Submissions are solicited for a special edition of the
Journal of Modern Periodical Studies on the relationship between periodicals
and silent cinema. Work is encouraged which treats the topic in its global, as
well as Anglophone, context.
The rise of silent cinema in the early twentieth
century changed the business of writing and publishing forever. Editors,
journalists, essayists and authors found themselves catering for readers whose
cultural expectations had been transformed by their interactions with cinema.
Debates raged over which periodical form would first be rendered obsolete: the
daily newspaper? The illustrated magazine? The serialised novel? The weekly
comic? The compendium of short fiction?
In fact cinema would effectively devour, not destroy,
them all and reconstitute a new, globalised culture industry by breaking the
established power of nineteenth-century publishing models, by fragmenting
readerships and establishing new modes of celebrity and fandom. The scope of
these transformations was dramatic and have been as yet underexplored in
existing periodicals scholarship.
