Resurrecting the Book: 15-17 November 2013, Library of Birmingham, England

PLENARY SPEAKERS: Professor Sir David Cannadine, Princeton University; Professor Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Dr David Pearson, City of London Corporation; Professor Nicholas Pickwoad, University of the Arts, London.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Professor David Roberts, Birmingham City University; Dr Jason Scott-Warren, Cambridge University; Linda Carreiro, University of Calgary; Sarah Bodman, University of the West of England

To celebrate the re-opening of the largest public library in Europe and its outstanding special collections,The Library of Birmingham, Newman University College, the Typographic Hub at Birmingham City University and The Library of Lost Books have united to host a three-day conference on the theme of Resurrecting the Book.

With e-book downloads outstripping the purchase of hard copies, with libraries closing and discarding books and with the value of the book as physical object being increasingly questioned, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together academics, librarians, publishers, artists, creators, designers, and users of books to explore a wide variety of issues pertaining to the creation, design, construction, publication, use, reuse, preservation, loss, and recovery of the material book, electronic and digitized books, and of collections and libraries. Abstracts on the conference themes and their intersection and covering any historical period are invited. The conference themes include, but are not limited to:

BOOKS AS MATERIAL OBJECTS: the materiality of book creation, construction, production, use, reuse, and destruction; manuscripts and printed books; book-design, illustration, paratextuality and its manifestations; book-covers, bindings, clasps, vellum, parchment, paper, manuscript and printing and production processes;

COLLECTIONS AND LIBRARIES: book collectors, collections and their locations; missing, lost and found books; the creation, recreation, dispersal, sale and destruction of books and libraries; the movement of books and libraries; lost libraries; the impact of libraries on books; lost and revised editions;

THE ARTIST’S BOOK: altered books; book preservation and conserved books; books and material culture; books as art; books in art; illustration and illumination; woodcuts; engravings; marbled pages; book decoration; printmaking;

E-BOOKS: the creation, use and abuse of ebooks; neglected and lost ebooks; ebook readers; electronic libraries; books and collections and the impact of digital technologies;

PUBLISHING: publishers and publishing; the future of publishing; back-catalogues; print-runs; editions; archives; digitization and multi-media books;

Abstracts of no more than 400 words accompanied by a 50 word biographical profile should be sent to both: Dr Matthew Day – m.day@newman.ac.uk and Dr Caroline Archer – caroline.archer@bcu.ac.uk

DEADLINE for submission of abstracts: FRIDAY 1st FEBRUARY 2013.

The conference will run in conjunction with The Library of Lost Books Project. This is an exhibition of 50 de-accessioned books which have been given a new lease of life as objects redesigned into works of art. The conference is also part of the Library of Birmingham’s reopening festival.

A weblink to the CFP is at http://resurrectingthebook.org/86-2/

On Friday 25 January, Cambridge University Library will be holding its 7th masterclass as part of the Incunabula Project.

The masterclass, entitled “Discovering Provenance in Book History”, will be led by David Pearson, Director of Culture, Heritage & Libraries at the City of London Corporation. David has published and lectured extensively in this area of book history and his books include Provenance Research in Book History (1994) and Books as History (2008); he also teaches a course on Provenance at the University of Virginia Rare Book School.

There is a growing recognition of the value of looking at provenance evidence in early books — the lessons about the social impact of books which can be learnt by looking at the ways they have been owned, marked, read, annotated, mutilated or ignored.  This workshop will explore these themes alongside some practical guidance on identifying the various kinds of evidence that can be found, with the help of examples from the early collections of Cambridge University Library, and the opportunity for hands-on exploration and discussion.

The seminar will be held in the Morison Room at the Library. It will start at 2.30pm and will last approximately 90 minutes, allowing time for questions and discussion. Attendance will be limited in order to allow all attendees a chance to see the books under discussion up close, and to participate in the discussion.

To book your place, please email <incunabula@lib.cam.ac.uk>.

