Print Culture

Edited volume exploring the use of print culture as a form of social and political activism in the United States during the 20th century.

From the intro: “Print activism” is a term I use here to refer to print media’s role in social and political activism throughout the long twentieth century. beginning in the late 1800s with the industrialization of print technologies and the prolific expansion of networks for distribution of printed materials to readers, activists relied on newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, calendars, and other print forms to amplify their voices. Print activism continued throughout the century as the central vehicle by which activists on all points of the political spectrum—left, right, and center—spread their opinions, elicited support, created networks among like- minded individuals, and attempted to establish cohesive group identities for the larger world.

This book was republished in paperback by Routledge.

This article explores the emergence and significance of printed game boards in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century. These objects constitute an important and overlooked visual and material aspect of a pervasive culture of gaming that engrossed a huge range of the populace: both the rich and the poor, men and women, the educated and the illiterate. Printed game boards not only served to entertain, but also mirrored and reified deeper social and moral concerns about gambling and leisure, a tension between the prescribed morality of the legal sanctions, decrees, and censures associated with the Counter-Reformation, and the everyday games common both in courtly leisure and play on the street and in the tavern. Visually manifesting a dual understanding of games as both ludic and mimetic, printed game boards enacted the ontology of life’s journey for early modern players, from the courtly, to the religious, to the quotidian.

Au regard de l’essor timide de la taille-douce à Paris au début du xviie siècle, l’expérience italienne devint une étape nécessaire pour les graveurs qui voulaient apprendre ou perfectionner le métier. À la différence de ses collègues, Jérôme David (v. 1590/1600 – v. 1670) vécut longtemps en Italie, et non seulement à Rome: son séjour atypique lui permit collaborer avec plusieurs artistes italiens, qu’il interpréta de manière assidue. À son retour en France, en 1637, David continua à graver d’après des modèles italiens et ses estampes contribuèrent à la diffusion du goût, déjà très présent à Paris, pour l’art italien. Après la mort de François Langlois, marchand, éditeur important pour les artistes français ayant voyagé en Italie, David cesse de graver d’après les maîtres italiens, mais son attachement à la culture  gurative ultramontaine s’exprimera tout au long de sa carrière parisienne à travers les citations ponctuelles des grands maîtres qui l’in uencèrent particulièrement.

Di fronte all’inizio esitante dell’incisione su rame a Parigi ai primi del XVII secolo, l’esperienza italiana divenne tappa necessaria per gli incisori intenzionati a apprendere o perfezionare il mestiere. A differenza dei suoi colleghi, Jérôme David (v. 1590/1600 – v. 1670) visse a lungo in Italia, e non solamente a Roma : il suo soggiorno atipico gli permise di collaborare con numerosi artisti italiani, che interpretò in maniera assidua. Al suo rientro in Francia, nel 1637, David continuò a incidere i modelli italiani e le sue stampe contribuirono alla diffusione del gusto, già molto presente a Parigi, per l’arte italiana. Dopo la morte di François Langlois, mercante e importante editore per gli artisti francesi che viaggiarono in Italia, David smise di interpretare gli artisti italiani, ma il suo attaccamento alla cultura  figurativa oltremontana si esprimerà durante tutta la sua carriera parigina attraverso puntuali citazioni dei grandi maestri che lo in uenzarono particolarmente.

The article discusses the handwritten revisions and drawn additions by Albrecht Dürer in his own copy of the treatise on geometry, Underweysung der Messung (1525). Situating Dürer’s interest in mathematics within the scholarly milieu of Renaissance Nuremberg, the article addresses the shifts in style and content that Dürer proscribes and offers new perspectives on the artist’s relation to his own late work. The article concludes by displaying several drawings bound into the edition by Dürer that illustrate variations on perspectival apparatuses. These lesser known drawings illuminate the evolution of Dürer’s conceptualization of the dynamics between artist and subject, as well as the tools used to facilitate this interaction.

