Events
Events
Last updated 13 February 2012
Disclaimer: While all efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information included here, please check with the organisers of an event before making any special arrangements to attend.
Professor John B. Thompson (Cambridge): Merchants of Culture
John B. Thompson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. A leading proponent of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological thinking in the UK, and a major contributor to current debates about the impact of digital technologies on the book, he has written extensively on the sociology of the media and modern culture, the social organization of the media industries, and the social and political impact of information and communication technologies. Recent publications include Political Scandal (2000), Books in the Digital Age (2005) and Merchants of Culture (2010).
Mondays - 5.15pm (except where noted)
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Admission to lecture free. All welcome.
Wine and sandwiches will be served in Chancellor’s Court after the lecture at a cost of £7 per person, for which bookings should be made and paid for in advance with the Administrator.
RSVP: The Administrator, Friends of the Bodleian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG. Tel: 01865 277234, Email: fob@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Contact: giles.bergel@merton.ox.ac.uk
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10336171359
The Magdalen Library Seminars form a new series of seminars offering participants the opportunity to hear about and see items from the libraries' collections.
Contact tabitha.tuckett@magd.ox.ac.uk for further information.
The seminars are open to all and refreshments will be provided.
Lectures and Seminars: Cambridge
For further details, please contact the Hon. Secretary, Cambridge Bibliographical Society, The University Library, Cambridge CB3 9DR
Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume on plays and their publication in 18th-century London
Free Admission. Please note that these events are not ticketed and seats will be allocated on the night on a first come, first served basis. For further details see http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/oct11/index.html
The Summer Visit for 2012 will be announced in The Library for March 2012
Meetings will be held in lecture theatres at University College, Gower Street, London, WC1, beginning at 6.00 p.m. Exact lecture theatres are given in the calendar above.
Tea will be served at 5.15 p.m. in one of several rooms in the main building (Wilkins) of University College; please see lecture dates for location. Members are welcome to bring guests, both to meetings and to the tea beforehand.
TThe AGM will take place at Christie's, 8 King Street, St. James's, London SW1Y 6QT on Tuesday, 18 October at 5.30; it will be followed by a tour of the London Library in St. James's Square. The AGM will not be preceded by tea, but refreshments will be served after the meeting.
For further details, please contact the Hon. Secretary, Dr. Margaret Ford, The Bibliographical Society, c/o Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Rm. 304, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU (Tel. 020-7862-8679; fax: 020-7862-8720) e-mail: Secretary@BibSoc.org.uk or Admin@BibSoc.org.uk
Seminar convenors: Giles Mandelbrote (Lambeth Palace Library, London); Dr. Keith A. Manley (The National Trust / Institute of Historical Research); Professor Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies); Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary); Professor Henry Woudhuysen (University College).
Meetings will take place monthly during term-time on Tuesdays at 5.30p.m.. Meetings will normally take place in Senate House (enquire at South Block Reception), but rooms will vary. The November meeting will be held elsewhere, details below.
The seminars are jointly sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Library & Information History Group of CILIP.
Information concerning the Institute of English Studies may be found on its website, or email ies@sas.ac.uk.
Four Saturday lectures: DB members £18, non-members £26 and students £9
Further details from Julia Dummett and Rachel Ward-Sale: 01273 486 718 / lectures@designerbookbinders.org.uk
Nearest underground stations: Holborn and Russell Square
Please see www.designerbookbinders.org.uk for details of The Bookbinding Competition and Exhibition
The 'Early Modern Text and Transmission' Series: Public Lectures organised as part of the King's College London and British Library joint MA in 'Early Modern English Literature: Text and Transmission'
Many historians of the English book trade consider that piracy--that is, the illicit printing of a book to which someone else had exclusive rights--only really became a problem in the late 1570s under Elizabeth I, but in reality a small group of wily printers and booksellers had already begun to make a profitable sideline of infringing royal privileges some twenty years earlier, during the reign of Mary Tudor. Drawing on hitherto neglected sources, Peter Blayney will discuss the evidence for some of the activities of these early pirates, including one little-known incident that was taken so seriously by the authorities that it threatened the very existence of the recently chartered Company of Stationers of London.
Peter W M Blayney is a Professor of English at the University of Toronto and Distinguished Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library. He has been researching the English book trade for nearly forty years, and is working on a detailed history of the Stationers’ Company and the printers of London in 1501–1616.
The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.
Attendance is free but please register your name with Teresa Harrington at the British Library teresa.harrington@bl.uk
Organizer: Dr Wim Van Mierlo, Lecturer in Textual Scholarship and English Literature (Institute of English Studies)
The theme for this year's programme will be: Reading and the First World War.
Venue: Room ST273 Stuart House, Malet St, London, WC1E 7HU. Telephone enquiries: 0207 862675
We would be delighted to see you there. Please feel free also to distribute this announcement on other networks.
Organisers: Dr Edmund King (The Open University), Research Associate, and Dr Shafquat Towheed (The Open University), Project Supervisor/Co-investigator. E-mail: E.G.C.King@open.ac.uk; S.S.Towheed@open.ac.uk
12 February
Edmund King (The Open University): A Captive Audience? The Reading Lives of Australian Prisoners of War, 1914-18
Edmund King is RED (Reading Experience Database) Research Associate in the English Department at the Open University, where he works on transnational reading during World War I. He received his PhD in English from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2008. His areas of interest outside First World War Studies include the digital humanities, Shakespearean textual criticism, the literature of settlement in the 19th-century Pacific, and library and book history, particularly in a colonial context.
Jonathan Black (Kingston University): Reading behind the Lines: Letters between British official war artists and writers of the First World War
Jonathan Black studied History and History of Art at St. John's College, Cambridge and University College, London. His PhD in History of Art was awarded by UCL in 2003 for his thesis exploring constructions of masculinity and the image of the British foot soldier in First World War art. Publications include: The Sculpture of Eric Kennington (London, 2002); Blasting the Future: Vorticism in Britain (London, 2004); Form, Feeling and Calculation: The Paintings and Drawings of Edward Wadsworth (London, 2005) and Dora Gordine: Sculptor, Artist, Designer (London, 2008). His next book The Face of Courage: Eric Kennington and the Second World War (April 2011) will accompany the exhibition of the same name he is curating at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon.
26 February
Jonathan Arnold (IES, University of London): 'Please send me Tess of the Dr Rbyvilles (Harding)': Reading preferences of American Soldiers and Sailors during World War One
Jonathan Arnold has a career in editing and publishing. He returned to academia in 2005 to complete the MA in Book History (University of London). He was awarded his Doctorate (University of London) in 2010 with his thesis "Publishing Theodore Roosevelt 1882-1919". He has given papers at SHARP, the British Association of American Studies Conference and the lunchtime seminar series at the IES. He was awarded the 2008-09 Houghton Mifflin Fellowship in Publishing History at Harvard University. He divides his time between freelance editing and academic work and is currently working on a monograph based on his thesis.
Jane Potter (Oxford Brookes University): Khaki and Kisses: Reading the Romance Novel in the Great War
Jane Potter is Senior Lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Her book Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918 is published by Oxford University Press. She has also contributed to Publishing in the First World War, edited by Mary Hammond and Shafquat Towheed.
