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. Covering a century of transformations that goes from the boom of magazine publishing in the mid-nineteenth century up until the emergence of television in the 1950s, the chapters focus on the circulation and diffusion of modernity in the form of ideas, cultural trends, role models, values, experiences and sensitivities that were articulated in the pages of representative magazines as well as in the efforts of key mediators.

Since at least the early nineteenth century, magazines have been dynamic laboratories and privileged observatories of ideas through which editors, intellectuals and artists have engaged with the public sphere in various countries. Many of these periodicals became true communities of thought and opened new channels of communication by commenting on everyday life as well as engaging in heated debates while spreading and spurring modern social practices that were already disseminating at the transnational level. As a medium with great capability for constructing, organizing and spreading ideas, magazines have created links of intelligibility with regard to ideas of modernity in Brazil, often in connection with that in other countries. The contacts of Brazilian publications with those based in London, Paris, New York, Antwerp, Madrid, Buenos Aires and Zagreb are examples of intercultural dialogues that have inspired new ways of editing magazines. It is in this historical context of cross-cultural exchanges that intellectuals and artists have made a critical assessment of the traditions aiming at the implementation of new aesthetic and social projects that were mediated by these ephemeral periodical publications. By focusing on case studies that explore the connections between countries and continents through magazines published or circulated in Brazil, this book presents a set of critical texts that aims not only to make a strong contribution to the studies on the intellectual and cultural history of modern Brazil, but also to disseminate and update these debates to English speakers worldwide.

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.