Revues et modernisme, périodiques et modernités : dynamiques des modern/modernist periodical studies

Abstract

Starting with a reference to Anne Ollivier-Mellios’s work on magazines and intellectual networks, this article offers a review of modern/modernist periodical studies. Periodical studies have developed considerably in the US and Britain since the 1990s, mostly in relationship to the renewal of modernist studies—which moved from a study of modernism’s big names to a reflection on how and where modernism began, with a focus on “little magazines.” This article shows how dynamic this field of study is today, mentioning its connections to broader fields of research (including the history of the book and print studies, the history of the media, and cultural history), unveiling its characteristics and methodologies (such as interdisciplinary work, the question of the materiality of the printed object, the notion of networks, and the impact of the digitization of archives), and looking at its resources in the US, Britain, and France (current digital projects, learned societies, and main publications in periodical studies). It addresses the question of digitization and its technical, methodological, economic and political challenges, the current interest in “big magazines” and newspapers (as opposed to “little magazines” and “high culture”), and the recent move towards more collective, interdisciplinary work on periodicals that focuses less on just modernism.