International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms

Book excerpt: With large-scale scholarly projects dedicated to digitizing print-based magazines and a concurrent turn towards digital mapping and data visualization, periodicals that were once accessible only in the archive now have the capacity to reach a wider audience, and make visible previously overlooked networks and connections enacted within and across the magazines. International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms: Image, Object, Text offers a unique contribution to the field of periodical studies, while also broadening the scope of purview to consider related content with regards to other relevant printed matter and cultural products, as well as digital archiving strategies. Including interdisciplinary contributions from academics around the world, the volume presents a wide range of approaches to periodicals and printed matter from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Questions of material print culture and the digital realm are considered both via theoretical and more empirical approaches. As a whole, the book considers the pluralism of perspectives that the study of periodicals and printed matter contribute to our historical understanding of various political and social issues, and also devotes attention to the ways in which digital archiving projects can be instrumentalized as a strategy for filling in gaps in the historical record. International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms should be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduates engaged in the study of periodicals, publishing, book history, world literature, digital humanities, media, visual and material culture.