The American Magazine:

Research Perspectives and Prospects

By David Abrahamson, Editor

Northwestern University

This definitive volume on magazine scholarship offers a survey of magazine research by which past and present scholarship can be understood. Significant for its integration of so much magazine scholarship, this unique research anthology provides instructors and researchers with articles that survey and organize the important historical and contemporary literature, discuss relevant theoretical and methodological issues, and suggest future directions for scholarship. A collective work, The American Magazine consolidates 17 research reviews and original articles by prominent scholars of the American magazine form. It stems from a special issue of the Electronic Journal of Communication/Revue Electronique de Communication, for which special editor David Abrahamson called for papers providing "a useful overview of magazine research...by which much of the past and present scholarship can be understood...[and] which will help define the existing corpus of magazine scholarship and suggest cogent directions for further research."

The volume is suitable for courses in journalism, publishing, magazine journalism and journalism history. It can also be used as a principle text in courses focued on magazine research.

. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION--Brilliant Fragments: The Scholarly Engagement with the American Magazine (David Abrahamson, Northwestern University). PERSPECTIVES ON MAGAZINE RESEARCH--Research Review: Issues in Magazine Typology (Marcia Prior-Miller, Iowa State University) Research Review: Quantitative Magazine Studies, 1983-1993 (Mark N. Popovich, Ball State University)/An Overview of Political Content Analyses of Magazines (Lawrence J. Mullen, University of Nevada--Las Vegas). PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN MAGAZINE PUBLISHING--Research Review: Magazine Editors and Editing Practices (Lee Joliffe, University of Missouri-Columbia)/Research Review: The Specialized Business Press (Kathleen L. Endres, University of Akron)/Research Review: Magazine Management and Economics (Robert Worthington, New Mexico State University)/Ms.ing the Free Press: The Advertising and Editorial Content of Ms. Magazine, 1972-1992 (Lori Melton McKinnon, University of Oklahoma). PEDAGOGICAL AND CURRICULAR PERSPECTIVES--Research Review: Laboratory Student Magzine Programs (Tom Wheeler, University of Oregon)/Research Review: Issues in Magazine Journalism Education (Elliot King, Loyola College)/Magazine and Feature Writing Unbound: A Critique of Current Teaching Paradigms and a Case for Rhetoric (Monica Johnstone and Andrew Ciofalo, Loyola College)/Preaching Our Practice: On Sharing Professional Work with Students (Paul Mandelbaum, Story Magazine). GLOBAL AND LOCAL ISSUES IN MAGAZINE JOURNALISM--Research Review: An International Perspective on Magazines(Leara Rhodes, University of Georgia)/Research Review: City and Regional Magazines (Ernest C. Hynds, University of Georgia)/Regional Consumer Magazines and the Ideal White Reader: Constructing and Retaining Geography as Text (Katherine Fry, Brooklyn College). MAGAZINES AS LITERATURE, MAGAZINES AS HISTORY--Research Review: Magazines and Literary Journalism, an Embarrassment of Riches (Thomas B. Connery, University of St. Thomas)/The Reform Years at Hampton's: The Magazine Journalism of Rheta Childe Dorr, 1909-1912 (Agnes Hooper Gottlieb, Seton Hall University)/The Women's Movement in the 1920's: American Magazines Document the Health and Progress of Feminism (Carolyn Ann Bonard, University of Missouri-Columbia).

Available from:

Iowa State University Press
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(Paper $24.95)

Kind Words:

The American Magazine is a work of unique significance to both the present scholarly study and future research concerning magazines as a journalistic form. Notable for both its academic soundness and originality, the book fills a real and pressing need because the entire field of magazine scholarship is surveyed and organized in a way that is useful both to teachers and to academic researchers.

--Sammye Johnson, Trinity University

From my own experience in teaching magqazine journalism and conducting magazine research, I can attest to the urgent need for such a book as The American Magazine. Never before has so much magazine scholarship come together in such as integrated and accessible whole. It will be regarded as a defining benchmark and indispensable aid for all subsequent magazine research.

--David E. Sumner, Director, Magazine Program, Ball State University

This volume answers a long-standing need and offers a shot in the arm to a neglected area of journalism research. In the future, The American Magazine will have to be the starting place for all magazine research. This service alone makes this volume well worth the price.

--Jack A. Nelson, Brigham Young University; reviewer, Journalism Educator