Séminaire PéLiAS (périodiques littérature, arts, sciences)
Les périodiques comme médiateurs culturels
Periodicals as cultural mediators
« Middlebrow Culture »
Le séminaire PéLiAS (Périodiques, Littérature, Arts et Sciences) se propose d’étudier les périodiques artistiques, littéraires et scientifiques du xviiie siècle au xxie siècle en tant que médiateurs culturels. Il s’agit d’analyser les périodiques en tant que constructions sociales, matérielles et entrepreneuriales, faisant intervenir de multiples acteurs : écrivains, artistes, typographes, graveurs, imprimeurs, éditeurs, ou lecteurs… et touchant des milieux socio-professionnels variés (milieux artistiques et littéraires, scientifiques, universitaires, théâtres, galeries, maisons d’édition…).
L’approche adoptée est double : les périodiques sont interrogés en tant que support de communication appartenant à la culture de l’imprimé et en tant qu’objet culturel pluridisciplinaire. La notion de médiateur permet également d’insister sur la circulation des idées, des textes, des images et des rédacteurs. Les périodiques sont pensés en termes de « réseau » : un dialogue s’établit entre les différents périodiques, au-delà des catégories traditionnelles qui opposent grande et petite presse, revues et livres, revues artistiques et littéraires et revues scientifiques. Enfin, les périodiques sont étudiés dans leur dimension de vulgarisation et dans leur rapport au livre et aux différents publics.
La thématique de l’année 2024-2025, « Middlebrow Culture », permettra d’approfondir le rôle de médiateur des périodiques à partir de supports intermédiaires qui permettent de faire le lien entre une culture populaire et une culture plus élitiste.
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The PéLiAS seminar (Periodicals, Literature, Arts and Sciences) aims to study artistic, literary and scientific periodicals from the 18th to the 21th century as cultural mediators. The aim is to analyse periodicals as social, material and entrepreneurial constructions, involving a wide range of players: writers, artists, typesetters, engravers, printers, publishers, readers, etc., and touching on a variety of socio-professional environments (artistic and literary circles, scientific circles, universities, theatres, galleries, publishing houses, etc.).
The approach adopted is twofold: periodicals are examined as a communication medium belonging to print culture and as a multidisciplinary cultural object. The notion of mediator also makes it possible to emphasise the circulation of ideas, texts, images and editors. Periodicals are considered as a ‘network’: a dialogue is established between the various periodicals, going beyond the traditional categories of large and small press, magazines and books, artistic and literary magazines and scientific magazines. Finally, periodicals are studied as popularisers, and in their relationship with books and different audiences.
The theme for 2024-2025, ‘Middlebrow Culture’, will explore in greater depth the role of periodicals as mediators between popular and more elitist culture.
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Les séances ont lieu en ligne :
https://u-paris.zoom.us/j/87580817799?pwd=RRaBRRduQz4oo3TzphTSPaIDlvdfH9.1
Séance 2 – 9 janvier 2025 – 17h-19h : Magazines and travel
Faye Hammill (University of Glasgow) : « Aeroplanes and ocean liners in 1950s fashion magazines »
This talk will explore how women's and fashion monthlies from the North Atlantic world engaged with trends in the travel industry. It will focus on the transition from ocean liners to planes on passenger routes between Europe, Africa and the Americas. During the 1950s, magazines including British Vogue, American Vogue, Toronto's Mayfair and the Canadian Home Journal ran travel-themed features which used liners, ports and airports as fashion runways. These features shed light on international exchanges in the aesthetic, political and commercial realms. They also offer insight into collaborations among several industries: periodical publishing, aviation, shipping, interior design, chemicals, couture, and ready-to-wear fashion.
Richard K. Popp (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) : « The Newsmagazine as Travel Agency: The Time Newstour and the Power of Press »
Between the 1960s and 1980s, Time magazine operated what was almost certainly the world’s most exclusive travel agency in the form of its Newstour program. On these two-week journeys, Time invited 20 to 30 leading businessmen, recruited from the U.S.’s largest corporations, to tour global hot spots with the newsweekly’s editors and foreign correspondents serving as guides. Along the way, they took in the local sights and sounds, lodged and dined in the world’s most acclaimed hotels and restaurants, held court with premiers, prime ministers, sultans, ministry heads, and business executives, and forged a kind of globetrotting camaraderie. Altogether, Time organized nine Newstours during this period: Western Europe/Soviet Union (1963), Southeast Asia (1965), Eastern Europe (1966), The Far East (1969), The Middle East (1975), Africa/Mid East (1978), Eastern Europe/Mideast (1981), Mexico (1983), and the Pacific Rim (1985). At a base level, the Newstours were a way for Time to manage relations with key advertisers. For the travelers, they were an opportunity to scope out global markets at a time when the corporations they ran were reinventing themselves as multinational enterprises. Yet the Newstours were more than that. Drawing on material from the Time Inc. archives, this paper explores the program, showing how the publisher used the conventions of vacation travel to temporarily render the pages of Time into a fully immersive and highly memorable life experience. By providing Time Inc. with a unique privilege it could bestow on select members of the nation’s corporate elite, the Newstours functioned as a tangible means of keeping the publisher’s aura of power and influence alit.
Faye Hammill is Professor of English Literature and Canadian Studies at the University of Glasgow. She is author or coauthor of six books, among them Modernism's Print Cultures (2016), with Mark Hussey; Magazines, Travel, and Middlebrow Culture (2015), with Michelle Smith; and Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History (2010). Her current project on ocean liners in literature and print culture (https://oceanmodern.gla.ac.uk) was funded in 2023-34 by an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship.
Richard K. Popp is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research focuses on media, consumer culture, and capitalism in twentieth-century America. He is currently writing a book about television and New York City. He is the author of The Holiday Makers: Magazines, Advertising, and Mass Tourism in Postwar America (LSU Press, 2012), which won the 2013 American Journalism Historians Association’s Book of the Year award, and co-editor of the forthcoming Commercial Intimacy: Affinity and the Market (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). His research has also appeared in the Journal of American History, Technology & Culture, Book History, Enterprise & Society, and elsewhere.
Organisation/organization :
Axel Hohnsbein (Université de Bordeaux, SPH)
Comité scientifique/scientific committee :
Jean-Charles Geslot (UVSQ, CHCSC)
Axel Hohnsbein (Université de Bordeaux, SPH)
Alexia Kalantzis (Université Paris Cité, CERILAC)
Catherine Radtka (CNAM PARIS, HT2S)
Viera Rebolledo-Dhuin (UPEC, CRHEC)
Évanghelia Stead (UVSQ, CHCSC)
Hélène Védrine (Paris-Sorbonne, CELLF 19-21)
Norbert Verdier (GHDSO/EST)
Contacts :