12 March
Alisa Miller (Christ Church, Oxford): Towards a popular canon: Poetry, war and authorial identity in Europe, 1914-1929
Alisa Miller received her DPhil in Modern History from Christ Church, Oxford (2008) for a thesis entitled 'Poetry, politics and propaganda: Rupert Brooke and the role of popular poetry in Great Britain, 1914-1918'. She has worked on the First World War Poetry and Great War Archive (2007-2009) at Oxford. Her publications include articles on war and poetry in Twentieth Century British History and First World War Studies, and an edited volume examining 'Competing Histories of the First World War' (2011). She currently serves as the CREST Research Network Coordinator and research policy officer for GuildHE in London, and is working on a book based on her thesis.
Sara Mori (IES, University of London): Reading during the First World War: the experience of Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux of Florence
Sara Mori obtained a PhD in History at the University of Pisa (2008). Her fields of specialization are publishing and the practices of reading in Italy during the nineteenth-century. Since 2005, she has collaborated with the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence, where she is involved in a project about the diffusion and circulation of foreign books and journals in Italy in the nineteenth-century. Her most recent work is a Catalogue of Tuscan broadsides in the Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea of Rome (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2008).
26 March
Santanu Das (Queen Mary, University of London): Reading India, Writing War: South Asian sepoys, empire and the First World War
Santanu Das is a Senior Lecturer at the department of English, Queen Mary, University of London, and was formerly a research Fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge, and at the British Academy. He is the author of Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge, 2006) and the editor of Race, Empire and Writing the First World War (Cambridge, forthcoming). In 2009, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize, and is currently working on India, empire and First World War writing.
Max Saunders (King's College London): Impressions of War: Ford Madox Ford, Reading, and Parade's End
Max Saunders is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King's College London, where he teaches modern English, European, and American literature. He studied at the universities of Cambridge and Harvard, and was a Research Fellow and then College Lecturer at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is the author of Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, 2 vols. (OUP, 1996) and Self Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature (OUP, 2010); the editor of Ford's Selected Poems, War Prose, Some Do Not . . ., and (with Richard Stang) Critical Essays (Carcanet, 1997, 1999, 2010, 2002), and has published essays on Life-writing, Impressionism, and on numerous Anglo-American authors. He is general editor of International Ford Madox Ford Studies and was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2008-10) to research 'the To-Day and To-Morrow' series.
John A. Lane
Printing Types in the Dutch Golden Age: Nicolaes Briot, Christoffel van Dijck & Nicolaus Kis
The mainstream in the evolution of printing types, like many cultural developments, shifted from France to the southern Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century, Holland in the seventeenth and England & Scotland in the eighteenth. Types from sixteenth-century France and the Low Countries and from most of the eighteenth-century British foundries have been well catalogued, including the work of great punchcutters like Garamont, Granjon, Van den Keere and Caslon. But Nicolaes Briot - possibly the most important figure in the Dutch 'golden age' - remains almost unknown, the types of the more famous Christoffel van Dijck are best known from specimens issued by his successors, and those of Nicolaus Kis from recuttings made in the 1920s from a few surviving sets of matrices (issued under the name Janson). Recently discovered specimens issued by seventeenth-century Dutch typefounders help paint a better picture of the seminal work of these and other masters, and research in archives and libraries fills many of the remaining gaps. In an illustrated lecture, John Lane shows types by these Dutch masters and suggests that Briot's roman types served as the principal models for Van Dijck, Kis and Caslon.
John A. Lane is a freelance historian of printing types, typefounding and type specimens, also specializing in analytical bibliography, paper & watermarks and archival research. He teaches at Amsterdam University's summer school and the Plantin Genootschap in Antwerp, has worked for antiquarian book dealers and taught typography at the University of Reading. He received a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the Printing Historical Society, Bibliographical Society of America and American Printing History Association. His many books and articles discuss the history of printing types from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.
Admission is free but by pre-booked ticket only. For tickets and more details: http://stbride.org/events/printingtypesinthe.
Martyn Ould (The Old School Press): Making books at the end of the seventeenth century - working life at the University Press, Oxford during its formative years
How the University Press at Oxford became a corporate reality and, except for paper, became self-sufficient as a maker of books, despite problems at home and wars abroad.
Biographical Note: Martyn Ould is an independent researcher with a special interest in the history of printing at Oxford University Press.
Readers writing in books
Dr. Jason Scott-Warren (Cambridge): Early Modern Marginalia and the Grain of the Text
Dr. Stephen Colclough (Bangor): Still at the margins? Annotation Strategies and the History of the Modern Book
Website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/our-research/centres/the-material-texts-network
The atmosphere will be informal, as will the presentations. We hope and expect that many of the talks will be illustrated by actual examples.
The sessions will be held in the University of London's Senate House (Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU) and will run from 6.00 to 7.30 pm, usually on the second Tuesday of the month. All are welcome.
Full details can be found at: http://events.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=res ults&aoi_id=358
Lectures and Seminars: Edinburgh
Two meetings will take place in the National Library of Scotland (NLS), George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EW. Advanced booking is required at the NLS talks please book via www.nls.uk or phone 0131 623 3918.
The Edinburgh Bibliographical, Society, founded 1890, promotes the study of books and manuscripts of any date, particularly Scottish, and prints bibliographical work in its Transactions and as Occasional Publications.
Society website: http://mcs.qmuc.ac.uk/EBS/
Lectures and Seminars: Elsewhere
Refreshments will be served in the interval and the Library will be open during the evening
The Cranston Library was founded on 14 March 1701 by the Revd Andrew Cranston. There are over two thousand books in the library, mainly dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. There are also a number of earlier printed volumes and some manuscripts. The library is one of the jewels of Reigate's heritage. (Registered Charity No. 237990).
If you are interested in attending and would like more details, or if you would like to know more about the Cranston Library, do please get in touch with Hilary Ely (h.ely@surreycc.gov.uk)
The first annual Eighteenth-Century Worlds Seminar at the Liverpool Athenaeum (held in conjunction with the University of Liverpool's Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre) will be held on 27 January 2011, with Dr David Allan speaking on "'Inlets of Vice and Debauchery': The Georgian Circulating Library".
Dr Allan is Reader in History at the University of St Andrews, having previously had stints as an administrator and lecturer at Lancaster. He is the author of many books and articles on cultural and intellectual history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment (1993), Philosophy and Politics in Later Stuart Scotland (2000), Making British Culture (2008) and most recently Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England (2010). His pioneering study of lending libraries in Georgian England, A Nation of Readers (2007), was this year awarded the prestigious Gleason Book Award by the American Library Association Library History Round Table.
For further information, or to book a place, please contact Dr Mark Towsey (m.r.m.towsey@liverpool.ac.uk).
The Cranston Library (1701-2011) in the aid of the funds of the Cranston Library
The Trustees invite you to attend the Cranston Lecture 2011
Speakers: Dr Andrea Thomas A Radical in Reigate: John Foxe and his Book of Martyrs / Revd Dr Simon Coupland The King James Bible Past and Present
Refreshments will be served in the interval and the Library will be open during the evening.
THE CRANSTON LIBRARY, founded in 1701 by the Revd Andrew Cranston, is situated in a small chamber above the vestry in St Mary's, the parish church of Reigate. It was probably the first public lending library in England and contains works of literature, history, geography, mathematics and classics as well as theology. The library is a charity managed by a board of trustees who endeavour to maintain it as an early 18th-century library. Many of the books have been there since its foundation, and funds are always needed for conservation.
