Producing knowledge through print culture

“Print culture seeks to bring together everyone engaged in print,” says Jim Danky, “whether they’re the author, with an idea, or the editors and publishers who transmit that idea, or those who physically transmit that idea — the typographers and printers of the past and the webmasters of today.”

Even before the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America began in 1992, Danky followed all points of the print culture cycle. His work spans everything from underground zines to cereal boxes, with a special focus on less mainstream periodicals. Two years after retiring as the center’s director, he continues to make major contributions to the print world.

With the publication of volumes four and five of the History of the Book in America, Danky and several UW–Madison colleagues from a variety of departments have created a significant portion of this new encyclopedic work, the first of its kind.

Perhaps, like the center itself, the five-volume history didn’t already exist because it seemed too obvious. Danky describes how many approaches to studying print culture on campus focused either on the history of mass communication — as in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication — or the history of landmark books and printing, as in the School of Library and Information Studies. Other institutions around the country took a variety of approaches, most notably an aesthetic study of rare books.

“People had mostly failed to incorporate studying the thing that’s most ubiquitous and central to the humanities: the production and consumption of print,” says Danky. “You can’t imagine it without readers, writers or producers, and yet we’ve only had bits and pieces about these parts of the cycle. We hadn’t brought it together.”

 For Danky, though, the cycle of print culture didn’t involve simply the creation of text. Paraphrasing cultural historian Robert Darnton, Danky posits that the cycle of print only works when the readers read the text and then act on and respond to it.

“[Former colleagues] Wayne Wiegand, Carl Kaestle and I thought then, and believe with more reason today, that you could talk about the relationship of the production of knowledge and the democratic experience,” says Danky. “Print culture is a way to understand that. Because it’s almost universal, it’s a way to extend the reach of the humanities beyond the academy.”

The center’s biennial conferences show how universal these topics can be. Beginning in 1995, each conference has tackled a major issue in relation to print culture. From the first conference on “Print Culture in a Diverse America,” themes have included women, education, religion, youth and most recently the intersection of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and print culture.

At first glance, these topics may seem overly broad. Nevertheless, the inclusive nature has spurred multidisciplinary collaboration. This process has, in turn, broken down seemingly monolithic subjects into thoughtful contributions accessible to a wider audience.

“I thought, ‘Here are these big topics and themes we can do, but by the time we get around to them, someone else might have gotten to them,’” says Danky. “That’s turned out not to be the case.”

So it was with the History of the Book in America project. When the American Antiquarian Society decided to produce a three-volume history, they planned that the period covered would simply conclude in 1876, the same terminus of the society’s own collection. Since the Center for the History of Print Culture’s collection purposely begins at that point, Danky and colleagues suggested that scholars connected with the Center continue the project through contemporary times.

Danky hopes that these books will be used almost like encyclopedias. He doesn’t expect that students and scholars will read them from cover-to-cover; rather, he hopes that they will be used as reference building blocks that lead readers to both foundational concepts and new ideas. He cites chapters by two of his UW–Madison colleagues, Paul Boyer of the history department and Donald Downs of political science, as perfect examples.

“For anyone interested in studying the suppression of information, I don’t see how they can avoid those two scholars’ work,” says Danky. “They will be led directly to those chapters, and it will expose them to things that they may not have heard of at all.”

Danky contributed essays on the oppositional press and African American print culture and readers. Carl Kaestle, now at Brown, served as co-editor of volume four, while alumnus David Nord co-edited volume five. Other contributors with UW–Madison ties include James Baughman (School of Journalism and Mass Communication) on the history of newspapers, center co-founder Wayne Wiegand (now at Florida State) on libraries, and alumni Charles A. Seavey, William Trollinger and the late Robert Frase.

By finally creating a basic reference, Danky hopes that readers will actually take issue with them.

“We’ll know how inadequate these encyclopedias are the moment that a student comes up and says, ‘Well, what about this?’” he says. “There are all kinds of other people who have ideas that I’d never come up with.”

That democratic flow of ideas has been a hallmark of Danky’s work. Arriving on campus in the midst of early-‘70s activism, he has championed lesser known periodicals, modern works and creations of groups that have historically been marginalized.

When the center itself began, it continued this mission. The purpose is twofold: first, the center provides a unique resource that does not overlap with other efforts. More importantly, however, this focus helps bring underappreciated work to light.

“I thought then, and believe today, that each of us should find ourselves in libraries: books, magazines and other materials that are about how you define yourself,” says Danky. “If you’re Spanish-speaking, you should find magazines and books that are in Spanish. If you’re a member of a small religious group, and a library says it collects religious periodicals, you should find your faith’s periodicals there, just like those of the better-known religious groups. As important as it is, you wouldn’t want to write a history of the United States using just the New York Times.”

Though Danky retired from his directorial duties on campus, he remains an active scholar. Now directing the “Newspapers and Periodicals of the African Diaspora” project through the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, he hopes to address the monumental task of chronicling the African presence around the globe by documenting their published works.

A champion of intellectual vigor, Danky’s efforts exist not in spite of perceived difficulties but because of them. He shrugs off any notion that tackling such broad issues might be too monumental a task.

“We’re a public university; we’re clearly engaged in broad, democratic ideas about education,” says Danky. “Those kinds of concerns are the daily coin of the realm for our colleagues and historians in many departments. It’s an obvious thing for us to want to do.”