ASECS-Panel “Writing Time: Temporality of the Journal in the Eighteenth Century”

This panel of the German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (DGEJ) aims to investigate eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century journals and related periodical publication forms, such as magazines, newspapers, or moral weeklies, in light of their relationship to time. One obvious mode in which time enters into these media is periodicity: journals typically appear at intervals, a quality that is constitutive to their production and reception. Moreover, journals and their contributors actively “write time” (Sean Franzel) — for example, by commenting on current events; by archiving the present in structures of repetition and duration (e.g. rubrics); and by developing aesthetic strategies of temporality. Our panel invites case studies of journals, authors, literary texts, and periodical genres that shed light on the many ways in which periodicals “write time.” How did authors, editors, or journals respond to the temporal conditions of periodical publishing? How did they render history, revolution, and ‘newness’? Which aesthetic, material and medial features did periodicals develop in order to create their own, internal temporalities and archive time? And how do these journal-specific temporalities map onto other temporal modes, such as historiography? By exploring these and similar questions, our panel seeks to discuss the potential of “writing time” as a new approach to periodical history.

The Annual Meeting 2018 of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies takes place in Orlando, Florida, March 22-25. We invite proposals for papers (15–20 minutes), which should be sent along with a brief biographical note to Nora.Ramtke@rub.de and Petra.McGillen@Dartmouth.edu no later than 15 September 2017.