University of Cambridge, 23 May

Keynes Library, Birkbeck College, University of London

Perversions of Paper is a one-day symposium investigating the outer limits of our interactions with books and with paper. It considers unorthodox engagements with texts, from cherishing or hoarding them to mutilating and desecrating them, from wearing them to chewing them, and from inhaling their scent to erasing their content.

‘Perversion’ may apply to deviations from normal usage but also to our psychological investments in paper. To talk of having a fetish for books is common, but is there more to this than merely well-worn cliché? What part do books and other written artefacts play in our imaginary and psychic lives, and what complex emotional attachments do we develop towards them? Also, how might literary studies or cultural history register these impulses and acts; what kind of methodologies are appropriate?

This symposium invites reflections on perverse uses of – and relationships with – paper and parchment. We welcome proposals from a range of historical periods and disciplinary backgrounds, and from postgraduate students, as well as from more established academics.

Contributors are invited to consider bookish and papery aberrations from any number of angles, including but not limited to:

* the defacing or mutilation of writing
* the book as sculpture or art medium
* ‘upcycling’ or re-purposing
* the book or manuscript as a fetish object
* pathologies or obsessions related to paper
* psychologies of book collecting
* bibliophilia and bibliophobia
* book crazes, the tactility or sensuality of paper and manuscripts
* books, libraries and archives as sources of contagion, or as the focus of terror or abjection.

Deadline for proposals: March 30th 2014.

Please email abstracts of no more than 200 words together with a brief bio statement to Dr Gillian Partington (g.partington@bbk.ac.uk).

More information: http://archivefutures.com/events/perversions-of-paper/

A one-day conference at the Centre for the Study of the Book, Oxford University

Saturday 5 July 2014

Call for Papers

‘Pag. 8. lin. 7. for laughing, reade, languishing.’

Richard Bellings, A Sixth Booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1624), ‘Errata’

Recent histories of the book have replaced earlier narratives of technological triumph and revolutionary change with a more tentative story of continuities with manuscript culture and the instability of print. An abstract sense of technological agency has given way to a messier world of collaboration, muddle, money, and imperfection. Less a confident stride towards modernity, the early modern book now looks stranger: not quite yet a thing of our world.

What role might error have in these new histories of the hand-press book? What kinds of error are characteristic of print, and what can error tell us about print culture? Are particular forms of publication prone to particular mistakes? How effective were mechanisms of correction (cancel-slips; errata lists; over-printing; and so on), and what roles did the printing house corrector perform? Did readers care about mistakes? Did authors have a sense of print as an error-prone, fallen medium, and if so, how did this inform their writing? What links might we draw between representations of error in literary works (like Spenser’s Faerie Queene), and the presence of error in print? How might we think about error and retouching or correcting rolling-press plates? What is the relationship between engraving historians’ continuum of difference, and letter-press bibliographers’ binary of variant/invariant? Was there a relationship between bibliographical error and sin, particularly in the context of the Reformation? How might modern editors of early modern texts respond to errors: are errors things to correct, or to dutifully transcribe? Is the history of the book a story of the gradual elimination of error, or might we propose a more productive role for slips and blunders?

Proposals for 20-minute papers are welcome on any aspect of error and print, in Anglophone or non-Anglophone cultures. Please email a 300-word abstract and a short CV to Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@balliol.ox.ac.uk) by 14 April 2014.

Deadline for CFP: 1 September 2013

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new AHRC-funded international research network on Community Libraries, which aims to establish a dynamic, interdisciplinary research forum to investigate the role of libraries in shaping communities in the long eighteenth century. Developed by Dr Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool) together with partners at Loyola University Chicago, the Newberry Library, and Dr Williams’s Library (London), the Network will explain the emergence of libraries in the ‘public sphere’ between 1650 and 1850. We will assess the contribution made by libraries to the circulation and reception of print of all kinds, and to the forging of collective identities amongst local, national, and international communities of readers. In addition, the network aims to explore the emergence of libraries in comparative perspective, asking how far models of library provision and administration were disseminated, discussed, imitated, and challenged as they travelled between different social environments and political regimes.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

