CMT members may be interested in a new journal to be launched this year entitled EAST ASIAN PUBLISHING AND SOCIETY. The journal is dedicated to publishing in East Asia, from the earliest times up to the mid-twentieth century and will bring together multi-disciplinary research from scholars addressing publishing traditions in China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. East Asian Publishing and Society envisages to publish articles that cover the production, distribution and reception sides of publishing. It wants to provide a forum for studies directed at the whole spectrum of printed information, such as books, single sheet prints, journals and the like. The journal is however not limited to publishing in woodblock print format only; contributions on manuscript culture and new technologies developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will also be welcomed by the editorial board. Additionally, topics as readership, libraries, relation between government and publishing world and more are to addressed in the East Asia Publishing and Society journal. The members of the editorial board are Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University; Matthi Forrer, Leiden University; Chris Uhlenbeck, independent scholar; and Hilde De Weerdt, Oxford University.

The first issue will be published later this year and will include articles on Korea and China, as well as book reviews. Submissions are welcome! For more information, or to contribute, contact the managing editor, Peter Kornicki, Cambridge University (pk104@cam.ac.uk)

Professor Peter Kornicki
Deputy Warden
Robinson College
Cambridge
CB3 9AN

Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, & Publishing at the Modern Language Association Conference, 2012

Print has been feared as a transmission vector for dangerous ideas since the incunabula era, and the printing press (and its later equivalents) has been one of the most effective weapons of political and cultural radicals for centuries. For its Affiliate Organization panel at the 2012 MLA Conference, The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) seeks papers that will provide historical studies of and theoretical insights into the use of print and printing (or other reproduction technologies such as mimeographs or photocopies) by radical political or social movements.

Proposals (250 words) and short CV by 15 March to:
Greg Barnhisel
Dept of English, Duquesne University
Pittsburgh PA 15282
barnhiselg@duq.edu

All panelists must be members of MLA by 7 April and of SHARP by 1 July.
Membership information at http://www.mla.org/membership and http://www.sharpweb.org/membership.html

For a SHARP-affiliated paper panel session at the annual convention of the American Historical Association (AHA) meeting in Chicago January 5-8, 2012 (under approval from Jonathan Rose, longstanding SHARP-AHA liaison). The panel’s theme is “Communities of Print during the American Civil War,” in keeping with the AHA convention theme of “Communities and Networks.”

With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War at hand, the panel’s papers will discuss the role of print in community formation, re-formation, and maintenance during a time of the widespread dissociations and dislocations wrought by the conflict. “Communities of print” as a term can cover specific congeries of readers, printer/publishers, or authors, as well as more general conceptions of nationhood or other types of mass affiliation.

International perspectives are particularly welcome, as are those reflecting upon print communities among racial and ethnic groups, or across categories of social difference, including those of gender and sexuality.

Please send a 300-word (max.) paper abstract and 250-word cv or bio to zboray@pitt.edu by Monday, February 7. Address any questions to Ron Zboray at the same e-mail. Final panel proposal is due to AHA by Feb. 15.

If selected to present, panelists must be members of both AHA and SHARP.

Link to AHA CFP:
http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2010/1009/1009ann2.cfm

THURSDAY, March 31 | 11:00 AM-6:30 PM

School of Communication and Information (Rutgers)

This one-day symposium will explore the theory and practice generated around the concept of SOURCE. Across a series of events, we will reflect on
practices of collecting, politics and publics of the archive, critical thought initiated from and disciplinary discourses framing the primary source, as well as the materiality and form of the source, be it letter, daguerreotype or digital object. This discussion aims to transcend boundaries by bringing together academics and practitioners from a wide range of institutions of the cultural record. We want to attract an audience from equally varied backgrounds.

The events also aptly mark the ten-year anniversary of School of Communication and Information’s student organization known as SOURCE (Student Organization for Unique and Rare Collections Everywhere), which we will celebrate with a reception at the end of the day.

(Except as noted, all events are free and open to the public.)

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

11:00 AM-12:00 PM | School of Communication and Information (Room 323)

“What’s in a Photograph?”: A Brief Introduction to Photo Identification and Preservation
A Workshop with KEVIN SCHLOTTMANN (Center for Jewish History)

Moderator: Jill Baron (Rutgers University)

Due to space limitation, this event is by registration only (RSVP
jebaron@eden.rutgers.edu).

