Exploring Transnational Dimensions of Activism in Contemporary Book Culture
“A is for Activist” is the title of a best-selling children’s board book, published in 2013 by Innosanto Nagara. This small book amplifies a large message: books can catalyze change. Publishing has both supported and hampered progressive political and social change, in a variety of international contexts. Activism in publishing is also transnational because national contexts and identities matter, but they exist within a transnational network with unequal power dynamics and “literary capital” (Casanova 2004). Building on ideas of “print activism” in the long twentieth century (Schreiber 2013), this special issue is dedicated to furthering our understanding of activism in the contemporary publishing industry – and in the research thereof.