Politics and Periodicals

The 4^th International Conference of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit)

10-11 September 2015

Stockholm, Sweden

The European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) will hold its 4^th international conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on 10-11 September 2015.

Its theme of Politics and Periodicals seeks to bring together current research on the connections between politics - most concretely, political or social movements - and individual or groups of periodicals. We welcome comparative cross-national perspectives as well as more local studies of European periodicals of any period on topics which may include but are not limited to

• Periodicals started by social or political movements
• Social or political movements invigorated by periodicals
• Periodicals devoted to political theory/political science; that is, periodicals explicitly about politics
• Periodicals as party organs
• Politicians as editors/contributors
• Periodicals and political reputations
• Politicised conflict and controversy between periodicals

We are keen to bring together postgraduates and early-career researchers with more experienced scholars, and aim to present a programme that includes various modes of engagement with research in the field: panels, round tables, workshops, etc.

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers, panels of three or four papers, round tables, one-hour workshops or other suitable sessions and short biogs by 1 June 2015 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The ESPRit 2014 Conference was succesfully held in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, on 10 and 11 April 2014.

Keynote speakers were Professor Dabid Abrahamson and Professor Joanne Shattock. The conference also featured several panel sessions.

Find a full programme here: esprit_conference_2014_programma.pdf

 Helleke van den Braber on De Nieuwe Gids

 Philip Leu from the T.I.G.R.E. Panel on La Plume

Nijmegen's Historic Centre

Periodicals Across Europe

9-10 December 2011

The Burgess Foundation, Manchester.

Keynote speakers

Professor Sophie Levie (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

Professor Barbara Mittler (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)

Dr Sascha Bru (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

To mark the foundation of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), the Centre for Periodicals Research at the University of Salford is hosting the Periodicals Across Europe Conference on 9-10 December 2011. The theme of the conference is the comparative study of European periodicals and periodical cultures, and the conference organizers now welcome proposals for contributions. We take ‘periodical’ in its widest sense to mean magazines, journals, newspapers and any other form of serial publication. ‘Comparative study’ is equally broadly defined. The conference aims to consider the differences or similarities in periodical cultures between European nations and languages; between historical periods; and between European and non-European periodical cultures. The organizers anticipate that this comparison will arise from the juxtaposition of papers, so individual papers need not be explicitly comparative.

Topics for proposals may include, but are by no means limited to:

• Periodicals and national culture
• Internationalization of and in periodicals
• Trans-European periodical culture
• Europe seen from abroad in periodicals
• The language of periodicals
• Cultural exchanges between periodicals
• Periodical genres (such as the illustrated newspaper; satiric, fiction or poetry magazines; the review; the woman’s magazine; little magazines; trade journals)
• Imitation/Influence/Borrowing in periodical culture
• Periodicals and print and image technologies

While we welcome proposals in any of these areas, we seek especially work on non-Anglophone and/or post-1900 periodicals. While the study of nineteenth-century Anglophone periodicals is well-established, part of ESPRit’s mission is to open up periodical research beyond this field. In line with ESPRit’s stated aims, the organizers hope to bring together some of the ‘many European scholars in different disciplines—historians, sociologists, literary scholars, media studies scholars—who use periodicals in their work’. Ideally, the conference will put experienced researchers from the established field in dialogue with more recent arrivals. Accordingly, we also welcome contributions which are focused on questions of theories and methodologies of periodical research, as well as proposals dealing with teaching periodicals, and the impact of digitization on periodical research.