1:00 PM-3:00 PM | Alexander Library (4th floor lecture hall)

Material Inscriptions, Collections, and Their Publics (Papers)

JARED ASH (Newark Public Library)
“Text, schmext!”: Collecting Books as Objects of Art and Design

KARLA NIELSEN (University of Illinois)
Reading Erasure in the Archive: The Making of Medieval Spanish Literature

LAURA HELTON (New York University)
On the Politics of Collecting: Archival Publics and African American
Documentary Practice, 1920-1960

IULIAN VAMANU (Rutgers University)
North American Indigenous Curators’ Discourses of Aboriginality and Material
Practices of Curation: A Case Study of the “Song for the Horse Nation”
exhibition at the National Museum of American Indian (NYC)

Moderator: Marija Dalbello (Rutgers University)

Break with refreshments (3:00 PM-3:15 PM)

3:15 PM-4:45 PM | Alexander Library (4th floor lecture hall)

From Fever to Folder: Applying Critical Theory in the Archives (Panel
Discussion)

Panelists:
JENNA FREEDMAN (Barnard College)
LAURA HELTON (New York University)
GRACE LILE (WITNESS)
JONATHAN LILL (Museum of Modern Art)
MARK MATIENZO (Yale University Library)

Respondent: to be announced

Moderator: Rachel Miller (Center for Jewish History)

5:00 PM-6:30 PM | Alexander Library (4th floor lecture hall)

Rutgers Seminar in the History of the Book event (Lecture)

SONIA CANCIAN (Université de Montréal/Concordia University)
The Poetics and Politics in the Intimate Worlds of Immigrant and Homeland
Epistolarity

These events are free and open to the public.

7:00 PM-10:00 PM | Location to be announced

Reception “SOURCE at 10” including “To the SOURCE on the Field” (Panel)

Moderators: Carolyn Dorsey (Rutgers University) and Ana Ramirez Luhrs
(Lafayette College)

This event is by registration only – RSVP to Carolyn Dorsey
carolynd@eden.rutgers.edu OR Ana Ramirez Luhrs luhrsa@lafayette.edu.

Abstracts and full information about each of these events and directions with parking information are forthcoming.

—————————————————
Symposium Program Chairs: Marija Dalbello and Rachel Miller
“SOURCE AT 10” Program Chairs: Carolyn Dorsey and Ana Ramirez Luhrs
Organizing Committee: Jill Baron, Marija Dalbello, Carolyn Dorsey, Rachel Miller, Ana Ramirez Luhrs
—————————————————
Sponsored by: School of Communication and Information
Keynote lecture sponsored by: Rutgers Seminar in the History of the Book, 2010-2011.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Submissions accepted on a rolling basis until Friday, March 4, 2011.

Conference dates: May 13-15, 2011 at MIT.

Conference website: web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit7/

Has the digital age confirmed and exponentially increased the cultural instability and creative destruction that are often said to define advanced capitalism? Does living in a digital age mean we may live and die in what the novelist Thomas Pynchon has called “a ceaseless spectacle of transition”? The nearly limitless range of design options and communication choices available now and in the future is both exhilarating and challenging, inciting innovation and creativity but also false starts, incompatible systems, planned obsolescence.

For this seventh Media in Transition conference we want to focus directly on our core topic – the experience of transition. Our first conference in 1999 considered this subject, of course. But that was before Facebook, iPhones, BitTorrent, IPTV and many other changes.

How are we coping with the instability of platforms? How are the classroom, the newsroom, the corporate office exploiting digital systems and responding to the imperative for constant upgrades. Our libraries and archives? Our public entertainments? Are new technologies changing the experience of reading? The experience of watching movies or television programs? How stable, how durable are current or emerging systems? How relevant are earlier periods of media change to our current experience of ongoing instability and transformation?

We welcome submissions from scholars and teachers in all fields as well as media-makers, producers, designers and industry professionals.

See the website for submission details.

Seminar on the History of Libraries, Institute of English Studies, University of London, UK

At the last meeting of this seminar, held on 30 November, Professor David McKitterick (Trinity College, Cambridge) spoke on `Libraries at risk’. He looked at a number of recent cases concerning historic collections in British libraries which have either been sold off, often without warning, or were/are at risk of dispersal. This talk is now available as a podcast on the website of the Institute of Historical Research at www.history.ac.uk/digital/podcasts.

Keith Manley, Giles Mandelbrote – Seminar convenors

Thursday 27 January, 5:30pm, SR-24, Faculty of English
Harriet Phillips: ‘Waste Paper: Early Modern Broadsides as Popular Print’; and Marie Léger-St-Jean: ‘“long for the penny number and the weekly woodcut”: Early Victorian Popular Authors and their Readers’

Thursday 24 February, 5:30pm
Managing curious collections: Stuart Stone (Radzinowicz Library): a visit to the collection of ‘banned books’ from the Home Office; Katie Birkwood (St John’s College Library), on managing the Fred Hoyle Collection of papers, books and other material texts.

(Please note that the seminar on 24 February will begin at 5.30pm in the Radzinowicz Library at the front of the Institute of Criminology on the Sidgwick Site, for a ‘show and tell’ of banned books, and will move for the second presentation and discussion to the Faculty of English.)

All welcome. For information, this term contact Sarah Cain (stc22@cam.ac.uk)

International graduate conference of The Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“ at Freie Universität, Berlin (D) in cooperation with eikones – National Centre of Competence „Iconic Criticism“, University of Basel (CH)

Berlin, 2011, July 13th – 15th

The creative process in art and science makes use of many different kinds of notation.  The wide variety of notational methods, in turn, gives rise to structures which alter and redefine our understanding of the discipline or genre in which the work is being carried out. Notational systems open up spaces within individual creativity that enable thinkers and artists to plumb the inner workings of ideas, and develop unconventional solutions to problems.  The notation used in a creative act often makes use of existing notational systems, but equally as often modifies them, or even replaces them with entirely new ones developed within the specific conditions of the problem or project being tackled.  Each new notational system helps redefine the parameters of the creative process.