a)     To explain the emergence of libraries in the ‘public sphere’ between 1650 and 1850;

b)     To examine the emergence of libraries in comparative perspective, testing the explanatory power of the Atlantic paradigm for Library History;

c)     To pool expertise on the use of database software for interrogating library records, discussing the full range of approaches, potential pitfalls, and successful solutions;

d)     To investigate the feasibility of developing a universal ‘virtual library system’, connecting up records relating to different types of library, in different places, and at different times with other large scale digital analyses of historic book production, distribution and reception;

e)     To assess the contribution made by libraries to historical processes of community formation, including questions relating to collective identity, gender, civility, sociability, literary censorship, social exclusion/social mobility, mental health and well being, and the impact of print;

f)      To contribute to current debates about the future of public libraries in the UK and the US, highlighting ways in which historical models of library provision might be adapted to contemporary needs.

PLANNED ACTIVITIES:

The Network will organise three two-day colloquia in the UK and the US. Each colloquium will focus on a specific theme, and will feature methodological workshops, work-in-progress presentations, pre-circulated papers, and roundtables.

Colloquium 1: Libraries in the Atlantic World, to be held in Liverpool on 24-25 January, 2014

Colloquium 2: Digital Approaches to Library History, to be held in Chicago on 30 May-1 June, 2014

Colloquium 3: Libraries in the Community, to be held in London on 23-24 January 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS:

The project team invites initial expressions of interest from scholars interested in any element of the Community Libraries research programme. If you feel you can make a significant contribution to any or all of our colloquia, please send abstracts of 500 words, together with a brief summary of your research interests and career to date, to the Principal Investigator Dr Mark Towsey (towsey@liverpool.ac.uk) by 1 September 2013.

The St Andrews Book Conference for 2014

Questions of survival and loss bedevil the study of early printed books. Many early publications are not particularly rare, but others are very scarce, and many have disappeared altogether. We can infer this from the improbably large number of books that survive in only one copy, and it is confirmed by the many references in contemporary documents to books that cannot now be identified in surviving book collections.

This conference will address the issue of how far this corpus of lost books can be reconstructed from contemporary documentation, and how this emerging perception of the actual production of the early book trade – rather than those books that are known from modern library collections – should impact on our understanding of the industry and contemporary reading practice.

Papers are invited on any aspects of this subject: particular texts, classes of texts or authors particularly impacted by poor rates of survival; lost books revealed in contemporary lists or inventories; the collections of now dispersed libraries; deliberate and accidental destruction. Attention will also be given to ground-breaking recent attempts to estimate statistically the whole corpus of production in the first centuries of print by calculating rates of survival.

The conference will take place in St Andrews on the three days 19-21 June 2014. The papers given at this conference will form the basis of a volume in the Library of the Written Word.

The call for papers is now open and also available online on the USTC website at the page: http://www.ustc.ac.uk/?p=1119. Those interested in giving a paper should contact Dr Flavia Bruni (fb323@st-andrews.ac.uk) at St Andrews, offering a brief description of their likely contribution. The call for papers will close on 30 November 2013.

to Dr Orietta da Rold of Leicester and Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries of Cambridge, who have both been appointed to CMT-related lectureships in Literature and the Material Text in the Faculty of English at Cambridge. Their appointments mark the start of an exciting new phase in the development of the Centre, which was founded in 2009, and which has become an increasingly important part of the research landscape both locally and internationally.

University of Vienna, 23-25 April 2014

Keynote Speakers: Thomas Wallnig (University of Vienna) and Howard Hotson (University of Oxford)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Paper and panel proposals are invited for Scientiae 2014, the third annual conference on the emergent knowledge practices of the early modern period (ca. 1450-1750). The conference will take place on the 23-25 April 2014 at the University of Vienna in Austria, building upon the success of Scientiae 2012(Simon Fraser University) and Scientiae 2013 (Warwick), each of which brought together more than 100 scholars from around the world.

