Periodicals and Indigenous Modernity: Building a Text Corpus of American Indian Magazines, 1890-1930

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This research project examines Native American periodicals and how they function as particular media formats to shape society and culture. Current research understands periodicals as serialized and aesthetic artifacts serving both as means of socialization and for establishing textual communities. Moreover, communication and media studies focus primarily on content, topic and the overall subject matter of periodicals. Scholarship tends to overlook, however, the indigenous periodicals’ aesthetic and material dimensions to address questions of sovereignty and modernity. Despite the central role of periodicals as public institutions that fulfill social functions, innovations in print and public communication specific to indigenous periodicals have yet to be empirically and theoretically integrated into the fields of periodical studies and Native American studies. The project aims at differentiating Native American periodicals as aesthetic products and curated artifacts (i.e. the magazine as an experience not as a commodity), addressing questions of collaboration, interaction, and ethnic differentiation in a period of social and technological transition. The project seeks to find out more about what makes Native American periodicals a powerful middle ground to affect the wider culture and mediate various types of indigenous modernity.