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

In this volume, Elisabeth Fraser shows that artists and the works they created in the Mediterranean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were informed by mutual dependence and reciprocity between European nations and the Ottoman Empire. Her rich exploration of this vibrant cross-cultural exchange challenges the dominant interpretation of European relations with the East during the period, revealing a shared world of fluid and long-sustained interactions.

Voyagers to and from the Ottoman Empire documented their journeys in prints, paintings, and lavishly illustrated travelogues; many of these helped define Europe’s self-identified role as heir to Ottoman civilizations and bolstered its presence in the Islamic Mediterranean and beyond. Fraser finds that these works illuminate not only how travelers’ experiences abroad were more nuanced than the expansionist ideology with which they became associated, but also how these narratives depicted the vitality of Ottoman culture and served as extensions of Ottoman diplomacy. Ottomans were aware of and responded to European representations, using them to defend Ottoman culture and sovereignty. In embracing the art of both cultures and setting these works in a broader context, Fraser challenges the dominant historiographical tradition that sees Ottoman artists adopting European modes of art in a one-sided process of “Europeanization.”

Theoretically informed and rigorously researched, this cross-cultural approach to European and Ottoman art sheds much-needed critical light on the widely disseminated travel images of the era—important cultural artifacts in their own right—and provides a fresh and inviting understanding of the relationships among cultures in the Mediterranean during an era of increasing European expansionism.
ISBN: 978-0-271-07320-0

On the occasion of the 2020 exhibition "LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography," this essay reevaluates longstanding myths about "the photo essay at life" while tracing how and by whom the magazine's varied photo features were actually produced over the course of LIFE's 36-year history.

This particular consideration of Piranesi’s influence is not an exhaustive geography of the haunted wanderings of the artist’s aesthetic ghost. Rather, what follows highlights three aspects of eclecticism in his work—presented in loose chronological order—that seem to have had the most bearing on the conceptualization of stylistic heterogeneity in the architecture of the nineteenth century. These three aspects are those which generate that ‘special essence’ of a Piranesi print, that certain impression of amalgamation derived from a sum total presented as the assembly of diverse fragments. The first of these aspects is Piranesi’s innovative coalescence of various influences, particularly in his early architectural fantasies, which were inspired simultaneously by new developments in scenographic perspective, the contemporaneous capriccio genre, and the older tradition of pictorially reconstructing ancient monuments. The second aspect is his combination of physical fragments, considered through the lens of his Vedute and Diverse Maniere. More specifically, it deals with architectural and sculptural ruins as a concept and as the actual product of assemblage: constructing for the former, collecting and making for the latter. The third is his portrayal of space, namely, the ambivalence between the spatial order of his maps and its dissolution in his Carceri, ending with a consideration of his progression toward abstraction, both geometric and perspectival.

This essay examines Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Emma Corbett: Or, the Miseries of Civil War (1780), a popular novel about the American Revolution that mounted an argument against the violence of the war. Pratt’s critique of the transatlantic conflict between the colonies and the mother country arises from his depiction of suffering veterans with injuries and missing limbs. In an interpolated tale that he titles “A Military Fragment,” he uses what I call a “typographical prosthetics” to represent absent body parts. Through a creative typography that includes extended dashes and multiple asterisks, he creates an architecture of the page that visually describes the placement and displacement of limbs. He thus criticizes and remediates discourses of national conflict by making the disabled bodies of injured soldiers discernible on the page.

La communication porte sur la dimension satirique d’une gravure de Jaspar Isaac intitulée « La Belle Helena. Cléopatre. Lucrèce »,  étudiée à la lumière du discours burlesque et misogyne qui voit le jour dans l'art et la littérature de la Renaissance.