The Magazine as Medium: Design, Materiality, and the Relationship Between Text and Non-text in European Periodicals

5 – 6 October 2012

Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Marshall McLuhan famously argued that magazines and newspapers resemble mosaics: their unique amalgam of texts, images and advertising, elicit reader participation in ways no other printed matter can.  Almost fifty years after the publication of McLuhan’s classic study Understanding Media (1964), magazines have gone digital and increasingly rely on audio, video and interactive elements to channel their information. But what is the effect of their particular arrangement of materials? How do texts, images, design, typography and materiality interact?  This conference seeks to explore the relationship between textual and non-textual aspects of European periodicals. We welcome proposals for 15 to 20 minute talks on the above theme, both dealing with individual magazines and discussing wider trends. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Periodical design and typography
Periodical materiality
Interaction between text and design in periodicals
The role of images in magazines
Avant-garde and underground magazines
Multimedia, loose leaf and unbound magazines
The role of magazine advertising
Non-textual elements in digital magazines

Conflict in the Periodical Press

6th International Conference of the European Society for Periodical Research

(ESPRit) www.espr-it.eu

28-30 June 2017

IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan

IULM Conference Website

Conflict is at the core of periodical publishing. Disputes constructed and played out on the periodical stage have been periodical themselves, recurring, though under different names and formats, in different periods from the eighteenth-century to the present day.  There is often an inherently militant aspect to the promulgation of ideologies in the periodical press. However, the spectacularization of conflict accompanying recent events – the in/out rhetoric of Brexit reporting and the representation of some policies on immigration, for instance – has made this key feature of the periodical press particularly visible and urgent. The 2017 ESPRit Conference seeks to explore from interdisciplinary perspectives (literary, linguistic, historical, political, sociological, etc.) how the periodical press mediates and remediates conflicts, including how verbal and visual devices on the periodicals’ pages enact conflict. ESPRit encourages proposals that speak both within and across local, regional and national boundaries and especially those that are able to offer a comparative perspective. We also encourage proposals that examine the full range of periodical culture, that is, all types of periodical publication, including newspapers and specialist magazines, and all aspects of the periodical as an object of study, including design and backroom production.  

Proposals are invited that deal with, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Staging conflicts: mediating political, cultural, aesthetic, social, moral disputes
• Visual rhetoric of conflict: e.g., use of black and white, contrasting colours, positive and negative pictures, captions, vectors in the page layout, etc.
• The grammar of conflict: e.g., use in different periods of verbal rhetoric such as refutation, climax/anticlimax, irony, dos and don’ts, etc.
• The performance of conflict in periodicals: manifestos, monographic issues, provocations and replies.
• Dictating socio-cultural agendas: factions and fashions.
• Cultural values and generational conflict.
• Militancy, mediation and re-mediation.
• Translation as a symptom of cultural conflict.
• Conflict as affect and/or entertainment.
• The business or commerce of conflict
• Possibilities and limits of dialogic rhetoric in periodicals.
• Views, not news? The seduction of ideas and the role of public opinion, with particular reference to the representation of or reporting on legal cases, referendums and opinion polls.

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (max 250 words), panels of three or four papers, round tables, one-hour workshops or other suitable sessions, together with a short CV (max. one page), to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The deadline for proposals is 31^st January 2017.

PERIODICALS IN-BETWEEN

Periodicals in the Ecology of Print and Visual Cultures

7^th International Conference of the European Society for Periodical Research

(http://www.espr-it.eu/)

27–29 June 2018 in Paris

(French version below)

The 7^th annual conference of the European Society for Periodical Research will explore how periodicals from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century function as mediators of alternative or experimental forms of publication and as springboards for other publishing and cultural activities. Many periodicals gave birth to publishing houses by using their printers’ networks and by treating their issues as experimental or more conventional test cases and economic drivers both in the book and the print industry and in the arts and crafts. Often, the periodical is a vehicle for science enthusiasts, trade or professional organisations, literature and arts connoisseurs: volumes of aggregated materials published over the year, then bound in hard covers to resist time, respond to the needs of such readers. Or the opposite may be the case: publishers or galleries issue a periodical or magazine to underpin their publication list, to foster their artists, to test new formulas or to retain their audience. The phenomenon extends to prints, both as bonuses to subscribers and as original works. The study of such a phenomenon in its international scope would highlight the relations of periodicals with the world of publishing, art galleries, various salons and circles of influence, as well as with several alternate forms of publication, of new ideas, trends, and manifestos.

