Black and white photo of several very thick stacks of magazines close together from the side view. Together they form a wavy pattern.

Working Group: The Cultural Study of Periodicals

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in periodicals as an object of study. New research has pioneered new methods of investigation that bring intellectual history, media studies, and the history of knowledge and science into a productive dialogue. The working group The Cultural Study of Periodicals offers researchers from various disciplines a forum to exchange ideas about different research methodologies. By ‘periodical’ (Zeitschrift), we understand a generic concept that encompasses elements of seriality and intellectual community, or sociability (sociabilité intellectuelle). As an organizing category, ‘periodical’ can include widely distributed cultural and theoretical magazines, as well as privately printed and circulated publications, scholarly journals, and digital platforms.

We aim to analyze the periodical as a specific medium that builds its own set of cultural, political, and epistemological horizons. Thus, instead of taking what appears in periodicals for granted—topics, themes, debates—we want to inquire into the particular ways in which periodicals frame  objects and represent them. This touches upon the question of circulation and how knowledge traverses different intellectual and aesthetic fields. It also asks for a new definition of the roles of producers and consumers in relation to periodical literature, since these are subjects of constant negotiation: Who is writing? Who are the publishers and what do they aim to accomplish? Who is the audience? And how does the relationship between producer and consumer constitute itself? In contradistinction to nationally focused histories of periodicals, or to media theoretical approaches to periodical literature, we aim to investigate the journal as a central arena within the field of intellectual history. This includes understanding them as ‘site of encounter’ (François Dosse), ‘conceptual laboratories’ (François Cusset) or as zones that can be characterized by the production of consensus or dissent, by rigorously defined programs or by intentional eclecticism.

The events and the mailing list of the working group are open to all interested parties. The members meet once a year for a working conference, previous meetings have taken place at the Leibniz Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, the institute for cultural studies in Essen, and the German literature archive in Marbach. The group is an associate member of the network of European cultural journals Eurozine. In 2018, the working group curated the dossier Worlds of Cultural Journals in Eurozine’s online magazine.

 

Fig. above: Dirk Naguschewski

Speaker at the ZfL:
Moritz Neuffer

Publications

Events

Lecture
08 Jul 2022 · 2.00 pm

Moritz Neuffer: The Movement and the Model. Forms of Compression in Theory Journals

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, Room 2249a

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Conference
31 Mar 2022 – 01 Apr 2022

Wandlungszonen: Zeitschriften und Öffentlichkeit 1945 bis 1969

Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Schillerhöhe 8–10, 71672 Marbach am Neckar, Tagungsraum 2-3

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Lecture and Q&A
14 Jun 2021 · 3.45 pm

Moritz Neuffer: From Chronopoetics to Anachronisms: Economies of Timeliness in Modern Intellectual Journals

online via Zoom

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Annual Meeting
18 Mar 2021 · 10.00 am

Annual Meeting of the Working Group “The Cultural Study of Periodicals”

online via Zoom

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Workshop
02 Dec 2020 · 5.00 pm

Moritz Neuffer: Worlds of Cultural Journals: What is ›Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschriftenforschung‹?

online via zoom

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Annual meeting of the working group (not public)
04 Jun 2018

The Cultural Study of Periodicals

Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (KWI), Goethestr. 31, 45128 Essen

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Panel discussion
10 Jul 2017 · 6.30 pm

Vom Aus- und Wiedereinlesen. Zeitschriftenforschung heute

ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, 3. Et., Trajekteraum

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Constitutive meeting of the working group (not public)
10 Jul 2017

The Cultural Study of Periodicals

ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, 3. Et., Seminarraum 303

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Media Response

22 May 2018
Von Karl Kraus bis zur "Vogue". Chefredakteure: Allein und gemeinsam

Was macht einen Chefredakteur erfolgreich? Der Literaturwissenschaftler Matthew Philpott sucht im Webmagazin „Eurozine“ eine Antwort. Zeitschriftenkolumne, by Gregor Dotzauer, in: Der Tagesspiegel (22 May 2018)

Contributions

Bücher im Gespräch

Episode 7: Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschriftenforschung

For our podcast, Moritz Neuffer and Barbara Picht talked about the cultural study of periodicals.
(in German)