1. “Comparative Print Culture and Alternative Literary Modernities: A Critical Introduction to Frameworks and Case Studies” by Rasoul Aliakbari (University of Alberta, Canada)
2. “Song Dynasty Classicism and Eleventh-Century ‘Print Modernity’ in China” by Daniel Fried (University of Alberta, Canada)
3. “Alternative Imaginaries of the Modern Girl: A Comparative Examination of Canadian and Australian Magazines” by Victoria Kuttainen and Jilly Lippmann (James Cook University, Australia)
4. “The Making of a National Hero: A Comparative Examination of Köroğlu the Bandit” by Judith M. Wilks (Northwestern University, US)
5. “Between Poetry and Reportage: Raúl González Tuñón, Journalism, and Literary Modernization in 1930s Argentina” by Geraldine Rogers (National University of La Plata, Argentina)
6. “New Fiction as a Medium of Public Opinion: The Utopian/Dystopian Imagination in Revolutionary Periodicals in Late Qing China” by Shuk Man Leung (The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China)
7. “Nineteenth-Century African American Publications on Food and Housekeeping: Negotiating Alternative Forms of Modernity” by Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France)
8. “Progressing with A Vengeance: The Woman Reader/Writer in the African Press” by Corinne Sandwith (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
9. “Fashioning the Self: Women and Transnational Print Networks in Colonial Punjab” by Arti Minocha (Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, India)
10. “Crafting the Modern Word: Writing, Publishing, and Modernity in the Print Culture of Prewar Japan” by Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche (Saitama University, Japan)
11. ‘“Books for Men”: Pornography and Literary Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century Brazil” by Leonardo P. Mendes (Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil)
12. “Print Culture and the Reassertion of Indigenous Nationhood in Early-Mid-Twentieth Century Canada” by Brendan Frederick R. Edwards (The Royal Ontario Museum, Canada)
Rasoul Aliakbari (PhD) has taught English Studies, Comparative and WorldLiterature, and Writing and Communication Studies at the University of Alberta,MacEwan University, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and NorQuestCollege, all in Canada.
“If we de-europeanize the historical narrative of the development of print, and of its motive power in generating modern social and political formations, and further pluralize that ‘modernity’ to ‘alternative modernities,’ what will be the result? Taking this question as a point of departure, the contributors to Comparative Print Culture provide vibrant studies of the role of print in effecting, and reflecting, individual sensibilities, collective networks, and political movements self-defined as ‘modern,’ working with considerable temporal range, a global span, and careful inflection for cultural difference.”
—Heather Murray, University of Toronto, Canada
“A succinct and accomplished contribution to this growing field.”
—Robert Fraser, The Open University, UK
“This is a fascinating collection of essays that brings together a number of hitherto under-represented and overlooked aspects of print cultural histories of Asia in a global comparative context. In doing so, the authors create a novel space to chart the development of modernities and trace formations of knowledge, but also creations of entertainment cultures across continents.”
—B. Venkat Mani, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, author of Recoding World
Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books
Drawing on comparative literary studies, postcolonial book history, and multiple, literary, and alternative modernities, this collection approaches the study of alternative literary modernities from the perspective of comparative print culture. The term comparative print culture designates a wide range of scholarly practices that discover, examine, document,and/or historicize various printed materials and their reproduction, circulation,and uses across genres, languages, media, and technologies, all within a comparative orientation. This book explores alternativeliterary modernities mostly by highlighting the distinct ways in which literaryand cultural print modernities outside Europe evince the repurposing of Europeansystems and cultures of print and further deconstruct their perceived universality.
Rasoul Aliakbari (PhD) has taught English Studies, Comparative and WorldLiterature, and Writing and Communication Studies at the University of Alberta,MacEwan University, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and NorQuestCollege, all in Canada.