ANDREA THOMAS studied history at Somerville College, Oxford, and produced a doctoral thesis in Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh. She works primarily as a schoolteacher but also maintains her research interests. She is the author of Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528-1542 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005) and Glory and Honour: the Renaissance in Scotland, forthcoming for 2012. She has been a trustee of the Cranston Library since 2003.
SIMON COUPLAND is vicar of St Paul's Kingston Hill in Kingston upon Thames. He holds a PhD in medieval history, and continues to write and lecture regularly on his specialist subjects, ninth-century continental history and the Vikings. He also studied theology at Cambridge, where he was particularly fascinated by the Reformation and by its relevance to debates, which are still going on in the church and society today. In this lecture he will look at the roots and forerunners of the King James Bible, and also at its place among Bible translations today.
RSVP to cranstonlibrary@gmail.com
For more details see the CEIR blog: http://cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com/
Professor Robert Darnton
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Library
More details: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/newsandevents/events/lecture.html
Principal Investigator Dr Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
9.00 Registration
9.30 Welcome: Martin Conboy (University of Sheffield)
9.45 Session 1
Elliot King (Loyola University Maryland): The Media History Exchange
Andreas Jucker (University of Zurich): 'The defendant replied that he
knew that': The development of speech presentation in the Times 1833-1988
Michael Pidd (University of Sheffield) Understanding Research Needs for
the Exploitation of Digital Newspaper Archives
11.15 Coffee
11.30 Session 2
Clare Horrocks (Liverpool John Moores University): Nineteenth century
journalism online: the market versus academia?
Simon Potter (National University of Ireland, Galway): 'No news hitherto
telegraphed to London concerning Major Marchand can possibly be
correct': Researching transnational history using digital newspaper
archives
12.30 Lunch
1.15 Session 3
Murray Dick (Brunel University): Content analysis 2.0: a framework for
using Wordle
James Mussell (University of Birmingham): The importance of genre for
understanding the nineteenth century newspaper press, as print and
digital resource
Nicole Maurantonio (University of Richmond, Virginia): Archiving crisis:
texts, contexts and narrative challenges
2.45 Session 4
Bob Nicholson (University of Manchester): Cultural History 2.0: exploring
the methodological potential of digital newspaper archives
Laura Wright (University of Cambridge): 'Ladies' Tormentors', 'Tour
Balloons' and 'Vassarettes': everyday commodities from nineteenth century
British newspapers
John Lee (University of Bristol): Exploring the language of the popular
in Anglo-American newspapers 1833-1988 (Looking at Rudyard Kipling)
4.15-5.15 Plenary discussion: future directions and networking
For directions on how to get to the University please visit http://www.shef.ac.uk/visitors/mapsandtravel. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me at clare.burke@sheffield.ac.uk
Outline of the Research Network
There is much work currently being undertaken in the history of newspapers in
the USA and the UK and it is the purpose of this network to bring leading
scholars in the field together to discuss how their research interrelates and
how it can be enhanced by broader disciplinary dialogue drawing on the
traditions and methodologies of history, language studies, literary studies,
and journalism studies. This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by
the growing number of digital newspaper archives from the 19th and 20th
centuries from the USA and the UK. As we move from a research economy of
archive scarcity to one of plenty, we need to be able to set out a new, more
integrated set of methodologies which enable the wealth and diversity of these
resources to be more appropriately mined.
Each of the seminars will seek to attract high quality, publishable research which contributes to the themes of the Research Network. The seminars, located as they are in the UK, the USA and Switzerland will aim to bring together leading researchers and emerging scholars so as to enhance the international and interdisciplinary ambitions of the project. The Research Network will also co-ordinate publication with the Media History Exchange, an archive and social network sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Aims and Objectives
Core Group
Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield
Kevin Barnhurst, University of Illinois at Chicago
Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield
David Copeland, Elon University
Bob Franklin, University of Cardiff
Jane Hodson, University of Sheffield
Andreas H. Jucker, University of Zurich
Chandrika Kaul, St Andrews
Ed King, Head of Collections, British Newspaper Library
Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
David Machin, University of Cardiff
John Nerone University of Illinois
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Terry Threadgold, University of Cardiff
Joel Wiener, CUNY
Key Dates
14 January 2011 (Sheffield) -
Exploring digital newspaper archives
12 March 2011 (New York) -
The long popularization process: Anglo-American perspectives
18 January 2012 (Zurich) - Historical pragmatics and the language of popular newspapers
28 March 2012 (Cardiff) -
The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view
8 July 2012 (Sheffield) -
Research methodology and digital newspapers: feasibility and sustainability
During the restoration and eighteenth century, the civil war period was consistently represented as a traumatic break in the history of England and the British Isles, separating the institutionally and culturally modern Augustans from either the primitiveness or idealised simplicity of the earlier epoch. Today, much academic practice silently repeats the period’s self-representation as a century divided between pre and post civil war cultures, whether in research, job descriptions or in undergraduate survey courses. Among the effects of this division of labour is a tendency for the earlier ‘Renaissance’ decades to be privileged over the restoration, which is frequently treated as a poor relation to the eighteenth century.
This conference provides a forum for researchers in all disciplines whose work spans all or any part of the long seventeenth century. As our titular quotations from Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Swift’s sermon ‘On the Martyrdom of King Charles I’ suggest, we also encourage papers on subsequent imaginings of the period that have contributed to or contested the ways in which it is read today. Concerns include but are not limited to:
Confirmed speakers include: Rosanna Cox (Kent), Jeremy Gregory (Manchester), Helen Pierce (York), George Southcombe (Oxford), Jeremy Tambling (Manchester), Edward Vallance (Roehampton)
Please send abstracts of 300-500 words to James Smith (Manchester) and Joel Swann (Keele) by 15th October 2010: c17.conference@manchester.ac.uk
Further information: http://www.chethams.org.uk/c17conference.html
Proposals from postgraduate students are particularly welcome. Attendance by students and Society for Renaissance Studies members will be subsidised by the kind support of the SRS.
To celebrate a new collaboration between Liverpool’s Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre and the Liverpool Athenaeum (one of Britain’s most important historical subscription libraries, founded in 1798), we will be hosting a major international workshop exploring new perspectives on the contribution made by libraries and other institutions of associational reading to the cultural, intellectual, political, military, social and religious history of the global eighteenth century.
The recent upsurge in interest in the history of reading has opened up numerous new interpretative avenues for scholars. Libraries, book clubs and reading circles have attracted particular attention, as scholars seek to recover the physical, administrative and cultural environments in which reading took place. Institutions of reading promised access to a much wider range of books than most members could possibly afford, but they were hugely significant in other ways. Libraries emerged to serve particular communities, reflecting the specialist demands of imperial garrisons, dissenting academies and informal networks of medical men and lawyers. Associational libraries provided a forum for conversation, debate and sociability, and made a key contribution to the social impact of the Enlightenment, the growth of nationalism and the spread of religious evangelicalism. Since they emerged in Britain, North America and continental Europe at around the same time, they also provide endless opportunities for comparative history – with different territories adopting distinctive organisational models, yet consuming a remarkably similar canon of international bestsellers.
Speakers will include:
For more information, to register or to take part, please contact Dr Mark Towsey (m.r.m.towsey@liverpool.ac.uk).
All are welcome, registration is free!
