Little Magazines’ Contribution to Modernity

In today’s introduction and from the reading, “Modernity and the Rise of Modernism: A Review,” by Robert Scholes and Clifford Wu from Modernism and the Magazines, one of the most surprising fact was the contribution of magazines in the development of a new age. One of the major aspects of modernity was the rise of public education and surprisingly the popularity of Little Magazines in the late 80’s played a tremendous part in the rise of such complex change.

Although it is a well known fact that art and literature have always been a major influencer in shaping societal standards and are involved in shifting norms of  a society, mediums such as a magazine are not given as much credit as they should. Personally, prior to reading this article, I did not think of a magazine playing such an important part in shifting societal norms or influencing mass population. Another surprising realization is the idea that the birth of complex systems that are still a major part of our society today such as consumerism, capitalism and commerce began through these magazines. All in all, only in the introduction to this course, I have realized the whole spectrum of strands attached to a single medium of magazines, and the realization of being ignorant towards the history itself fascinates me.