Studies in Periodical Cultures – serie

Between 1880 and 1920, newspapers, magazines, and journals figured as the most important media for the public discussion of current events, as central nodes for the circulation of mass entertainments, and as windows into bustling art scenes. Periodicals thus presented themselves as crucial media for the negotiation and implementation of cultural modernization processes. Modernity and the Periodical Press explores this privileged role of the periodical press and focuses in particular on the often-neglected intersections between mass print culture and the practices of literary and artistic avant-gardes. In doing so, the volume examines a variety of materials that are shaped by the formats and themes of the periodical press, including Modernist little magazines, mass-marketed scrapbooks, advertising campaigns, comics, and more.

Combining theoretical and empirical approaches, this volume offers a wide-ranging survey of periodical research today. It illustrates the shift from content-related investigations and archival recovery to multidisciplinary analyses which consider, for instance, how magazines, newspapers, and other serial print products shape our opinions and help us to form like-minded communities. International specialists explore periodicals as relational artefacts, highlighting editorial constellations, material conditions, translation, design, marketing, and the consumption of newspapers and magazines from the late seventeenth to the twenty-first century. A must-read for academic and interested readers who wish to explore new and relevant ways to analyze periodicals.

Early African Caribbean Newspapers as Archipelagic Media in the Emancipation Age shows how two Black-edited periodical publications in the early decades of the nineteenth century worked towards emancipation through medium-specific interventions across material and immaterial lines. More concretely, this book proposes an archipelagic framework for understanding the emancipatory struggles of the Antiguan Weekly Register in St. John’s and the Jamaica Watchman in Kingston. Complicating the prevalent narrative about the Register and the Watchman as organs of the free people of color, this book continues to explore the heterogeneity and evolution of Black newspaper print on the liberal spectrum. As such, Early African Caribbean Newspapers makes the case that the Register and the Watchman participated in shaping the contemporary communication market in the Caribbean. To do so, this study engages deeply with both the textuality and materiality of the newspaper and presents fresh visual material.

Protestant Periodicals in Transition: From the Twentieth Century to the Digital Age demarcates the field of religious periodical studies by offering a range of historical and contemporary case studies from different Protestant traditions drawn from various regions of the world. Taking religion, periodicals, and their cultures seriously, this volume focuses not only on content but on the people, processes, networks, technologies, and economics involved in periodical publishing. Case studies explore the role of the Protestant magazine in defining, policing, and extending the boundaries of religious communities, of engaging with and influencing the surrounding society through political activism and lifestyle advice, and adapting to and sometimes spearheading technological changes to keep relevant in changing times.

Fredrika Bremer (1801–1865) reached out to the world beyond her native Sweden. Her promotion of women’s emancipation was celebrated and pursued by Sophie Adlersparre (1823–1895), Rosalie Olivecrona (1823–1898), and Alma Åkermark (1853–1933). From dreams to projects involving collaboration with Britain, France, and Germany, in translation, literature, and periodical editing, this book unearths exciting transnational connections that contributed to the awakening of the Nordic feminist movement. Shedding light on the circulation of liberal ideas, Marxist theory, and the Nordic debate, the three chapters of the book focus on cultural variation, constructive conflicts, mutual (mis)understandings, and class issues.