In the seventh issue of the journal “Transfers: International Journal of Mobility Studies” the contributors explore the way, in which print culture was part of the practices, experiences, mediations and representations of travel and mobility. Mobility can be understood in a number of ways: from the movement of people and texts across space to the mobility of ideas to the opportunities of social mobility through travel. The special issue moves beyond studies of travel writing and the literary analysis of travel narratives by discussing a range of genres, by paying attention to readers and reception, and by focusing on actual mobility and its representation as well as the mediation between the two.
The introduction, co-authored by Susann Liebich and Victoria Kuttainen, provides the broader context for considering print culture and mobility within one analytical frame. Furthermore, the articles in this special issue interlink the emergence of mass travel, mass print, and mass consumption. For example, an increasing number of books and new glossy magazines were awash with glamourous images of people and vehicles on the move. Also, mobility was central to the production of modern print culture since mass print was distributed through mass transportation networks. Conversely, print culture stimulated both real and imagined travel and contributed to an aspirational culture that tied geographical mobility to social mobility.
The journal “Transfers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies” is published by Berghahn and is a peer-reviewed journal on cutting-edge research on the processes, structures and consequences of the movement of people, resources, and commodities. The journal combines the empiricism of traditional mobility history with more recent methodological approaches from the social sciences and the humanities.
Dr. Susann Liebich joined the Cluster's project MC 12 "Floating Spaces" in December 2014. She works on a project exploring reading and writing practices at sea, from nineteenth-century immigrants to soldiers on troopships during WW1 to leisure travelers on cruise liners in the twentieth century.
Dr. Victoria Kuttainen is the Margaret and Colin Roderick Scholar of Comparative Literature at James Cook University, Townsville.
Further information on the issue and the separate articles are available here.
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