Are you interested in the reading experiences of British subjects and overseas visitors to Britain from 1450-1945 - whoever they were, and pretty much whatever they were reading? If so you may wish to learn more about RED (the Reading Experience Database). RED contains evidence of all sorts of reading, not only books but also newspapers, journals, posters, advertisements, magazines, letters, scripts, playbills, tickets, chapbooks and almanacs, and the experience of reading aloud.
On the 25th February the RED team will be hosting a workshop designed specifically for teachers in Higher Education. The purpose will be to explore how the latest version of RED can be used by students in a range of academic disciplines, as well as in attendees' own research projects. For example, data in RED can form part of a study of the reception of literary texts; it can help us understand the role of printed material in shaping popular ideas and opinions; and it offers information about what people in the past read, how and in what circumstances they read, what impact their reading had on them, and how the experience of reading changed over time. The workshop will include a demonstration of RED, and hands-on activity sessions using primary materials to show how users can explore RED, and contribute evidence to it themselves. There will be opportunities to discuss how RED can help train students in the use of digital resources in the humanities. Further details are given in the draft programme below.
The workshop is free, but numbers are limited, and it is advisable to book early.
For further information, contact Carol Gillespie (c.a.gillespie@open.ac.uk); tel: (+44) (0)1908 655141.
To book a place, please complete and return the booking form available at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/index.html
For travel directions see http://www3.open.ac.uk/contact/locations.aspx
A one-day event exploring aspects of street literature and popular print traditions
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
Principal Investigator Dr Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
Please send abstracts of 500 words to Administrative Assistant Clare.Burke@Sheffield.ac.uk by the end of October 2010 if you feel that you can make a significant contribution to either or both of the seminars. We have a limited amount of sponsorship available to support travel to both seminars and in some cases we can also pay for participants’ accommodation.
Outline of the Research Network
There is much work currently being undertaken in the history of newspapers in
the USA and the UK and it is the purpose of this network to bring leading
scholars in the field together to discuss how their research interrelates and
how it can be enhanced by broader disciplinary dialogue drawing on the
traditions and methodologies of history, language studies, literary studies,
and journalism studies. This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by
the growing number of digital newspaper archives from the 19th and 20th
centuries from the USA and the UK. As we move from a research economy of
archive scarcity to one of plenty, we need to be able to set out a new, more
integrated set of methodologies which enable the wealth and diversity of these
resources to be more appropriately mined.
Each of the seminars will seek to attract high quality, publishable research which contributes to the themes of the Research Network. The seminars, located as they are in the UK, the USA and Switzerland will aim to bring together leading researchers and emerging scholars so as to enhance the international and interdisciplinary ambitions of the project. The Research Network will also co-ordinate publication with the Media History Exchange, an archive and social network sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Aims and Objectives
Core Group
Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield
Kevin Barnhurst, University of Illinois at Chicago
Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield
David Copeland, Elon University
Bob Franklin, University of Cardiff
Jane Hodson, University of Sheffield
Andreas H. Jucker, University of Zurich
Chandrika Kaul, St Andrews
Ed King, Head of Collections, British Newspaper Library
Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
David Machin, University of Cardiff
John Nerone University of Illinois
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Terry Threadgold, University of Cardiff
Joel Wiener, CUNY
Key Dates
14 January 2011 (Sheffield) -
Exploring digital newspaper archives
12 March 2011 (New York) -
The long popularization process: Anglo-American perspectives
18 January 2012 (Zurich) - Historical pragmatics and the language of popular newspapers
28 March 2012 (Cardiff) -
The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view
8 July 2012 (Sheffield) -
Research methodology and digital newspapers: feasibility and sustainability
Convenors: Dr Brian Young and Jacqueline Thalmann
Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church from 1689 to his death in 1710, and Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford between 1692 and 1695, was a true polymath: Anglican divine, politician, scholar, collector, musician, architect, to name but a few of his talents and occupations. This concentration of interests and activities, combined with a powerful post which enabled Aldrich to promote and utilise them, made him ‘one of the most eminent men in England’ in the late 17th century. But his life and activities are much under-researched and under-studied, a fact that might be explained through the absence of most of his personal papers. In his will he asked for everything to be destroyed except for his collections of music manuscripts (c. 8000), books (c. 3000) and prints (c. 2000 - still in their original albums), which he left to Christ Church. In recent years scholars have started to study these collections in more detail and the cataloguing of them has begun.
His fundamental purpose as a collector, especially in his accumulation of prints and music, was a strongly utilitarian one, and this prevailed over pure academic curiosity on his part. He used the prints in his collection to design plates for the Oxford Almanac; some of the drawings by Aldrich which he seems to have made for the newly appointed engraver and printer Michael Burghers, have survived. A glass window in Christ Church cathedral, now lost, was also designed by him after prints in his collection. Furthermore, the design for the window and the prints offer a link to General John Guise (1682 – 1765), who was taught by Aldrich, and who bequeathed his large and important art collection to Christ Church. Several indications lead to the theory that Aldrich was the major influence behind Guise’s interest in art and his extraordinary bequest. Prints after Girolamo da Treviso's Adoration of the Shepherds and Cornelius van Cleve’s painting of the same subject - which we know were repeatedly used by Aldrich - must have made such a deep impression on John Guise that he subsequently acquired the paintings, which he then bequeathed to Christ Church (at the time believed to be by Raphael).
It is again the combination of theory and practice which is specific to one of Henry Aldrich's major interests: architecture. This union can be seen in his unfinished treatise, Elementa Architecturae, which drew strongly on Vitruvius and Palladio, and in his designs for the Peckwater Quadrangle at Christ Church, built between 1706 and 1708. The quadrangle is regarded as the first English Palladian building in Britain, constructed several years before the publication of Colin Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus.
This interdisciplinary Study Day will look at Henry Aldrich in more detail and will trace his substantial influence on late 17th century Oxford.
The Study Day has been made possible with the support of the Paul Mellon Centre and the Patrons of the Picture Gallery.
Ticketing
The Study-Day fee, including coffee/lunch/tea is £20 full price and £15 for student, senior and unemployed concessions. To register for the conference and to check availability please contact the Picture Gallery by Email: picturegallery@chch.ox.ac.uk or Tel: 01865 276 172. Payment can be made by cash or cheque. Cheques should be made payable to 'Christ Church Picture Gallery'.
Exhibition
Christ Church Picture Gallery is commemorating the tercentenary of the death of Henry Aldrich (1648 – 1710) with an exhibition: Henry Aldrich – An Oxford Universal Man (22 October 2010 to 30 January 2011)
Address and further information:
Christ Church Picture Gallery
Christ Church
Oxford OX1 1DP
Tel: 01865 276 172
See also: http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/gallery
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2010
The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version, undoubtedly the most important English translation of the Bible. Though this version is today often associated with Fundamental Evangelical Christian circles, its historical importance and its cultural and artistic impact cannot be overlooked. To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication, SIG VERBI, an international research group of CETRA under the auspices of the faculties of Theology and Arts of the K.U.Leuven and the Department of Translation Studies of the Lessius University College (Antwerp), is holding a conference. The conference fits into the events to commemorate the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, organized by Refo500, of which the K.U.Leuven is a project partner. The aim of the conference is to present research on this remarkable version of the Bible primarily from the perspective of translation, including the effects this piece of translation have exercised on various areas of religious and popular culture, and especially on the theory and practice of translation.
