ABSTRACT
Comprised of thirteen essays first presented at the second international conference on Women and Magazines held at Cornell University in October of 2013, Women’s Magazines in Print and New Media contributes to our collective understanding of the significance of representations of women and gender in magazines both old and new. The essays are authored by scholars, writers and cultural producers in fields such as art, film and visual studies, literature, critical race studies, communications, broadcast and print journalism, history, and women and gender studies. Taken as a whole, the volume offers historical breadth and perspectives that are both cross-national and cross-racial on women in magazines in a variety of ways. It examines how women are represented, how women have created and produced magazines and the various ways women make meaning of themselves and their world using magazines as key sources of information. Indeed, what this volume makes clear is that magazines are as diverse as are their readers and that they have served an astonishing array of audiences and purposes. As such, the contributors introduce a wide variety of periodicals on which their research is based including mass-market publications such as the Saturday Evening Post , to 1970s niche publications like Essence and Cosmopolitan . There are also essays exploring changes that have transformed entertainment and mass culture industries in the last few decades, such as the growth of reality television and the rise of digital publications. As a result, in addition to its many other contributions, this collection offers insights into how scholars from a range of academic disciplines use magazines to investigate wider questions about the changing nature of society and the roles of gender and race in shaping our understanding of it.
