*Book History Research Network: a one-day colloquium*

*Institute of English Studies (University of London), 25 November 2011*

At a moment when the rise of e-Readers foretells the end of the printed book, the founder of the Internet Archive Brewster Kahle launches an initiative for the preservation of the book. He is creating a storehouse for physical books in specially-adapted containers on the West Coast of the United States in order to preserve them as “backup copies” for posterity. His idea came about as a reaction against the notion that books can be put beyond use (or thrown away) as soon as they are digitized.

While the future of the book is certainly an important topic for consideration, an initiative such as Kahle’s also begs the question how did past the past envision the future of the book – or of the predominant medium of the time. Victor Hugo’s phrase, ‘ceci tuera cela’, spelt a new paradigm of mistrust when the printed book suddenly disrupted the foundation of manuscript culture and the transmission of the written. Although the digital revolution is possibly the most radical change in the history of writing, one can wonder how
other similar transitions fared: from the scroll to the codex, from manuscript to printed book, from printing on the handpress to machine and offset printing, from writing by hand to writing on the typewriter
and the wordprocessor? More fundamentally, do the concerns of fifteenth-century critics of print like those of Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim have anything in common with twenty-first-century anxieties about the triumph of digital technology? Is access to knowledge and preservation, which champions of the digital revolution invoke, really a new concern? How much of the (old) culture of the book is retained in the new digital media?

This colloquium, therefore, wants to consider not just what “will be”, but also “what would have been” – the future perfect of the book. We invite proposals (no more than 250 words) for 20-minutes papers on any topic in book history relating to the future of the book considered at any moment in history.

Deadline: 15 October 2011.

Topics may include:

-competing technologies: scroll v. codex/paper v. screen/writing v. typing

-manuscript culture in the age of print

-the Gutenberg revolution as devolution

-the library of the future in the past

-old books and new media

-mass digitization or digital archive

-book collecting in the digital era

-/mise-en-page /and digital design

-hypertext and other outmoded technologies

-readers and e-readers

Organizers:

Cynthia Johnston

Research Student

Institute of English Studies

cynthia.johnston[at]postgrad.sas.ac.uk

Dr Wim Van Mierlo

Lecturer in Textual Scholarship and English Literature

Institute of English Literature

wim.van-mierlo[at]sas.ac.uk

*Manuscript Identities and the Transmission of Texts in the English Renaissance*

*Friday 25 and Saturday 26 May 2012,*

*Humanities Research Institute, Sheffield University*

As part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Early Modern Manuscript Poetry: Recovering our Scribal Heritage’, this conference will explore the role of manuscripts in the production of individual and corporate identities in early modern culture, including the commissioning, copying, circulation, and collection of manuscripts. The conference welcomes multidisciplinary approaches and is keen to consider the relationships between manuscript and print identities in the period.

*Topics might include:

* ownership and commissioning; selection criteria (authorial, thematic, generic, miscellaneous); scribal identities; collection and donation; manuscripts and place; the construction of poetic, religious, political, and regional identities in manuscript; coteries; circulation and dissemination; manuscript afterlives; editing

Speakers include: Julia Boffey (Queen Mary, London), Arthur Marotti (Wayne State University), Steve May (Sheffield University), Mary Morrissey (Reading University), Fred Schurink (Northumbria University), Jeremy Smith (Glasgow University), and Henry Woudhuysen (University College, London)

Please submit 200-word proposals for 20 minute papers by *Friday 30 September* to Alan Bryson (a.bryson@sheffield.ac.uk <mailto:a.bryson@sheffield.ac.uk>) and Cathy Shrank (c.shrank@shef.ac.uk <mailto:c.shrank@shef.ac.uk>).

Protest on the Page: Print Culture History in Opposition to Almost Anything*

(*you can think of)

Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, Madison, Wisconsin, September 28-29, 2012

Protest has a long and varied tradition in America. The conference will feature papers focusing on authors, publishers and readers of oppositional materials, in all arenas from politics to literature, from science to religion. Whether the dissent takes the form of a banned book by Henry Miller or documents from Wikileaks, conference presentations will help us to understand how dissent functions within print and digital cultures.

Proposals for individual twenty-minute papers or complete sessions (up to three papers) should include a 250-word abstract and a one-page c.v. for each presenter. Submissions should be made via email to printculture@slis.wisc.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2012. Notifications of acceptance will be made in early March 2012.

For information, contact:

Christine Pawley, Director, Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture cpawley@wisc.edu

1 July 2011
Corsham Court Centre, Bath Spa University (deadline: unspecified, but ‘still open’)

Bath Spa University’s newly formed Book, Text and Place (1500-1750) Research Centre is pleased to announce its inaugural conference, ‘Book Encounters, 1500-1750’. In keeping with the Centre’s focus on early modern literary
culture, place, and the history of the book broadly defined, this conference invites exploration into early modern encounters with the book. The central theme of the conference will be the role that the book as material vehicle
played in the transmission of ideas. Possible topics of study include

• literary circles
• knowledge communities
• book ownership
• marks in books
• the destruction of books
• letterwriting
• scribal publication
• the intersection of book and manuscript cultures
• private and public libraries

The aim of this conference is to consider a wide variety of encounters with the book: not only from different cultural and geographical sites of production, circulation and reception but also from various periods within early
modernity. Different disciplinary perspectives are particularly encouraged. Proposals for papers (20-25 mins) are still welcome. Please send queries to Chris Ivic (c.ivic@bathspa.ac.uk).

Information on the Book, Text and Place (1500-1750) Research Centre is available at www.bathspa.ac.uk/schools/humanities-and-cultural-industries/research/book-text-and-place/

Plenary speakers:

David Pearson, Director, Libraries, Archives & Guildhall Art Gallery

Mark Towsey, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of
Liverpool

One-Day Symposium 5th September 2011, King’s College London

The ‘Digital Resource and Database of Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic’ (DigiPal) at the Centre for Computing in Humanities at King’s College London is pleased to announce a one-day symposium on digital resources for palaeography. In recent years, scholars have begun to develop and employ new technologies and computer-based methods for palaeographic research. The aim of the symposium is to present developments in the field, explore the limits of digital and computational-based approaches, and share methodologies across projects which overlap or complement each other.

Papers of 20 minutes in length are invited on any relevant aspect of digital methods and resources for palaeography and manuscript studies. Possible topics could include: * Project reports and/or demonstrations * Palaeographical method; ‘Digital’ and ‘Analogue’ palaeography * Quantitative and qualitative approaches * ‘Scientific’ methods, ‘objectivity’ and the role of evidence in manuscript studies * Visualisation of manuscript evidence and data * Interface design and querying of palaeographical material

To propose a paper, please send a brief abstract (250 words max) to digipal@kcl.ac.uk. The deadline for receipt of submissions is 8th May 2011. Notice of acceptance will be sent by 20th May 2011.

— Dr Stewart J Brookes, Research Associate, Digital Resource for Palaeography

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

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.

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