The UCLA Center for 17^th– and 18^th-Century Studies announces two two-year visiting positions in History of the Material Text, to be housed in the Departments of History and English, respectively. These positions are designed to enable participation in the life of the Center and the appropriate Department, as well as fuller use of the riches of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the Special Collections of the UCLA Libraries. We seek scholars of early modern studies (16th-18th centuries), broadly defined, whose expertise includes but is not limited to book history, history of the material text, and print cultures, in Europe and beyond. Applicants should have received their doctorates in the last six years (no earlier than July 1, 2007 and no later than September 30, 2013).

Visiting fellows will teach two courses per year in their respective Department, one of which would be at the Clark Library. Fellows are also expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center’s working groups and other research initiatives.

Fellows will receive a stipend of $50,000 per year, plus benefits for the fellow and dependents and a $3000 research fund.

Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, 20-page writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to:

Barbara Fuchs, Director

Center for 17^th– and 18^th-Century Studies, 310 Royce Hall Box 951404, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 90095-1404

Thursdays at 5:30pm, room SR-24, Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Thursday 24 January

Bob Groser (Bibles Production Manager, Cambridge University Press), will talk about materials and processes used in modern Bible manufacture

Thursday 21 February

Elizabeth Upper (Munby Fellow, Cambridge University Library) and Ad Stijnman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), ‘Cycles of Invention: The Historical Developments of ‘New’ Innovations in Colour Printing, ca. 1600-1700′

All welcome. Wine & soft drinks will be served at the start of the seminar.

For more information, please contact Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk), Andrew Zurcher (aez20@cam.ac.uk) or Dunstan Roberts (dcdr2@cam.ac.uk)

Please come for tea & mince pies

& a spin of the new book-wheel

on Tuesday 18 December

between 3.30 and 5 pm

 
G6, Walnut Tree Court, Queens’ College

(Andrew Zurcher’s rooms)

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Chris Hilliard (University of Sydney), ‘What do the masses read? Popular literacy and social investigation in Britain, 1850s-1930s’.

The Seminar meets at 5 pm in the Senior Parlour, Gonville Court, Gonville and Caius College.

One thing that is bound to happen as e-texts threaten to displace traditional printed books is that publishers will fight back by designing ever more beautiful objects. This is the binding of a cookery book which comes without a spine–just threads running across folds of paper. Or so it appears. In fact, when you run your hand across it, it feels gluey, as though those green strings aren’t really doing much of the work. Still it’s a nice surprise and somehow appropriate to a genre which is all about remembering that you’re flesh and blood, at the end of the day and at quite a few times in the day before that.

An international conference on collecting, editing, performing, producing, reading, and reviving Romanticism at the Fin de Siècle

Trinity College Oxford, 14-15 June 2013
Keynote Speaker: Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

Call For Papers
This conference places Romanticism at the core of the British Fin de Siècle. As an anti-Victorian movement, the British Fin de Siècle is often read forwards and absorbed into a ‘long twentieth century’, in which it takes the shape of a prehistory or an embryonic form of modernism. By contrast, Fin-de-Siècle authors and critics looked back to the past in order to invent their present and imagine their future. Just at the time when the concept of ‘Victorian’ crystallized a distinct set of literary and cultural practices, the radical break with the immediate past found in Romanticism an alternative poetics and politics of the present.

The Fin de Siècle played a distinctive and crucial role in the reception of Romanticism. Romanticism emerged as a category, a dialogue of forms, a movement, a style, and a body of cultural practices. The Fin de Siècle established the texts of major authors such as Blake and Shelley, invented a Romantic canon in a wider European and comparative context, but also engaged in subversive reading practices and other forms of underground reception.

The aim of this conference is to foster a dialogue between experts of the two periods. We welcome proposals for papers on all aspects of Fin-de-Siècle Romanticism, especially with a cross-disciplinary or comparative focus. Topics might include:

bibliophilia and bibliomania – collecting – cults – editing – objects – performance – poetics – politics – print culture – sociability – continuities and discontinuities – Romanticism and Decadence – Romantic Classicism – European Romanticism and the English Fin de Siècle

Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2013
Please email 300-word abstracts to romanticfin@bbk.ac.uk

Conference organisers: Luisa Calè (Birkbeck) and Stefano Evangelista (Oxford)
This conference is co-organised by the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and the English Faculty of Oxford University with the support of the MHRA

The Bibliographical Society invites applications for awards from scholars engaged in bibliographical research (on, for example, book history, textual transmission, publishing, printing, bookbinding, book-ownership and book-collecting). The Society hopes to make awards both for immediate research needs, such as for microfilms or travelling expenses, and for longer-term support, for example to assist with prolonged visits to libraries and archives.

