Introducing Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities

Abstract This introduction coins the concept of ‘serial circulation’ by connecting Mark W. Turner’s view of the nineteenth century as an expanding yet unruly “culture of seriality” (2019) with Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicist notion of circulating “social energy” (1988) and Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma’s idea of modern public spheres as “cultures of circulation” (2002). We first identify the long nineteenth century as the extended moment when advances in printing technology, growing publishing infrastructures, and a broad sense of mobility connected European and North American print markets, fostering new social connections and political discourses. We then suggest that these developments can be studied through what we want to call the ‘serial circulation’ of texts, genres, authors, and ideas that, over the course of many decades, established transatlantic ‘print cultures’ and constituted intersecting ‘periodical modernities’ marked by a particular sense of time, space, and transatlantic connectivity. These conceptual and historical observations are followed by a preview of the articles collected in this issue and by concluding thoughts on potentials for future research.