The Cultural Study of Periodicals

Recent years have seen a boom in the study of periodicals that breaks new methodological ground. This boom facilitates a productive dialogue between different perspectives such as intellectual history and the history of ideas, media, and knowledge. The Working Group The Cultural Study of Periodicals offers a forum for scholars from different disciplines with a shared interest in periodicals to discuss and understand questions and analytical categories. We understand “periodical” as a generic concept that addresses the elements of periodicity, objectives, and the “intellectual social context” (sociabilité intellectuelle). As a central and umbrella term, it can include cultural and theoretical periodicals as well as grey literature, academic journals, and digital publishing sites.

We want to understand the periodical as a specific medium that generates its own cultural, political, and epistemic horizons. Instead of always already presupposing the subject areas discussed in the periodicals—the objects, the topics, the debates—we want to primarily explore how the medium brings forth and presents them. On the one hand, this touches on the issue of circulation and the transfer of knowledge between different intellectual and aesthetic fields. On the other hand, the medium of the periodical requires an individual redefinition of roles: who is writing? Who edits the periodical and what do these editors want? What audience do they intend to reach? And how does the relation between these two poles constitute itself? In contrast to a national-historical “study of periodicals” and approaches focused purely on communication, library, or book studies, we want to examine periodicals as central arenas of an intellectual history—as “places of encounter” (François Dosse) and “conceptual laboratories” (François Cusset), founding sites of consensus and dissent, of programmatic rigor, or eclecticism.

The Working Group’s next meeting will take place online. Everyone interested is invited to join via the Zoom link. Following a brief introduction round during which we will present our current projects related to periodicals (max. 5 minutes per person) to facilitate direct networking, we want to discuss the future and plans for the Working Group at this meeting.