KATHARINE F. PANTZER JR RESEARCH AWARDS IN THE HISTORY OF THE PRINTED BOOK

The Society has received a generous bequest from the estate of the distinguished bibliographer Katharine F. Pantzer Jr and has established two research awards in her memory: a Fellowship of up to £4,000, and a Scholarship of up to £1,500, to be awarded annually.

Applicants’ research for either of the Pantzer awards must be within the field of the bibliographical or book-historical study of the printed book in the hand-press period, that is up to c.1830. Applicants should be established scholars in the field but may be university-based or independent researchers. The Pantzer Fellowship, worth up to £4,000, is intended to assist with both immediate research needs, such as microfilms or travelling expenses, and longer-term support, for example prolonged visits to libraries and archives. Applicants may use a part of the Fellowship money to pay for teaching cover.

MAJOR GRANTS

A number of major awards, up to a maximum of £2,000 each, are offered. Several of these take the form of named awards. One will be associated with the name of the late Barry Bloomfield, sometime president of the Society, and one or more will be associated with the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, which has generously contributed to the fund. The Society also offers the Katharine F. Pantzer Jr Research Scholarship of up to £1,500, the Fredson Bowers award of $1,500 funded by the Bibliographical Society of America, the Falconer Madan award of £500 in conjunction with the Oxford Bibliographical Society for research undertaken in Oxford libraries or, under certain circumstances, conducted elsewhere upon topics connected with Oxford; the holder of the Madan award may be eligible to apply for association with Wolfson College, Oxford. The named awards may be supplemented from the Society’s research funds to a maximum total of £2,000 each.

MINOR GRANTS

In addition, the Society offers a limited number of minor grants, of £50 to £200, for specific purposes such as the costs of travel or of microfilming for research purposes (but not for attendance at, or travel to, conferences). Applications for these minor grants may be submitted at any time and should be supported by one reference.

CONFERENCE SUBVENTIONS

The Society offers a number of subventions of up to £250 each to organizers of conferences so that they can help defray the cost of conference fees for at least two students. The subject of the conference must fall within one or more of the areas of interest specified in the first paragraph. Conference organizers granted a subvention must agree to mention the Society’s support in their conference literature, for which purpose a logo is provided.

Full guidelines and application forms for all grants and awards can be found at http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/grants.htm

Applications for the Pantzer Fellowship and Major Grants (including the Pantzer Scholarship ) must be submitted, on the appropriate form (http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/grants.htm); two referees familiar with the applicant’s work should be provided. Applications and references must arrive by 11 January 2013. All applications must be supplied electronically. References are preferred via email, but may also be posted, to arrive by the same date.

Applications for Minor Grants may be submitted at any time, on the form provided by the Society (http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/grants.htm). Applications must be supplied electronically. References are preferred via email, but may also be posted.

Applications for Conference Subventions may be submitted at any time, on the form provided by the Society (http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/grants.htm). Applications must be supplied electronically. Brief supporting documentation (e.g. Call for Papers, Draft Programme) should be appended.

Informal enquiries welcome to:

Ed Potten
Secretary to the Fellowships and Bursaries Sub-committee
Care of: Cambridge University Library
Rare Books Department
West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DR

Hosted by the Centre for Material Texts, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Friday 1st February 2013

This one-day event will take as its starting point the recent opening to wider research of a number of significant great house private libraries in the United Kingdom, thanks to the on-going cataloguing work being undertaken by the National Trust. Papers and discussion will treat themes including the migration of books and ideas in and out of libraries; communities of the library (how ‘private’ was a private library?); libraries as repositories of cultural history.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please contact Dunstan Roberts (dcdr2@cam.ac.uk) or Abigail Brundin (asb17@cam.ac.uk) for more information.