Reading Forensically: Modernist Paper, Newfoundland, and Transatlantic Materiality

This paper highlights the importance of North American and Canadian paper industries to modernist print practices. Drawing on previously unpublished archival sources, Huculak argues for a forensic reading of the modernist periodical, one that looks beyond symbolic economies to material realities of Newfoundland’s burgeoning wood pulp paper industry at the turn of the twentieth century. By taking into account the complex social system of print products, trade networks, and technologies, the paper sheds new light on modernist print culture and proposes several significant directions for its future preservation.