The premise of this conference is that knowledge during the period of the Scientific Revolution was inherently interdisciplinary, involving complex mixtures of practices and objects which had yet to be separated into their modern “scientific” hierarchies. Our approach, subsequently, needs to be equally wide-ranging, involving Biblical exegesis, art theory, logic, and literary humanism; as well as natural philosophy, alchemy, occult practices, and trade knowledge. Attention is also given to mapping intellectual geographies through the tools of the digital humanities. Scientiae is intended for scholars working in any area of early-modern intellectual culture, but is centred around the emergence of modern natural science. The conference offers a forum for the dissemination of research, acts as a catalyst for new investigations, and is open to scholars of all levels.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Intellectual geography: networks, intellectual history, and the digital humanities.
• Theological origins and implications of the new sciences.
• Interpretations of nature and the scriptures.
• Antiquarianism and the emergence of modern science.
• The impact of images on the formation of early modern knowledge.
• Genealogies of “reason”, “utility”, and “knowledge”.
• Humanism and the Scientific Revolution.
• Paracelsianism, Neoplatonism, and alchemy more generally.
• Interactions between the new sciences, magic and demonology.
• The history of health and medicine.
• Morality and the character of the natural world.
• Early modern conceptions of, and practices surrounding, intellectual property.
• Poetry and the natural sciences.
• The development of novel approaches to cosmology and anthropology.
• Botany: between natural history, art, and antiquarianism.
• Music: between mathematics, religion, and medicine.
• The relationship between early modern literature and knowledge.
• Advances or reversals of logic and/or dialectic.

Abstracts for individual papers of 25 minutes should be between 250 and 350 words in length. For panel sessions of 1 hour and 45 minutes, a list of speakers (with affiliations), as well as a 500-word abstract, is required. Roundtable discussions or other formats may be accepted at the discretion of the organizing committee. All applicants are also required to submit a brief biography of 150 words of less. Abstracts must be submitted through our online submission form by 15 October 2013. If you have any questions, please contact the conference convenor, Vittoria Feola (vittoria.feola@meduniwien.ac.at).

The 2014 conference will be held in the Juridicum at the University of Vienna, a modern conference building which is part of the ancient University of Vienna, founded in 1365. The conference will take place in the historic city centre of one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals, easy to reach by plane and train.

TOM PHILLIPS’ A HUMUMENT: TREATMEMTS, REFLECTIONS, RESPONSES

A Material Texts Network Event at Birkbeck College, University of London

13 July 2013, 9.45 am-5pm

To reserve a place, please email ahumument2013@gmail.com

Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

The Faculty of English wishes to appoint a University Lecturer in Literature and the Material Text to 1500, from 1 September 2013.

The appointee will be expected to have a good first degree and a doctorate in a relevant subject area and possess the ability to work as part of a team. He/she will also be expected to demonstrate evidence of ability to engage in high-level research, with publications and participation in scholarly activity commensurate with stage of career, and to teach effectively at all relevant levels. The appointee should also be able to teach in related fields in English literature and play an effective role in the life and work of the Faculty as a whole, including academic administration.

Appointments made at University Lecturer level will be permanent, subject to a probationary period of five years.

Further particulars for this post, with information about the Faculty, and details of how to apply can be found online, together with the University Application Form.

Quote Reference: GG26472                                                       Closing Date: 26 April 2013

Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

The Faculty of English wishes to appoint a University Lecturer in Literature and the Material Text from 1500, from 1 September 2013.

The appointee will be expected to have a good first degree and a doctorate in a relevant subject area and possess the ability to work as part of a team. He/she will also be expected to demonstrate evidence of ability to engage in high-level research, with publications and participation in scholarly activity commensurate with stage of career, and to teach effectively at all relevant levels. The appointee should also be able to teach in related fields in English literature and play an effective role in the life and work of the Faculty as a whole, including academic administration.

Appointments made at University Lecturer level will be permanent, subject to a probationary period of five years.

Further particulars for this post, with information about the Faculty, and details of how to apply can be found online, together with the University Application Form.

Quote Reference: GG26462                                                       Closing Date: 26 April 2013