Considérer l’image dans la dimension technique de son élaboration n’est pas une réflexion périphérique à la question de la caricature chez les Goncourt. Si l’image est plus volontiers abordée sur les plans stylistique et politique, la fabrique des estampes caricaturales demeure un paramètre majeur, ce dont témoigne le discours critique et essayiste des Goncourt développé dans le Journal, la correspondance, la critique d’art ou encore la monographie sur Gavarni. La fabrique graphique de la caricature, c’est d’abord une pratique personnelle pour les Goncourt. On sait par ailleurs la passion des deux frères pour la collection et leur attrait pour la bibliophilie, intérêts qui questionnent directement l’esthétique, la facture et la valeur de l’image. Si le commentaire des Goncourt prend la forme d’un discours avisé, c’est aussi parce qu’ils ont été très tôt versés dans la critique d’art. Ces considérations posent la question de la nature et de la portée du propos des Goncourt sur les modalités matérielles de la fabrique des images caricaturales, que ce savoir émane des sociabilités artistiques et culturelles, d’une expérience de critique d’art ou encore d’une participation à la presse. Gravure, lithographie, eau-forte occupent une place centrale dans la vision du monde des Goncourt, à une époque où l’estampe gagne une visibilité à travers les associations d’artistes. Mais c’est avant tout par les sociabilités et le réseau amical que se forme chez les deux frères une conscience des techniques de l’image.

Рад представља попис свих спомена (памети) и успомена (васпоминанија) светаца и непокретних празника по реду црквене године од 1.септембра до 31. августа, који се налазе у календарима венецијанских издања Божидара Вуковића. У основи је постављен најпотпунији месецослов у Псалтиру са посљедованијем из 1520. године, упоређен са подацима из следећих издања: Служабник 1519, Молитвеник 1521. и готово исти с њим Молитвеник из 1536, Mинеј 1538. и Требник 1538-40. Називи и имена су нормализовани према Православном Светачнику Хризостома (Столића) и ковинскоме Месецослову Јерусалимскога типика у издању В. Савића. У првом делу наводимо спомене дан по дан, у другом делу дајемо азбучни именик светих и празника. Рад је замишљен као почетна база за реконструкцију српскословенског црквеног календара и репертоара календарских богослужбених текстова у штампаним књигама XVI столећа. Следећа етапа истраживања укључиће податке унутар текстова (служби, тропара, кондака, молитава) који су у тај списак ушли у незнатном броју, а осим тога и спомене светих ван непокретног календара.
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The paper presents a list of immovable feasts and all memories of saints which were enumerated in the Božidar Vuković’s Venetian editions of calendars. Basically, the complete list with at least one saint for each day of the year we can find in Psaltir saposledovanjem i časlovcem (Psalter with horologion, 1520). In this paper, Psaltir is compared with the data from the following editions: Služabnik (Priest’s Service Book, 1519), Molitvenik (Prayer Book, 1521) and an almost identical to it Molitvenik (Prayer Book, 1536), as also with Minej praznični (Festal Menaion, 1538) and Trebnik (Book of Needs, 1538-40). All names and titles are normalized according to the Pravoslavni Svetačnik of Chrysostom (Stolić) and to the Mesecoslov Jerusalimskoga Tipika in the edition of V. Savić.
The paper consists of two parts: the first is a list of saints and holidays presented in the order of the church year (from September 1st to August 31st). In the second list, all names and holidays are in alphabetical order. This work is thought as a basis for the future reconstruction of the Serbian church calendar and the repertoire of calendar liturgical texts in printed books in XVI century. The next step of the research will include materials from the inside texts (services, troparia, kontakia, prayers) which mention other names of saints, when their memories don’t make part of the calendar rubrics.

