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 enable a productive dialog between the fields of intellectual history, media studies, and the history of knowledge and science. The working group “The Cultural Study of Periodicals” is a forum for researchers from various disciplines where they can 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 will analyze the periodical as a specific medium that forms 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 explore the particular ways in which periodicals frame and represent objects. 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 constantly being (re)negotiated: 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? We aim to investigate journals and magazines as “sites 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 intentional eclecticism.

The working group’s events and mailing list are open to all interested parties. Once a year, the members meet for a working conference. Previous meetings have taken place at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, and at Ruhr University Bochum. 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.