Comparative Print Culture

“If we de-europeanize the historical narrative of the development of print, and of its motive power in generating modern social and political formations, and further pluralize that ‘modernity’ to ‘alternative modernities,’ what will be the result? Taking this question as a point of departure, the contributors to Comparative Print Culture provide vibrant studies of the role of print in effecting, and reflecting, individual sensibilities, collective networks, and political movements self-defined as ‘modern,’ working with considerable temporal range, a global span, and careful inflection for cultural difference.”

—Heather Murray, University of Toronto, Canada


“A succinct and accomplished contribution to this growing field.”


—Robert Fraser, The Open University, UK



“This is a fascinating collection of essays that brings together a number of hitherto under-represented and overlooked aspects of print cultural histories of Asia in a global comparative context. In doing so, the authors create a novel space to chart the development of modernities and trace formations of knowledge, but also creations of entertainment cultures across continents.”

—B. Venkat Mani, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, author of Recoding World

Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books



Drawing on comparative literary studies, postcolonial book history, and multiple, literary, and alternative modernities, this collection approaches the study of alternative literary modernities from the perspective of comparative print culture. The term comparative print culture designates a wide range of scholarly practices that discover, examine, document, and/or historicize various printed materials and their reproduction, circulation, and uses across genres, languages, media, and technologies, all withina comparative orientation. This book explores alternative literary modernities mostly by highlighting the distinct ways in which literary and cultural print modernities outside Europe evince the repurposing of European systems and cultures of print and further deconstruct their perceived universality.



Rasoul Aliakbari (PhD) has taught English Studies, Comparative and World Literature, and Writing and Communication Studies at the University of Alberta, MacEwan University, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and NorQuest College, all in Canada.