What are the conditions that define the role of notation in artistic and scientific creativity?  What creative potential does notation unlock? Our conference aims to investigate these crucial questions with the help of notational and creative phenomena taken from many artistic, scholarly and scientific contexts.  The following questions will help guide our inquiry:

– Upon what rules or constraints is notation dependent when it avails itself of elements of a pre-established notational system?
– What conditions does notation require in order to be effectively deployed?
– What potential do individual notational systems or methods possess, especially in relation to  their alternatives? Comparing approaches can help us to see to what extent unconvential notational formats cross traditional epistemological boundaries – especially in relation to traditional methods of notation.
– What creative potential is revealed by the transcription-process implicit in many notational systems? What possibilities come to light in the intra- and inter-medial translations and adaptations that play such an essential role in realizing creative work?
– What methodological approaches are suited to describing various notational configurations and their creative potential?

The international, English-language, graduate student conference is open to young scholars from all disciplines interested in the questions and phenomena surrounding the role of notation in creative processes. All speakers will be asked to give a twenty-minute presentation and lead an in-depth discussion immediately following their talk. The conference will take place at the Free University, Berlin.  Keynote lectures will be given by Professor Sybille Krämer and other distinguished scholars in the field.

Requirements for submitting a conference talk proposal:
First and last name of the presenter
Institutional affiliation
Biography of presenter (maximum 1200 characters)
Mailing address, telephone number and email address
Proposed title of talk
Abstract (maximum 3000 characters), clearly presenting the subject, objectives and methodology used
Selective bibliography (3-8 references) and principal sources used (archives, experimental or ethnographic data, etc.).

Deadline for submission of proposals:
Proposals should be sent before 15. March 2011 as an email with an attached Word file to the address: papers@schriftbildlichkeit.de
Conference talk proposals (abstract and selective bibliography) will be submitted to the conference committee.
Notification of selection will be sent to presenters within four weeks. Funds are available to cover travel expenses for some conference participants.

Organising Committee:
Fabian Czolbe  (Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“/Berlin (D))
David Magnus (eikones/Basel (CH))
Mark Halawa (Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“/Berlin (D))
Elisabeth Birk (Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“/Berlin (D))
Rainer Totzke (Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“/Berlin (D))

Institutional Support:
The Research Training Group „Notational Iconicity“: On the materiality, perceptibility and operativity  of writing at Freie Universität Berlin, funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/en/v/schriftbildlichkeit/index.html

eikones – National Centre of Competence (NCCR) „Iconic Criticism – The Power and Meaning of Images“, Cluster „Image – Writing – Ornament“
http://www.eikones.ch

The editors of the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne are delighted to announce that on 26 March 2011, we will host the first of three AHRC-funded events: Editing Donne. This conference will appeal to scholars and students of the writings of John Donne, notably his sermons; to those engaged in textual criticism and bibliographical studies in the Early Modern period (and beyond), as well as to those with an interest in the historical, cultural, and religious milieu that forms the backdrop to Donne’s sermons.

We are very excited to have Claire Preston (Cambridge) as conference respondent.

Other speakers to include: Peter McCullough (Oxford); David Colclough (Queen Mary); Katrin Ettenhuber (Cambridge); Erica Longfellow (Kingston); Mary Ann Lund (Leicester); Mary Morrissey (Reading); Emma Rhatigan (Sheffield); Hugh Adlington (Birmingham); Philip West (Oxford); Sebastiaan Verweij (Oxford).

Student bursaries available.

For more information please visit: http://www.cems-oxford.org/donne

A one-day event exploring aspects of street literature and popular print traditions.

26th February 2011   Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, London NW1 2AY

Organised jointly by the English Folk Dance & Song Society and the Traditional Song Forum.

£10.00 (£8 for EFDSS and TSF members)

Contact: To book a place – 0207 485 2206; other enquiries: Steve Roud on sroud@btinternet.com or 01825 766751

Program:
10.00  Welcome

10.15 Steve Gardham
Where’s that Song from? the Historical Links between Popular Song, Street Literature and Oral Tradition

11.00 Ewan MacVicar
The Eskimo Republic: Scottish Political Song on Broadsides and Song Sheets from 1705 to 1965

12.00 Gregg Butler
John Harkness, Preston printer (Work in progress)

12.30 Lucie Skeaping
Have I Got News For Thee!: Broadside Ballads of 17th Century England

1.30 – 2.30  Lunch

2.30 Roy Palmer
In Moor Street was a Printer: Aspects of the Ballad Tradition in Birmingham

3.15 John Hinks
Chapbook Bibliography Project (Work in progress)

Pete Wood
Newcastle broadsides & chapbooks (Work in progress)

4.00 Vic Gammon
The Street Ballad Singer in Pre- and Early-Industrial Society

5.00 end of session