06 – At the margins of the periodical: reading advertisements in early twentieth-century regional periodicals
South Asian print cultures shaped reading publics and modern identities across British India. This panel turns to the literal margins of regional periodicals to explore what paratextual elements may tell us about the formation of not only national, but also (trans)/regional and global networks formed through advertisements. Many South Asian periodicals of the early twentieth century carried numerous advertisements of print materials, services and goods. When they are not stripped-off prior to being archived or digitized, they form a rich archive to scholars studying nation-formation and the fashioning of religious, caste, class, gender and other identities. This panel is directed at researchers who engage with periodicals in various South Asian languages published in colonial India. It seeks to explore the role advertisements may have played in shaping socio-economical, socio-political, religious-cultural, domestic, national and transnational identities and sensibilities.
Advertisements also provide information about marketing and potential reader consumption habits and preferences. They testify to the establishment of local, regional, national and in a few instances imperial and international networks between the literary and economic spheres. Academic reasons to consult advertisements in periodicals are varied. Some scholars do so to delve into the history of a (brand-name) product or company, others do so to intervene in larger discourses on health, medicine, capitalism and consumption practices as well as the self-fashioning of the emerging middle classes. This panel aims to initiate an epistemological and methodological conversation on the form and economy of the periodical with advertisements at the center. To meet that objective, it invites presenters to reflect on the relationship of editor-publishers’ marketing interests and need to finance their publishing ventures in relationship to their respective periodicals’ supposed larger agendas.