Confirmed speakers include, among others, prof. dr. Stephen Prickett (University of Kent), prof. dr. Gordon Campbell (University of Leicester), prof. dr. Guido Latré (U.C.Louvain & UGent), prof. dr. Amanda Piesse (Trinity College) and prof. dr. Tibor Fabiny (Budapest).
Thursday 24 March, 2011 in Lessius (Antwerpen)
1. Historical Session
2. Literary/Cultural Session
Friday 25 March, 2011 at the Faculty of Theology (K.U.Leuven)
3. Exegetical Session
4. Practical Theology Session
The above list is not meant to be exclusive or restrictive. All suggestions for papers relating to the topic of the conference’s theme will be taken into consideration. We welcome paper submissions from graduate students.
It is anticipated that the allocated time for each paper will be 30 minutes, with additional time for questions/discussion.
Please submit your abstract (max. 500 words) by 30 November 2010 to Dr. Gergely Juhász: gergely.juhasz@theo.kuleuven.be
Notification of acceptance by 15 December 2010.
Details of accommodation in Leuven or in Antwerp and a booking form will be available soon from the conference organizers and on the websites of the Faculty of Theology (http://theo.kuleuven.be) and of Lessius University College (www.lessius.eu). For further enquiries please contact either of the organisers Dr. Gergely Juhász (gergely.juhasz@theo.kuleuven.be) or Dr. Paul Arblaster (p.e.t.arblaster@hszuyd.nl). It is hoped that (selected) papers from the conference will be published in a volume edited by Dr Arblaster and Dr Juhász.
You are cordially invited to attend a one day research colloquium at Queen Margaret University on the topic of the postcolonial book. This colloquium will feature new research about the production, reception and circulation of the postcolonial book and related cultural commodities, institutions and practices. Papers will consider how postcolonial realities have been shaped by the global trade in cultural commodities, and will highlight the intersecting legal, social, political and economic forces that impinge upon the postcolonial cultural field and communications circuit. The colloquium is supported by strategic research theme funding from Queen Margaret University.
The colloquium, which will include lunch, is free for postgraduates and academics from UK Higher Education establishments. To register for this event, please visit: http://conferencing.qmu.ac.uk/index.php/CPB/
Numbers are limited to 20, so early registration is advisable.
Schedule:
9.00am-9.15am / coffee and welcome
9.15am-10.45am / Session I: Publishing
Caroline Davis: Publishing Wole Soyinka: Oxford University Press and
the Creation of 'Africa's Own William Shakespeare'
Alistair McCleery: Penguin and post-colonial publishing 1948-1972
10.45am-11.00am / coffee
11.00am-12.30pm: Session II: Readership and Reception
James Procter: Not Reading Brick Lane
Ruvani Ranasinha: Writing and Reading Sri Lanka: the shifting politics
of cultural translation, consumption and the implied reader in
contemporary diasporic Sri Lankan fiction
12.30pm-1.30pm / lunch (provided)
1.30pm-3.00pm / Session III: 'Centres' and 'Peripheries'
Peter McDonald: The Question of the Book in South Africa
Ana Margarida Dias Martins: 'Gender and the Postcolonial Exotic' in
Lusophone Postcolonial literatures
3.00pm-3.15pm / coffee
3.15pm-5.15pm / Session IV: Documentaries, Archives, and Festivals
Gail Low: 'A Commonwealth of Words?': Discoursing on the Commonwealth
at the Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965
Andrew van der Vlies: Peripatetic Matter: Ivan Vladislavi and the
archaeology of art in the ordinary
Graham Huggan: Attenborough, Colonialism, and the British Tradition of
Nature Documentary
Deadline for proposals: January 6, 2011.
This year the Medieval English Theatre meeting on Texts in Plays will be hosted by Sarah Carpenter at Edinburgh University (sarah.carpenter@ed.ac.uk) The meeting aims to look across the range of uses of written and read material in staging medieval drama of all genres. This might include documents associated with play production and their functions, books as physical properties on stage, scenes involving public or private writing or reading, written material as part of visual presentation in plays, processions and entries, or any other stage use of the written or printed word. All colleagues interested in offering a paper for the event are warmly invited to send titles and a brief abstract to Sarah Carpenter, sarah.carpenter@ed.ac.uk or to Sue Niebrzydowski, s.niebrzydowski@bangor.ac.uk by 6 January 2011.
The first of three AHRC-funded OESJD 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 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).
Please visit the conference website in early 2011 for a full programme and titles to presentations: http://www.cems-oxford.org/donne/events/march-2011-editing-donne
The theme is 'Early Christian Writers and the Text of the New Testament'
Proposals are invited for papers of 30 or 45 minutes on this topic. Suggestions for workshops, presenting work in progress, are also welcome. These, and any enquires, should be sent to H.A.G.Houghton@bham.ac.uk
Further information (and a booking form) will be posted on the web page at http://www.arts-itsee.bham.ac.uk/itseeweb/conferences/
Papers from the Fifth Colloquium have been published as: Textual Variation: Theological and Social Tendencies? (Texts and Studies 3.6) http://www.gorgiaspress.com/bookshop/p-56164-houghton-h-and-d-parker-textual-variation-theological-and-social-tendencies.aspx
With an opening lecture from Dr. Joseph L Black (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), editor of The Martin Marprelate Tracts, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Registration packs now available; call for papers still open!
Inspired by the recent publication of the first new edition of the Tracts for nearly a century, this day conference seeks to position the publication of the Tracts not only as a pivotal event in the history of English polemic and religious writing but also as something which redefined the terms in which religious politics in early modern England were debated publicly. Initially produced and circulated during 1588 and 1589, the Tracts were published on a secret press transported around the country under cover of darkness. Many of those involved in the production of the Tracts had close ties to the county of Warwickshire and its neighbours and defining their publication as a Midlands event is something the conference will seek to address. The historical background to the tracts will be considered, along with the wider pressures that faced those seeking further Protestant reform during this period and the way in which this gave rise to an environment in which the Tracts were conceived, written and produced. Despite the widespread dissemination of the Tracts and the dramatic response of the Elizabethan regime to their publication, many questions remain unanswered.
Brief proposals (c. 200 words) should be submitted for papers lasting c. 20 - 25 minutes while proposals for shorter papers lasting c. 10 minutes to be presented in round table discussion are also very welcome, particularly where they represent new perspectives on the Tracts or their wider influence.
Topics might include: the reception of the Tracts in towns and cities; the dissemination and production of pamphlets in Elizabethan England; stylistic and literary analysis of the Tracts or aspects of them; the Elizabethan reading public; the Presbyterians and the bishops; the influence of the Tracts on the pamphleteers of the 1640’s.
All enquiries and/or proposals should be sent to Cathryn Enis, c.e.enis@reading.ac.uk by Monday 17th January 2011
Conference advisors: Professor Ralph Houlbrooke and Dr Helen Parish, Department of History / Dr Mary Morrissey, Department of English and American Literature
Organizers: Dr. Sheila McTighe, Senior Lecturer, Emily Gray and Anita Sganzerla, PhD candidates
For details about tickets and attending the conference, contact researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk
From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, the advent of print utterly changed the production of images. A repertoire of images of all kinds, from the crudest woodcut to the most virtuosic engraving, from broadsides of wonders and prodigies to pictures reproducing famous paintings and sculptures, was put into the hands of both image-makers and consumers of images. New possibilities for allusion and intertextuality came into being thanks to this bridge between the image and its publics. And the publication of printed images, a commercial venture, widened the spectrum of those who bought images, producing new kinds of viewers and readers.