Introduzione: ogni sera, una pillola contro la paura Cosa fare se da un giorno all'altro ti rinchiudono in casa e ti chiudono biblioteche, librerie e sale di lettura? Si può rimediare con la tecnologia, certo, ma non tutti i libri si trovano negli archivi online o sotto forma di e-book, e un libro digitale non dà lo stesso gusto di una lettura serale cartacea, specialmente se hai già passato tutta la giornata su uno schermo per fare quello che chiamano smart working. Qual è stata dunque l'idea di Gianandrea, libraio militante, autore tra le altre cose di pionieristici cataloghi tematici sull'Anarchismo, sul Sindacalismo Rivoluzionario, sul Sessantotto, sui Mazziniani, sul Movimento Federalista Europeo, sul Liberalsocialismo? Usare la tecnologia per socializzare i contenuti dei libri che per lavoro e passione aveva sottomano. Perché bisogna ricordare che questo lavoro non nasce solo in un contesto librario, ma anche in un contesto libertario. Le prime di queste "pillole" vengono inviate nel gruppo Signal dell' Area Libertaria Reggiana: ogni sera una citazione da un classico dell'anarchismo accompagnata da un breve profilo dell'autrice o dell'autore. Ben presto l'iniziativa si allarga, raggiungendo tutti quei compagni e compagne, soprattutto giovani, che avevano l'abitudine di vedersi tutti i giorni al Circolo "Berneri" di via Don Minzoni. Se ci pensiamo questa è stata la prima volta che la nostra generazione si è confrontata con il divieto formale di riunione e di manifestazione, e con degli arresti domiciliari di fatto, che per chi studia la storia dell'anarchismo e dei movimenti sociali richiama alla mente le limitazioni alla libertà sofferte sotto i regimi totalitari. Anche se per ragioni (e con modalità) molto diverse, abbiamo assaggiato un po' delle biografie da quelle nostre compagne e compagni che tra il diciannovesimo e il ventesimo secolo hanno vissuto il carcere, l'esilio, il confino, la lotta clandestina nella resistenza antifascista. Ma rispetto a loro, nel 2020 abbiamo un'arma in più: la tecnologia. Da Signal, il gruppo passa a Whatsapp e si è propagato in maniera virale (è il caso di dirlo) a più gruppi e liste, tanto che non si riesce più a sapere quanta gente direttamente o indirettamente ha ricevuto queste pillole. Chiusi in casa durante il lockdown, in momenti in cui il morale effettivamente si abbassava molto, ogni sera arrivava un messaggio con questi stralci anarchici di vita e di pensiero. Ed eravamo tutte e tutti un po' meno sole e soli.

La civilisation du journal ne voit pas seulement apparaître une circulation accrue des idées, une extension du lectorat, un mode d’information tissé de romanesque et de nouveaux rythmes liés à la quotidienneté. Elle instaure aussi un rapport spécifique à l’objet en papier. À l’heure où triomphe la chose imprimée, la culture médiatique est éminemment matérielle : manipulations, appropriations, circulations invitent à considérer les usages concrets du livre, du journal, de la brochure et de l’affiche, depuis les modes d’étalage à la vente jusqu’aux modalités de collection du livre et de conservation du roman-feuilleton, en passant par le démembrement du tract et le recyclage de l’affiche. Cet article examine les objets en papier produits par les éditeurs de pittoresques et de littérature panoramique dans les années 1830-1860 en France.

This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.

Conceived as a review of the state of book history in Colombia, this paper examines the roots, mutations and contemporary conditions of possibility for the development of this discipline in the country. After reviewing the bibliographical origins of the studies dedicated to the book and documenting the pioneering historiographical turns, the article highlights the most important contributions to the discipline, at the local level, and also the role of different academic meetings in the appearance of the first specialized research groups. However, considered still in a stage of maturation, the history of the book in Colombia warns the need for a greater involvement of groups and researchers, not only to advance in a more complex and "national" history of the book, but also more attentive and critical of the global turns that the discipline has taken.

