Call For Papers: Periodika und ihre Praktiken des Auswählens (Marburg, 9-10 Oct 26)Philipps-Universität Marburg, Oct 9–10, 2026Deadline: Apr 30, 2026Dr. Miriam Sarah Marotzki

Call for Papers: Periodicals and Their Practices of SelectionConference at Philipps-Universität Marburg, 9 October 2026Deadline for the abstracts: 30.04.2026

The conference of the Arbeitskreis Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschriftenforschung (Working Group for Cultural Studies Approaches to Periodical Research, founded in 2016) offers a forum for the shared interest in the periodical as an object, bringing together Early Career Researchers from diverse disciplines across the German-speaking academic landscape to exchange and establish questions and analytical categories relating to periodical studies.

Over the past 15 years, Europe has witnessed a boom in systematic, interdisciplinary research on newspapers and magazines. Periodicals are now taken seriously across a range of scholarly contexts as objects that follow their own logic and can be described in terms of their form and function. In recent years, systematic introductions to Periodical Studies as a distinct field of inquiry have been published (e.g., Fazli, Scheiding 2023; Ernst et al. 2022). Within a broader cultural studies context, numerous interdisciplinary approaches have emerged that explore periodicals through the dynamic structural principles of the periodical form, through media poetics, as networks, and in terms of their specific materiality.

One fundamental functional and formal dimension of periodicals, selection, has however received comparatively little attention, even though individual aspects have already been examined (e.g., from the perspective of the history of knowledge by Frank, Podewski, Scherer 2010). This conference is dedicated to the selection practices of periodicals and aims to contribute to their systematic exploration. In doing so, we seek to engage with recent research on selection practices from cultural studies, scholarly editing, book history, history, literary studies, art history, sociology, and other fields, and to ask about the specificity of these practices with respect to the periodical as an object. The dimension of selection opens up a broad range of perspectives on periodicals, only a few of which are outlined here as inspiration:

- Selection as editorial, typographic, and graphic practice: The selection of content and forms, that is, of texts, images (and image templates), sections, layouts, materials and paper, advertisements and merchandise, including the circulation of these elements and the resulting curatorial orders that decisively shape perception and meaning. This perspective also invites comparisons between traditional selection and filtering processes of historical periodicals and those of contemporary media, including social media and large language models.

- Selective uses: This includes the affordances of periodicals and the collective modes of usage they enable (ranging from reading to wrapping food), as well as the study of actual historical and empirical reading processes between intensive and extensive reading (Benedict 2022). More broadly, it also encompasses the question of how periodicals facilitated the extraction of elements from themselves (cutting out, collecting, extracting, decontextualizing; cf. Turner 2024).

- Building on these aspects, one may ask more generally about the specific materiality of periodicals as selected objects, as media that group together serial and heterogeneous elements (see the work of Mussell; Gretz et al. 2022).

- Selection in transnational exchange: What conditions determine the translation of certain texts? Which strategies of selection can be identified? And how do translated texts, published and received in a different context, relate to that new national, regional, or geopolitical environment? (Gemacher 2024)

- Selectedness and selectivity as a claim to distinction: Many periodicals present themselves as in some way refined and deliberately chosen objects, a claim articulated in manifold ways (in editorial programs, advertisements, etc.). In doing so, they aim to give their readership the impression of belonging to a refined group, an elite (in literature, art, sport, cuisine, lifestyle, etc.) or to a particular imagined community (Anderson 1983). One may also ask whether and how such claims were actually fulfilled. Research on literary canon formation (Rippl, Winko 2013), on the poetics of knowledge (Frank, Podewski 2022), and on the demarcation between different periodical formats (e.g., the weekly magazine as a more selected format compared to the daily newspaper) may be relevant in this regard.

- In this context, one might also consider the revolutionary potential of periodicals as spaces where selection practices may operate less under dominant “orders of knowledge” and which, in times of crisis, have been and can still be seen as revolutionary spaces of possibility (Anderson 1983; Pettitt 2020, 2022).