This one-day conference focuses on the relations between print culture and the visual arts as a whole, looking not only at the artist‚s print as produced by the peintre-graveur, but at the relations between the entire spectrum of print and what we think of now as ÂŒfine art‚. Since the 1990s when the studies of Roger Chartier inspired work across many historical disciplines, much has been claimed for the impact of printed media on social, intellectual and cultural life in early modernity. The study of popular culture, the history of mentalités, book history and reception studies across a diverse range of periods and cultures have all profited from opening up the area known loosely as print culture. Art historical studies, however, have not often referred to this body of research. Bringing together some of the disciplines that study print culture to focus on the image and the printed text opens up new questions of concern to historians and literary historians as well as to students of the art print.
This conference will be concerned with the distinctive ways in which the communication of ideas, news, and entertainment was conducted nationally and internationally during the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War. Our main focus will be on print production, but we will also want to provide a context for this in terms of broadcast materials, and documentary and feature films. We are interested in propaganda, in censorship, in the sustaining of morale at home, and in the projection of ideologies abroad. Additionally, we would welcome papers on how periodical and book publishers coped with the privations of war and the temptations (such as money from government agencies) of an ambivalent peace. Relationships between government, government agencies, actually or apparently independent institutions, and publishers and writers, will also be of interest.
This is an international conference, and thus we would particularly welcome papers that offered views from countries within the Axis during the 1939-45 period, and from countries in the Communist Bloc during the Cold War. We hope that one strand in the conference will be concerned with Britain's Ministry of Information, which operated during the Second World War from London University's Senate House, in which the conference will be held.
Papers should be no more than twenty minutes in length. It is our intention subsequently to publish as many of the papers as we can, if possible in the form of a book.
Proposals with your name, position, address, email address, and a summary of your paper (the summary should be no more than 300 words) should be sent either by mail or email to Jon Millington (Jon.Millington@sas.ac.uk), Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
The deadline for submission is 1 November 2010. Those submitting proposals will be informed of the result by 1 December 2010 at the latest.
A Joint Conference organised by the Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts at the University of Plymouth and the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen
Call for Papers
This conference investigates the cultural uses of the letter, and the related practises of correspondence in early modern culture. Concentrating on the years 1550-1640, it examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter that saw a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society and an expansion in the uses to which letters were put. The conference aims to enhance our understanding of epistolary culture and to challenge accepted models of epistolarity through the study of letter-writing practices in all their nuanced complexity, ranging from the textual production of letters, their subsequent delivery and circulation, to the various ways in which letters were read and preserved for posterity. The transmission and reception of correspondence is a major theme for exploration, from the various processes by which letters were delivered in an age before the post office, to their copying and dissemination in manuscript form, and publication in print, as well as the oral divulgation of letters through group and public reading. Study of the early modern letter in its material and cultural forms can reveal the complex interplay of material practices of letter-writing with rhetorical strategies of the letter text. Contemporary literary appropriations of the letter on page and stage demonstrate the cultural significance of the letter and its potential resonances.
Proposals are invited for papers that treat the following key areas:
Proposals for papers, including titles and abstracts (of no more than 300 words) should be sent to James Daybell (james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk) and Andrew Gordon (a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk) before 1st July 2010.
Confirmed Speakers Include:
The Organisers
James Daybell is Reader in Early Modern British History at the University of Plymouth. His publications include Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), three collections of essays, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (Ashgate, 2004), Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Palgrave, 2001) and Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580-1730 (Palgrave, 2010) and more than twenty articles and essays in journals and edited collections. Dr Daybell is currently completing a monograph entitled, The Material Letter: The Practices and Culture of Letters and Letter-Writing in Early Modern England (Palgrave 2011)
Andrew Gordon is Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and Programme Co-ordinator of the Department of English. He has published articles on various aspects of urban culture in the renaissance from city mapping to the urban signboard, and co-edited (with Bernhard Klein) Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2001) and (with Trevor Stack) a special issue of Citizenship Studies (2007) devoted to early modern concepts of citizenship. A monograph entitled Writing the City is forthcoming. His work on manuscript culture has focused principally on letter-writing and included articles on Francis Bacon, the earl of Essex, John Donne, and early modern libels.
For further details please email: james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk, or a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk.
Much attention has been given in recent years to the book as a material, historical object and its possible technological obsolescence in the era of digitization. Such reflections have tended to concentrate on the production and cultural circulation of books, their significance and their power to shape knowledge and subjectivities. But there is another aspect to our interactions with the book which remains relatively unexplored: the history of book destruction. In certain circumstances books are treated not with reverence but instead with violence or disregard. This conference invites reflections on this alternative history of the book, and we welcome papers from a range of historical periods and disciplinary backgrounds. We welcome proposals from postgraduate students, as well as from more established academics.
Why do people destroy books? What are the mechanics of book destruction: the burning, pulping, defacing, tearing, drowning, cutting, burying, eating? What are the cultural meanings that have been attached to book destruction, and what do they reveal about our investments in this over-familiar object? Why should the burning of books have such symbolic potency? Book destruction is often invoked as a symbol of oppressive, despotic regimes; what is our ethical position, now, in relation to such acts? What is the relationship between book destruction and other forms of cutting up (quotation; collage)? When do acts of destruction become moments of creativity? How does destruction relate to recycling and reuse? Do transitions in media (manuscript to print; print to digital) threaten those older forms? How might the current phase of digitization and the gradual disappearance of library stock relate to prior moments of destruction? In the internet age, is it still possible to destroy (that is, completely erase) a text? What does materiality mean in a digital age?
Please send 300-word proposals (for a 20 minute paper) and a brief CV, to
A conference organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub, the Centre for Media History at the University of Aberystwyth, and the journal Media History
The 4th biennial Media History conference will focus on the ways in which people have understood the social, cultural and political roles of the media over the past five centuries. The concept of 'the media' will be interpreted broadly, so as to include newspapers, magazines and one-off publications which included news and information, as well as manuscript, aural, visual, and broadcast and other electronic sources.
A great deal of work has been done by scholars on the institutional, political and cultural history of various forms of media. 'Perception, Reception and Deception' will build on this literature to explore the ways in which print, manuscript, visual representations and the broadcast media have been understood, conceptualised, and imaginatively represented in the societies in which they were produced. It will, in other words, focus not on media production but on the reception, depiction and perception of the media by individuals and groups of individuals in a variety of different contexts over time.
How have readers, consumers, and the industry itself framed arguments about the media as a force for good (or evil) at different points in time? Have contemporaries always seen the media as an agent of change, or is there a counter-history of the media to be written in terms of promoting conservatism, deference and order? How have people understood and represented the media in terms of concepts of personal and geographical space, time and changing belief systems? Can we think 'internationally' about the similarities and differences between perceptions of the media in different states and nations over time, or is the media still best understood and examined in largely local or regional contexts? How, in short, have men and women answered in different contexts the apparently simple questions, 'what is the media, and what is it for?'
Proposals are welcome from a range of chronological, geographical and methodological backgrounds. Abstracts, of no more than 200 words for papers of between 20 to 25 minutes duration, should be sent by close of business on 30 September 2010 to Mediahistory2011@gmail.com
Additional enquiries can be directed to one or more of the following: Dr. Jason McElligott, Dr Sian Nicholas or Professor Tom O’Malley.