"Artistry and Industry: The Portraiture of George Peter Alexander Healy, 1830-1865." What do antebellum portraiture and industrialization have in common? In a word: Healy. George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894), a little-studied portraitist, painted the faces of hundreds of industrialists. Industry functioned in Healy's career as a source of patronage as well as inspiration, sparking the artist to redefine a genre and rethink marketability. The sheer duration and volume of his production (1830-1865), the high intensity of his itinerancy (crossing the U.S. annually from north to south and across the Atlantic), and the speculative nature of his production and exhibition practices make Healy a prime candidate for exploring how industrialization changed the practice of portraiture during the mid-nineteenth century. Existing historical scholarship has examined how industrialization changed people's lives socially, politically and economically, but it has not addressed its impact on art. Healy's career reveals the marriage of various old and new practices in the art system of antebellum America, showing how art benefitted from industrialization in creative ways. In three chapters, this study will look at Healy's production of painted portraits, his commercialization of prints after these portraits, and his use of new materials to understand how he engaged with industrial culture. Healy was an opportunist who quickly learned how to navigate the world of industry unfolding in front of him, applying industrial approaches to creation and marketability and seeking the favor of wealthy patrons. Healy pursued replication practices, attached himself to key industrialists, participated in world exhibitions, and engaged with speculative marketing practices. My dissertation helps reconsider the continued importance and modernity of portraiture, highlighting its groundedness in the historical development of industrialization.

Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The  essays in Early American Cartographies examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited.

Drawing from both current historical interpretations and new interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection provides diverse approaches to understanding the multilayered exchanges that went into creating cartographic knowledge in and about the Americas. In the introduction, editor Martin Bruckner provides a critical assessment of the concept of cartography and of the historiography of maps. The individual essays, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including "dirty," ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair.

This volume not only highlights the collaborative genesis of cartographic knowledge about the early Americas; the essays also bring to light original archives and innovative methodologies for investigating spatial relations among peoples in the western hemisphere. Taken together, the authors reveal the roles of early American cartographies in shaping popular notions of national space, informing visual perception, animating literary imagination, and structuring the political history of Anglo- and Ibero-America.

Dr. Herbert Halpert was an American folklorist who came to teach at Memorial University in the early 1960’s, and founded the Folklore Department.  His private library, numbering approximately 13,000 volumes, is considered by scholars to be one of the world’s finest collections of folklore and history.  By surveying the Halpert Collection and its associated personal commentary and marginalia, I hope to find close linkages between Halpert’s research and his library, and develop a more fine-grained understanding of how Halpert (and other scholars of his stature) interacted with the books in their libraries.  Although this project is just an initial examination, further research into these linkages may unearth some new ideas with regards to how scholars use libraries as road maps to scholarly thought and research.

Architecture monograph engages with production and marketing instruments to exist within the system of our image-driven society. Challenging its conventional understanding, this article aims to uncover the contemporary monograph as a site of plurality, heterogeneity, divergence, and fragmentation. The paper forms a critical reading of two books in particular: Content (2004) by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), led by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, and Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2009) by the Danish practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

Le livre imprimé  matérialise dans sa forme même la mutation du statut auctorial. De même que des milieux intellectuels et sociaux nouveaux se constituent physiquement autour de l’atelier des grands imprimeurs-libraires, le livre imprimé reflète le réseau dans lequel s’inscrit l’auteur et qui lui donne sa légitimité. On y trouve des pairs, des amis mais aussi des protecteurs potentiels et des mécènes, des gens à remercier ou à flatter, des adversaires à combattre… On voit donc s’y dessiner des relations sociales et des liens de clientèles, s’y tracer des carrières… ; on voit également s’y modifier les rapports des sphères privée et du publique, puisque sont écrits pour la publication des textes qui donnent l’illusion de l’intime et parfois projettent sur la scène littéraire la vie quotidienne de leurs auteurs. Ce chapitre explore d'abord le lien matériel entre transformation du livre et transformation de la sociabilité littéraire, puis tente de dessiner les grandes lignes de cette dernière, à travers l’exemple de quelques cas précis.

