Call for Papers “I Read It in a Magazine”: The Changing Roles of Literary Periodicals, 1960-2020

The activities of European literary magazines since the 1960s constitute an under-documented and under-analyzed field. And yet most European countries have a lively literary magazine scene. Such a lacuna needs to be addressed and rectified. Certain categories of literature – poetry and short fiction, for example – depend heavily on journals for initial readership and in order to achieve subsequent book publication. This special issue of the Journal of European Periodical Studies aims to draw attention to this vital aspect of the periodical scene and literary periodicals’ importance in relevant national and trans-national literatures. The changing configurations and roles of literary journals in the past decades may also tell us something of the effects of new media on this venerable type of periodical. The period in focus is the last sixty years; this may be interpreted to include literary journals that have emerged in (approximately) the last sixty years, or older literary periodicals that have evolved or played (or evolved to play) significant roles in literature over the past several decades.

Possible topics could include:

• discussions of the literary periodical scene in individual European cultures;
• discussions of the activities and changing faces of individual journals in the period under consideration;
• the intimate relationship between the literary periodical and categories of literature – poetry, the short story, and drama, for example;
• the effects of specific literary journals on the literature of particular decades or contexts;
• the literary periodical as a vehicle for literary and social change;
• the response of literary periodicals to social, cultural, and political changes of the past six decades (Eastern European examples may be of particular interest here);
• responses of literary journals to new media and the digital revolution;
• economics and institutional issues in literary magazine publication;
• editors and their influence on the literary periodical scene.

The aim of the special number is to offer a view of the development and roles of the literary periodical in several European (not only Anglophone) cultures over the past sixty years.

The deadline for article proposals is December 1^st 2020, full articles are expected on June 1^st 2021. All submitted articles will be subject to double-blind peer review. The standard length of an academic essay is between 5,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and bibliography.

Please send your proposal to the guest-editors: Wolfgang Görtschacher (University of Salzburg, Wolfgang.Goertschacher@sbg.ac.at), David Malcolm (University of Warsaw, dmalcolm.pl@gmail.com)

The Journal of European Periodical Studies is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed online journal devoted to the study of periodicals and newspapers in Europe from the seventeenth century to the present. It publishes research from a broad range of critical, theoretical and methodological perspectives, including, but not limited to, cultural history, literary studies, art history, gender studies, media studies, history of science and digital humanities.

As the official journal of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), the Journal of European Periodical Studies offers scholars a forum for sharing their research and exchanging ideas across disciplinary borders. Although the journal welcomes articles on any aspect of the European periodical press, it particularly encourages comparative contributions that take the study of periodical publication beyond linguistic, cultural and historical boundaries, explore new theoretical and methodological paths, and thereby open up new lines of scholarly inquiry.