Sponsored by the British Society for Literature and Science
Keynote speaker: Aileen Fyfe (University of St Andrews)
In literary studies, canonisation has been an important topic since the 1980s. Alongside critiques of canons as pantheons of dead white males, and work to supplement canonical literatures by (re)instating female authors, new topics, and world literatures, critics have interrogated the very usefulness of 'the canon' as a conceptual category. To what extent are canons necessary to disciplines as they compete to secure their own special kinds of authority? Do specialists create special sets of texts in their own image, or do special texts produce a need for specialist expertise? And what is the role of the critic, and of readers, in making and unmaking literary canons? Such questions have energised our relation to the history of literature, but in the history of science discussion of the 'canon' is only just getting off the ground. The problems here are different: perhaps there is a canon of /people/ (Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin) but isolating and defining a canon of scientific /texts/ is a much trickier affair. Papers and speakers are therefore invited to this one-day conference debating the problems and possibilities of a scientific canon.
Papers might address the following (or related) questions:
Please send abstracts to Adelene Buckland, University of East Anglia, at a.buckland@uea.ac.uk, by 31st January 2011. Panel submissions especially welcome.
Keynote speakers
Professor Susan Schreibman, Director of the Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO), the Royal Irish, Academy, Dublin.
Professor Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg.
IT-journalist Mark Malseed, author of The Google Story.
Dr. Linda Bree, Commissioning Editor, Cambridge University Press.
Professor Peter Naur, Computer Scientist and winner of the Turing Prize.
Themes
The conference will discuss a broad range of issues all concerning the interactions between research and study in the humanities and so-called web-based knowledge. We are seeking speakers who are interested in the epistemologies of knowledge, issues concerning legal copyrights, the construction of national legacy on the web, the development of web-based learning techniques, and the historical perspectives on modern-day IT culture and the dissemination of knowledge.
Rationale
Ordinarily providers of web-based knowledge and users of technology in the humanities do not interact on an academic level. The objective of the conference is to create a forum for interaction that breaks down this barrier. Thus, we ask participants to redefine their own disciplines in order to address the possibility of a new definition of knowledge: a definition that has implication for the fields of philosophy, ethics, economy, law, and psychology. We will ask about the consequences this new dissemination has for the establishment of transnational, or rather global (abandoning national borders) communities of knowledge.
Who we are. Who we are not
This conference finds its origins not in IT media studies. It finds them in the studies of the humanities. We are not researchers directly involved in the latest advances in the computer science. Rather, we are researchers, like so many others, who are indirectly involved with advancing technology; we are end users. With this understanding in place, we invite participants of this conference to come to an open form so that they can interact with people like us and researchers from the worlds of IT technology. In other words, Click-on-Knowledge is a conference designed to break the ice between IT providers and users. We cannot impress enough the importance of such an event. This conference aims to allow an open dialogue and thereby create permanent links between various groups, so that these links can foster greater interaction between providers and users.
Impact
The impact of the conference comes in the form of creating a community of scholars that would have access to each other beyond the interval of the conference itselaf. In the past, web-sites have merely functioned as ancillary elements to such gatherings. However, with the assistance of our collaborative partner Project Matterhorn, the use of web-based technology would be employed to maintain an internet portal for research and discussion. The results of this portal would be that the participants of the conference would come together to form an international community that might grow and develop through time. In addition, it is the aim of the conference to produce a hard-copy text that would take the form of a collection of essays. These essays would consist of the presentations given at the conference. In addition, it is the aim of the conference to produce a hard-copy text that would take the form of a collection of essays. These essays would consist of the presentations given at the conference.
Traditional and Digital Formats
In the spirit of the conference's aim, we seek to combine the traditional elements of an academic conference and those elements of video conference and ‘streaming'. This allows participants to choose between whether they wish to physically attend the conference at the University of Copenhagen or merely wish to attend online. Should a participant opts to participant on line, as the support structures for the conference develop over the next year, materials will be available on line so that this participant can attend over the net. It is our hope that this will enable participants from developing countries, as well as eastern Europe with low travel budgets to enhance our discussion with their insights.
Website: http://engerom.ku.dk/clickonknowledge/
Webcasts
Certain plenary sessions will be available via the SHARP website: http://www.sharpweb.org/en/newsevents/multimedia.html
Webcast schedule
All times are in CET, Central European Time (UTC + 1, and currently using
summer, daylight saving hours), which is the time now given in New York
(EDT) plus 6 hours. Sessions starting at 15:00 in Copenhagen will be viewable
at 09:00 in New York, but at 18:30 in Mumbai (IST, no daylight saving).
Wednesday 11 May 2011
10:00-10:15 Welcome: Announcements (Dr. Robert Jensen-Rix and Dr. Andrew
Miller)
10:15-10:30 Opening of the Conference: Dean Kirsten Refsing, Faculty of
Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
10:30-11:30 Plenary Speaker: Professor Susan Schreibman, Director of the
Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO), the Royal Irish, Academy, Dublin. 'We
are All Digital Humanists'. (Introduced by Professor Charles Lock)
Break
12:00-13:00 Plenary Panel: University of Leeds: Professor Simon Burrows,
Vincent Hiribarren and Mark Curran. 'Digital Humanities and the Mapping of the
Eighteenth Century Book Trade'. (Introduced by Dr. Robert Jensen-Rix)
Break
14:00-15:00 Plenary TRAMS Speaker: Dr. Linda Bree, Editorial Director, Arts
and Literature, Cambridge University Press. 'Scholarly Publishing and
Technological Change'. (Introduced by Dr. Robert Jensen-Rix)
Thursday 12 May 2011
10:00-11:00 Plenary Speaker: Professor Peter Naur, Computer Scientist and
winner of the Turing Prize. Misapprehensions Around 'Knowledge'. (Introduced
by Professor Charles Lock)
Break
11:30-12:30 Plenary Panel: Educating Rita? Cultural Heritage, Digitization and
Bildung:
Helle Porsdam and Mia Bendix, 'On the Right to Read: Digitization and
Notions of Bildung'
Stina Theilmann-Lock, '"Worth a Thousand Words": Image Database
and the Right to Information'
Nanna Bonde Thystrup, 'Cultural Heritage and Digitization - From
Preservation to Access'
(Introduced by Robert Jensen-Rix)
Break
15:00-15:30 Plenary Speaker: ENGEROM Speaker: Professor Charles
Lock: 'Digital Typography'. (Introduced by Dr. Andrew Miller)
Friday 13 May 2011
10:00-11:00 Plenary Speaker: Jasper Hedegaard Bøjsen, Director of
Technology, Microsoft Denmark. (Introduced by Professor Charles Lock)
Break
14:00-15.00 Plenary Speaker: Mark Malseed, IT-journalist, author of The
Google Story. 'Google and the Humanities: Friend or Foe?' (Introduced by Dr.
Andrew Miuller)
Break
15:15-16:30 Plenary Panel Discussion: Professor Susan Schreibman, Jasper
Hedegaard Bøjsen, Professor Peter Naur, Dr. Linda Bree, Jasper Bojsen, Mark Malseed and Professor Charles Lock.
Focusing on the transition towards e-books and e-reading.
Conference sessions include:
Preconference workshops on:
Further information can be found at http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/
Registration is now open.