Techniques applied to description of hand-press-era literary works can be turned toward popular duplication processes. Close examination of material objects tests other forms of evidence and aids in identifying potential concerns regarding handling and care by special collections professionals. The initial issues of "The Ladder," produced by the Daughters of Bilitis from 1956 to 1972, suggest a route for identifying duplication methods during a period in which many reproduction technologies were available. That diversity points to a greater variety of papers and inks that need to be assessed for best care of materials. It also testifies to the pragmatic approaches that the Daughters of Bilitis took in establishing a publication that proved to be a foundation for the American LGBT movement. The article includes a historical section on the A.B. Dick Company and Mimeograph technologies, comparative images for identifying selected 20th-century duplication techniques, and a bibliographical essay noting technical and historical sources for forensic analysis of print.

Visual and cultural analysis of Meiji shōnen kaiko 明治少年懐古 (Reminiscences of a Meiji youth, 1944), an illustrated book that nostalgically recalls Japan's late nineteenth and early twentieth century period of modernization. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/440/title/1.

*Impressive Shakespeare* reassesses Shakespeare’s relationship with "print culture" in light of his plays' engagement with the language and material culture of three interrelated "impressing technologies": wax sealing, coining, and typographic printing. It analyses the material and rhetorical forms through which drama was thought to "imprint" early modern audiences and readers with ideas, morals and memories, and—looking to our own cultural moment—shows how Shakespeare has been historically constructed as an "impressive" dramatist. Through material readings of four plays—Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale—Harry Newman argues that Shakespeare deploys the imprint as a self-reflexive trope in order to advertise the value of his plays to audiences and readers, and that in turn the language of impression has shaped, and continues to shape, Shakespeare’s critical afterlife. The book pushes the boundaries of what we understand by "print culture", and challenges assumptions about the emergence of concepts now central to Shakespeare’s perceived canonical value, such as penetrating characterisation, poetic transformation, and literary fatherhood.

This article analyses the place and value of occult arts in the healthcare market of Republican China (1912-1949). Medical historiography has long neglected the resilience of such occult arts as talismans, astrology and divination in the context of China's search for modernity. Focusing on the production, trade, and consumption of goods and services related to talismanic healing, I give voice to Chinese occultists by investigating the formation of a 'market of the occult' in the Republican era. I adopt a global perspective to clarify the changes that occult healing underwent following the popularisation of new printing technologies, mass media and transnational spiritualism in early twentieth-century China. Erstwhile embraced in secrecy, the occult was now being made public. Cheap manuals, wide-circulation newspapers and book catalogues reveal that in contrast to past studies that herald the disenchantment of the world as the hallmark of Chinese modernity, occult healing did not simply survive but thrived in the face of modern science and technology.

L’usage de la mise en abyme abonde dans l’art du XVIIe siècle, qui voit une profusion de tableaux figurés dans des toiles. Elle se manifeste notamment sous forme de prolongement ou d'explicitation de la représentation, à l’aide de miroirs enchâssés ou de références à des œuvres antérieures ; ou à travers le phénomène de réduplication (c’est-à-dire l’évocation de l’œuvre dans l’œuvre même). C’est le cas des thèses illustrées que nous étudions dans cet article. Au sein de la typologie très riche de la mise en abyme, nous nous penchons sur une des modalités particulières de ce mode d’inclusion, qui est la dédicace. En effet, les affiches imprimées à l’occasion d’une défense académique illustrent souvent le moment de leur propre don à un mécène, engendrant à l’intérieur d’elles-mêmes une répétition isomorphe du sujet à l’infini. Sur base d’exemples issus d’un corpus de gravures de thèses flamandes, nous souhaitons montrer le rôle et les enjeux de ce procédé structurel qui permet un jeu de relations complexes entre texte et image, et qui offre une visualisation de l’instance de communication dans le contexte de la soutenance publique et du mécénat académique.