How is the standard history of book and print publishing extended by more nuanced considerations of media structures – economic and symbolic – that focus on the role of periodicals? What questions emerge when we consider periodicals as key drivers of print and visual cultures, the materiality of publications, their exchange value, and their function as cultural operators? We invite papers, panels, round table proposals that address these issues.

Topics could include but are not limited to:

• Periodicals and publishing houses
• Periodicals and galleries or salons
• Periodicals and print networks
• Periodical economies
• Periodicals and intertextuality; hybridization; remediation
• Parts; instalments; supplements; annuals
• Periodicals and prints for subscribers
• Periodicals and print-outs
• Periodicals and albums
• Periodicals as bound volumes/“books”
• Quotidian periodical cultures
• Alternative periodical cultures

Please send proposals in either English or French for 20-minute papers (max. 250 words), panels of three or four papers, round tables, one-hour workshops or other suitable sessions, together with a short CV (max. one page), to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The deadline for proposals is 31st January 2018.

LES PERIODIQUES COMME MEDIATEURS

Les périodiques dans l’écosystème de la culture imprimée et visuelle  

 7^e Colloque International de la  European Society for Periodical Research

(http://www.espr-it.eu/)

27–29 Juin 2018 à Paris

Le 7e colloque international de la European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) abordera les périodiques comme médiateurs de publications alternatives ou expérimentales et comme tremplins vers d’autres activités éditoriales et culturelles du XVIII^e au XXI^e siècle. De nombreux périodiques ont en effet donné naissance à des maisons d'édition en recourant aux réseaux de leurs imprimeurs, en testant dans leurs livraisons des formules expérimentales ou plus conventionnelles, et en devenant des moteurs économiques dans les domaines du livre, de l’imprimé, des arts, de l’artisanat et des métiers. Souvent, le périodique est un véhicule pour les amateurs de sciences, les organisations professionnelles ou commerciales, les amateurs de littérature et d’art : ses matériaux, égrenés tout au long de l'année, puis réunis en volumes sous reliure ou cartonnage pour résister au temps, répondent aux besoins de tels lecteurs. Ou l’inverse : les éditeurs ou les galeries publient un périodique ou un magazine pour soutenir leur catalogue, promouvoir leurs artistes, tester de nouvelles formules ou fidéliser leur public. Le phénomène s'étend aux estampes, à la fois comme prime aux abonnés et comme œuvres originales. L'étude d'un tel phénomène dans son envergure internationale mettrait en lumière les relations des périodiques avec le monde de l'édition, les galeries d'art, divers salons et cercles d'influence, ainsi qu’avec plusieurs formes alternatives de publication, de nouvelles idées, tendances et manifestes.

Comment l'histoire canonique de l'édition de livres et d’estampes s’amplifie-t-elle dès lors qu’on prend en compte les structures médiatiques – économiques et symboliques – qui accentuent le rôle des périodiques? Quelles questions émergent lorsqu’on considère les périodiques comme des moteurs clés de la culture de l’imprimé et de la culture visuelle, de la matérialité des publications, de leur valeur d'échange, et de leur fonction d'opérateurs culturels? Nous invitons à des communications, à des panels, et à des tables rondes autour de ces questions.

Les propositions pourraient inclure, sans s'y limiter:

• Périodiques et maisons d'édition
• Périodiques et galeries ou salons
• Périodiques et réseaux d'imprimeurs
• Économies des périodiques
• Périodiques et intertextualité ; hybridation ; réinterprétation en un autre médium (remediation)
• Parties; livraisons; suppléments; volumes annuels
• Périodiques et estampes pour les abonnés
• Périodiques et tirés à part
• Périodiques et albums
• Les périodiques comme volumes reliés/“livres”
• Cultures périodiques quotidiennes
• Cultures périodiques alternatives

Merci d’adresser vos propositions en français ou en anglais pour des présentations de 20 minutes (250 mots max.), des panels de trois ou quatre contributions, des ateliers d’une heure, ou d’autres formats adéquats, avec un bref CV (max. une page), à This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. avant le 31 janvier 2018.