Introduction: magazines and/as media: periodical studies and the question of disciplinarity

In the opening article of this special issue, Patrick Collier asks whether a thing called "modern periodical studies" exists, and he turns to the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies itself to find an answer. Appearing in the pages of the very journal that articulates the existence of such a field, this question may seem purely rhetorical. It is certainly timely: a moment of pause five years after this journal's establishment to consider what the concretion of energy and scholarly at tention around periodical studies has wrought. Collier's question echoes the ML A 2013 roundtable that was in many ways the starting point for our special issue, although the editors were mere audience members. Organized by J. Stephen Murphy around the similarly evocative question "What Is a Journal?" the roundtable began from the premise that periodical studies was fragmented due to the absence of a unified theoretical framework — a move toward synthesis that, while important, is not new.