Sarah Herndon and Samuel Stebbins

Introduction Music journalism found significance in the 1960s, following the Beatles’ mainstream success. One of the first popular music magazines was Melody Maker, a British magazine that began being published in 1926 and ran until 2000, finding success when it started focusing on Rock music in the 1960s. With the emergence of publications like New Musical Express (NME) and Rolling Stone, Pop music and cultural criticism became a serious pursuit of many journalists, helping to legitimize...

Lauren Bondor, Victoria Bridges, Eliana Collantes, Jewell Pfister, Kali Schwartz, Taofeeqat Soluoku, and Kaitlyn Wolfmeyer

Between the 1980s and 2000s, countless magazines were published to help home cooks, ranging from novices to experienced cooks. These could be picked up at any grocery store checkout lane. While most of the magazines in this exhibit focus on health, especially calorie counting, a few serve gourmet cooks. These publications offer us much more than just recipes. They serve as asnapshot of American domestic life and cultural values during a transformative period in food history....

Hannah Brown, Macy Love, Gracie Doolin, Linsey Prahl, Maggie Zdrowdowski, and Francesca Griffero

The Music Magazines presented in this exhibit highlight the influence these magazines had on establishing the social and cultural identities of today. In the late 20th century music magazines began to see a transformation from simply reporting on musical events to influencing the music industry as a whole. These magazines began interviewing artists, reviewing music, ranking artists, making social and political critiques, as well as determining what unique look fit within each genre. We begin to...

Curated by Arian Abdulla, Abigail Cutts, Zachary Gibson, Jeffrey Gluckman, Jonathan Phillips, & Renee Spinner, 2025

This exhibit presents toy and collectible magazines drawn from the Samir Husni Magazine Collection. The exhibit was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.

Curated by Tess Childress, Anna Comfort, Faith Edwards, Hannah Kittle, and Caitlin Souers, 2025.

This exhibit presents sports magazines drawn from the Samir Husni Magazine Collection. The exhibit was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.

Curated by Elisabeth Baker, Colin Hodges, Matthew Lane, Tamaka Mann, Sheri McCaskill, and Kelsey Meline, 2025.

The decades leading up to the new millennium and the decades beyond saw the arrival of modern religious magazines. These magazines delved into subjects both sacred and secular, from daily living for practicing adherents, to news from around the world and how it affected those faithful laypeople. Obviously, these religious magazines featured articles upon the faith and how those practitioners might best live their beliefs credibly. Many of these religious magazines were created specifically to be...

Curated by Diana Bell, Gina Hays, Shelby Janke, Julianne Moore, Rachel Peters, Gabrielle Wicker, 2025.

This exhibit features issues of North American fashion magazines spanning 1985-2004. It was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.

Curated by Jacqueline Culas, Haley Disterhoft, Isabelle "Jennie" Murray, Alison Restelli, Chayanne Sandoval-Williams, and Gretchen Tharp, 2025.

This exhibit focuses on a select number of Bridal magazines during that peak from 1992 to 2011. They were donated by Dr. Samir Husni, a leading expert on print and magazine journalism, known as Mr. Magazine. These magazines, mostly first volume editions, focus on the bridal industry from across the world. The exhibit was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.

Curated by John Henry Adams and Haley Lykins, 2024

In this exhibit, we are showcasing fourteen pet-centric magazines from the Samir Husni Magazine Collection. Many of these magazines are about pets, but some simply use pets as “props” to sell the magazines. In the interests of space, we have limited ourselves to four kinds of pets: birds, cats, dogs, and ferrets. We present them in alphabetical order, so please don’t think that the order of the pets in any way indicates our preference! We...

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2024

Over the course of the 20th century, the number of magazines published in the United States went from approximately 5,500 to well over 18,000, an increase that outstripped population growth by a considerable margin. Magazines appeared on almost every conceivable topic and for almost every conceivable demographic. Black Americans were no exception, with numerous magazines developing in the second half of the century to cater specifically to their interests. This exhibit showcases a tiny number of...