About Transnational Periodical Cultures

The newly established research group on Transnational Periodical Cultures (TPC) contributes to the bourgeoning field of periodical studies, exploring magazines, newspapers, and other forms of serialized mass media in transnational contexts. Up until recently, scholarly work tended to focus on either national print markets and emphasize certain periods—frequently the nineteenth century and the time of modernism—or  it highlighted specific approaches ranging from material philology to digital humanities. Extending and enhancing these methodological takes, TPC seeks to explore periodicals as a medium of cultural transfer and translation. It looks at how periodicals evolve within transnational constellations, considering  both human and non-human interactions and co-agencies. As such, the group’s research projects examine the sociability of periodicals in and through networks of personnel, material infrastructures, entrepreneurship, media markets, and changing technologies.  TPC  is intent on clarifying what role periodicals play not only as sites of affection, identification, and social differentiation, but also as aesthetic sources for the arts and literature, given the changing expectations of global media markets and their audiences since the eighteenth century.

Funded by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, TPC serves as an interdisciplinary forum for organizing workshops, conferences as well as graduate and postgraduate research, bringing together students and international scholars from literary studies, media studies, book studies, journalism studies, sociology, translation studies, text design, archival studies, and digital humanities.

The research group consists of senior and junior faculty members, PhD candidates, and graduate students working in the field of periodical studies.

Principal Investigators:

Ernst, Jutta (Amerikanistik)
von Rimscha, Bjørn  (Publizistik u. Medienwirtschaft)
Hoff, Dagmar von (Germanistik)
Scheiding, Oliver (Amerikanistik)
Emrich, Oliver (Management und soziale Medien)
Schneider, Ute (Buchwissenschaft)
Hansen-Schirra, Silvia  (Englische Sprach- und Übersetzungswissenschaft)
Martin, Alison E. (Anglistik)

Post-Docs:

Fazli, Sabina
Wetenkamp, Lena 
Johanna Seibert

 

Ph. D. students:

Arend, Sebastian
Colbert, Vivian
Kulczyk, Anna Monika
Lörch, Michael
Meerwein, Sandra
Newton, Frank
Riemann, Robin
Sawade, Laura
Wilke, Natalie

Associated members:

Cordell, Ryan  (Northeastern University)
Flotow, Louise von  (University of Ottawa)
Gruber Garvey, Ellen  (New Jersey City University)
Noonan, Mark  (The City University of New York)
Remoortel, Marianne Van  (Ghent University)
Podewski, Madleen (FU Berlin)
Sousa Ribeiro, António (Universidade de Coimbra)
Andrew Thacker (University Nottingham Trent)

TPC also intends to forge links with other organization and research networks and to promote collaboration between institutions and disciplines across Europe and beyond. TPC invites scholars to Mainz (short-term fellowships) and provides opportunities to develop postgraduate research (dissertation projects). TPC cooperates with the Research Society of American Periodicals and members of the group are involved in the collaborative research group “Un/doing Differences” focusing on religious periodicals in North America.