraft Crisis of 1692; Mary Beth Norton 3. Governed Gossip: The Personal Letters and Public Purpose of Philip Ludwell in Early-Eighteenth-Century Virginia; Virginia Price 4. The Infamous Anne Royall: Jacksonian Gossip, Scribbler, and Scold; Nancy Isenberg 5. "Gadding," "Gainsaying," and Negotiating Gossip in the Antebellum Black Press; Erica L. Ball 6. Gossip Law: Popular Journalism and Transformations in Law and American Legal Culture; Samantha Barbas 7. Diplomacy and Gossip: Information-Gathering in the U.S. Foreign Service, 1900-1940; Molly M. Wood 8. "As Told By Helen Ferguson": Hollywood Publicity, Gender, and the Public Sphere; Mary Desjardins 9. Gossip in the Women's Pages: Legitimizing the Work of Women Journalists in the 1950s and 1960s; Kimberly Wilmot Voss 10. The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics; Andrea Friedman 11. Gossip Goes Mainstream: People Magazine, the National Enquirer, and the Rise of Personality Journalism; Anne Helen Petersen 12. Is Charles Trippy Famous?: Vlog Culture and Twenty-First-Century Celebrity Gossip on Internet Killed Television; Tim Seiber