- More broadly, one can examine the consequences of selection practices: how periodicals contribute to directing their readers’ attention (especially with regard to processes of popularization, see Lickhardt 2024), filtering and limiting visibility, while simultaneously excluding certain experiences, voices, and bodies of knowledge. Such perspectives relate to Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Intersectionality Studies.

We welcome both overarching, theory-oriented contributions as well as case studies. The working language of the conference is German; however, presentations in English are also welcome. Contributions should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send your abstract (max. 300 words) along with a short bio sketch (max. 100 words) by 31 March, 2026 to Alexandra Dempe (alexandra.dempe@uni-tuebingen.de) and Florian Gödel (florian.goedel@uni-marburg.de). We aim to secure funding to reimburse travel expenses.

Ausgewählte Bibliographie/Selected Bibliography

- Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

- Barner, Ines. Auswählen, Bearbeiten, Adressieren: Lektorat und Lektüreerwartungen. Universität Duisburg-Essen, 2021. Unterstellte Leseschaften. Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, vol. 9.

- Benedict, Barbara M. “So Much to Read! So Little Time! Reading the Literary Miscellany in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” In Miszellanes Lesen. Interferenzen zwischen medialen Formaten, Romanstrukturen und Lektürepraktiken im 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Daniela Gretz, Marcus Krause, and Nicolas Pethes. Wehrhahn, 2022, pp. 55–73.

- Engelberg-Döckal, Eva von, and Stephanie Herold, editors. Ordnungssysteme: Auswählen, Werten, Sortieren. Universitätsverlag Siegen, 2024, Frieder & Henner, vol. 4.

- Ernst, Jutta, Dagmar von Hoff, and Oliver Scheiding, editors. Periodical Studies Today: Multidisciplinary Analyses. Brill, 2022.

- Fazli, Sabina, and Oliver Scheiding, editors. Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung – Disziplinäre Perspektiven und empirische Sondierungen: Eine Einführung. Transcript, 2023.

- Frank, Gustav, Madleen Podewski, and Stefan Scherer. “Kultur – Zeit – Schrift: Literatur- und Kulturzeitschriften als ‘kleine Archive.’” IASL, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, pp. 1–45.

- Frank, Gustav, and Madleen Podewski. “The Object of Periodical Studies.” In Periodical Studies Today, edited by Ernst et al., Brill, 2022, pp. 29–53.

- Gemacher, Johanna. Feminist Activism, Travel and Translation Around 1900: Transnational Practices of Mediation and the Case of Käthe Schirmacher. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

- Gretz, Daniela, Marcus Krause, and Nicolas Pethes. “Einleitung.” In Reading Miscellanies / Miscellaneous Reading, edited by Daniela Gretz, Marcus Krause, and Nicolas Pethes, Wehrhahn, 2022, pp. 7–54.

- Heinold, Wolfgang Erhardt. Bücher und Büchermacher: Verlage als Umschlagplätze für Ideen und Informationen. Bramann, 2009.

- Lickhardt, Maren. “Aufwertung der großen Zahl: Popularität als quantitative Kategorie im Zeitschriftendiskurs der Weimarer Republik.” Jahrbuch zur Kultur und Literatur der Weimarer Republik, vols. 23–24, 2024, pp. 47–67.

- Mussell, James. The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age. Palgrave, 2012.

- Pettitt, Clare. Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848. Oxford University Press, 2020.

- Pettitt, Clare. Serial Revolutions 1848: Writing, Politics, Form. Oxford University Press, 2022.

- Rippl, Gabriele, and Simone Winko, editors. Handbuch Kanon und Wertung: Theorien, Instanzen, Geschichte. Metzler, 2013.

- Turner, Mark W. “‘Collect and Simplify’: Serial Miscellaneity and Extraction in the Early Nineteenth Century.” In British Writers, Popular Literature and New Media Innovation, 1820–1845, edited by Alexis Easley, Edinburgh University Press, 2024, pp. 19–39.