The essays gathered in this book discuss transnational networks as well as cross-cultural exchanges in the context of the modern magazine print culture in Brazil (1820s to 1950s).

Although published as part of a series on Brazilian studies, central to this collection are not the concepts of nation or nationhood but those of transnational networks and cross-cultural exchanges. The concept of nation is of limited value to account for the periodical print culture as a global phenomenon marked by transnational movements such as those involving capital flows, commodities, people, ideas and editorial models. In this vein, what these chapters explore is not so much the concept of influence – which often plays a central role in Eurocentric analyses – but those of circulation and interaction. The notion of “circulation” here emphasised is more appropriate to the study of cultural exchanges, focusing on the movements of and engagements with ideas and concepts, as well as the appropriated models and the people involved in the publication and consumption of magazines. What the reader will find in these essays are analysis of numerous processes of transnational cultural negotiations.

Table of figures; List of authors; Introduction; The French periodical print culture in Brazil: A survey of catalogues and mediators (1800–1945) by Valéria dos Santos Guimarães; The transnational model of popular illustrated magazines: Three case studies from Brazil (1900–1920) by Felipe Botelho Correa; The transnational networks of the modernist periodical print culture: The magazine lumière in the aftermath of WWI by Monica Pimenta Velloso; Versions of modernity in the household magazine A Casa (1923–45) by Marize Malta; Panorama magazine and the far-right in Brazil (1936-1937) by Matheus Cardoso da Silva & Renato Alencar Dotta; Against Nazi-fascism in Brazil: The case of the magazine Diretrizes (1938-44) by Joëlle Rouchou; Literary inquiries and disputes on global modernism: The debate in Brazil during WWII by Tania Regina de Luca; Modernity and modernisms in the magazine Sombra (1940-1960) by Cláudia de Oliveira; Index.

The essays gathered in Magazines and Modernity in Brazil explore transnational topics such as architecture; cosmopolitanism and universalism; antisemitism, anti-war movements; visual artistic movements; advertising; anti-racism; avant-garde; class; consumer society; design; ethnicity and race; fascism and anti-fascism; intellectual elites; literature; modernity; publishing; translation, as well as book and periodical exchange, which is the main focus of this collection.

Together, these essays propose a critique of traditional comparatist approaches, promoting instead the study of contact zones and intersections, highlighting the place of production and reception of cultural products, as well as the role of mediators. What guide these analyses of magazines are concepts such as connected and shared histories, which emphasize transnational interactions. Within the spectrum of global history, this collection is related to a recent body scholarship on cultural transfers, which opened a fertile field for new research based on the analysis of transnational movements not only of ideas but also of networks and magazines.

Organized chronologically, the chapters explore a period from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of World War II, always having key magazines as the focus of analysis. The authors deliberately move away from traditional comparative approaches, in which two or more nations are set as a parameter, leading to emphasize their similarities and differences in a rigid framework that does not take into account interactions and cross-pollination of cultures and ideas. Some of the keywords that appear here are transnational models, global, circulation, mediation, hybridity, mestizaje, as well as histories that are shared and connected. These keywords help the authors to analyse the formation and development of the participation of Brazil in the global, modern periodical print culture. However, it should be noted that the purpose of this book is not to suggest a supposed singularity of the Brazilian case. The contribution of this volume of essays is precisely the opposite of this, showing how modernity in Brazil, including what is conventionally called modernism, is a complex expression of transnational movements and cross-cultural exchanges.