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Although the term “magazine” has been derived from the Arabic word for store- or warehouse, magazines or periodicals are more than just containers for discrete bits of information. Instead, they combine texts, pictures, and other elements to project specific worldviews for their readers and to turn the latter into an “imagined community” (Anderson). In this class, we will first learn how to approach magazines as a distinct form of print and to examine the intermedial and interpersonal relationships they establish. In a second step, we will take a look at three case studies of American magazines and the socio-political communities they sought to construct: Century, a nineteenth-century middle-class literary magazine, Der Pionier, a turn-of-the-century German-language socialist periodical, and Grecian Guild Pictorial, a 1950s gay sports magazine. Finally, students will be encouraged to develop their own case studies. |