Library and Information History Group: One day conference
Speakers to include:
The conference will commence at 9.45 (registration from 9.20)
A fee of £40 (inc. VAT) will be charged for members of the Library & Information History Group, and £52 (inc. VAT) for non-members: fee includes annual membership of the Group.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
A student bursary is available for attendance at this event - for details see the booking form.
For bookings contact:
Shauna Barrett,
Subject Librarian for Anthropology & Celtic,
UCL Library Services,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
s.barrett@ucl.ac.uk
http://www.lihg.org
An exhibition in the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace
Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version
This exhibition explores the tools and traditions of biblical translation, from Wyclif to the New English Bible. On display will be a wide range of manuscripts and books from the collections of Lambeth Palace Library, offering a glimpse into the practical processes involved, as well as the motives behind these initiatives. At the centre of the exhibition is the 1611 edition of the King James Version, set in the historical context of the scholarship which created it.
Admission by pre-booking (timed ticket) only
Visit www.lambethpalacelibrary.org or call the booking line: 0871 230 1107
Tickets: £6 adults (children under 17 free)
Plenary speaker: Leon Jackson, Associate Professor of English, University of South Carolina (Author of: The Business of Letters: Authorial Economies in Antebellum America (2008))
Roundtable
Print culture in practice: first-hand perspectives on archives,
methodologies, and magazines
With contributions by Chris Cotton (Product Manager, Proquest,
American Periodicals Series Online), Adam Farquhar (Head of Digital
Library Technology, British Library), Clare Horrocks (Liverpool John
Moores University), James Mussell (University of Birmingham), and
Steven O'Brien (Editor, The London Magazine)
For further details, directions, and to register by March 31st, please visit http://knowledgenetworks.wordpress.com.
Call for papers
We are seeking four or five papers of approx. 30 minutes each, one at 11.15 a.m. and the others after lunch, with ample time for discussion after each paper. Papers dealing with any aspect of printing and book
production in Continental Eastern and Western Europe are warmly invited,
as are papers dealing with other aspects of historical bibliography,
editing,
and the history of the book and reading. Papers giving an account of
work
in progress or offers to introduce discussion of bibliographical
interest are
a long-standing feature of the seminar.
Please let us know by the end of April if you are willing to give a paper.
Barry Taylor (barry.taylor@bl.uk; tel 020 7412 7576) Susan Reed (susan.reed@bl.uk; tel 020 7412 7572)
This conference coincides with the conclusion of the Derry & Raphoe Diocesan Library Project, a 3.5 year project to conserve and publicize a collection heretofore relatively unknown to modern scholarship. The aim of the conference is to engage with bibliographers, historians and conservators to generate an interdisciplinary discussion about the current and possible future uses of such libraries and the curatorial and preservation issues that have been raised over the course of the project. Conference themes include:
Confirmed speakers include: Prof. Nicholas Pickwoad (University of the Arts, London), Caroline Bendix (conservator in private practice), Jonathan Rhys-Lewis (consultant on preservation and collections care issues), Elizabethanne Boran (The Edward Worth Library), Dr. Mark Empey (Church of Ireland Historical Society, Queen’s University Belfast), Ken Bergin (Glucksman Library, University of Limerick) on behalf of Prof. Robert S. Matteson (St. Lawrence University), Andrew Megaw (Trinity College Dublin), Jennifer Miglus (Hartford Medical Society Library), Crónán Ó Doibhlin (University College Cork), Kim O'Donnell (Etherington Conservation Services – West)
There is still time to submit an abstract for this conference. Abstracts should be sent to Jennifer Jarvis j.jarvis@ulster.ac.uk no later than the end of January, 2011. For more information please visit our website, www.derryraphoelibrary.org, and follow the link to the conference announcement.
About the Library
The library, today numbering roughly 5,600 printed books and pamphlets ranging in date from around 1480 to 1900, was formally founded in the early 18th century and incorporated the collections of earlier bishops of Derry, notably Ezekiel Hopkins. It was intended to provide the then Diocese of Derry with a reading library that could be used by successive Bishops, and later by all Diocesan members. Most of the books in the Derry Library were printed in the 16th and 17th centuries, whereas the Raphoe Diocesan Library, added to the Derry collection in 1881, dates mostly from the 18th century. Both exemplify the intellectual links between Derry and the wider world during an important period in the city’s history. Today the amalgamated library is under the guardianship of the University of Ulster, through a long-term agreement with the Diocese.
A large number of books still retain contemporary or near-contemporary bindings. This happy circumstance offers a rare opportunity to study aspects of their construction, to appreciate them as artefacts and to uncover the histories of their ownership and movement within the larger European book trade. Many avenues of study pertaining to the history of the book in Britain and Ireland have already been identified in preliminary reports undertaken prior to the conservation project; others undoubtedly remain to be discovered.
The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication, in association with Scottish Insight, is co-organising a Programme of Enquiry: 'Independent Publishing: Making and Preserving Culture in a Global Literary Marketplace' from June-August 2011, in Glasgow. For full details, see the Programme website: http://www.independentpublishing.stir.ac.uk/
We will be holding three separate themed conferences:
Digital Technologies and Publishing (9-10 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Chris Meade (Institute for the Future of the Book): 'The Amplified Author in the Unlibrary'
Globalisation and Independent Publishing (23-24 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Simon Gikandi (Princeton): 'Scenes of Reading in the Global Literary Marketplace: Some Postcolonial Reflections'
Cultural Policy (22-23 August 2011)
Keynote speaker, in association with Publishing Scotland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: Andre Schiffrin, author of The Business of Books and Words and Money.
The conferences are free, but you need to register and places are limited. To register, please email publishing@stir.ac.uk and we will send you details. You can register directly for the first two keynote lectures via these links: Chris Meade (9 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/ChrisMeadeAmplifiedAuthor.aspx Simon Gikandi (23 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/SimonGikandiLecture.aspx
Presented by Ligatus, CERL, and the Bodleian Libraries, Centre for the Study of the Book
Convenor: Nicholas Pickwoad
Designed for researchers using early books, rare books librarians, cataloguers, booksellers and conservators of bindings, this conference surveys resources that help to identify and describe bindings, investigates what a knowledge of bindings can add to bibliography and history of the book, and and presents recent research in book history based on evidence from bindings.
The day will conclude with an evening lecture by Anthony Hobson in the Divinity School, Bodleian Library.
For details see the CSB website, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/, or email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Attendance is free but you must register in advance. e-mail bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Literacy practices have become increasingly prominent features in everyday life, especially in social media through digital technology. However, vernacular literacy is not a new phenomenon. The written word has been used for everyday purposes throughout history in other media and using different technology. Whether historical or modern, vernacular literacy practices have arisen out of everyday needs and have not been formally regulated by institutions or organisations linked to education, religion or the work-place.
We hereby invite researchers to submit conference papers that illustrate vernacular literacy in the Nordic countries at different periods of time: in the past, the present or looking into the future. We look forward to contributions from a variety of disciplines such as linguistics, history, education, folklore, literature and book history.
The conference is multilingual. Conference information will be given in Swedish and English. Conference papers will be presented in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian or English. For further details about the conference, visit the conference website http://eventus.trippus.se/vernacularliteracy2012.
Plenary Speakers
Professor David Barton http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/David-Barton/, Lancaster University
Professor Deborah Brandt
http://www.english.wisc.edu/people/faculty/brandt.html, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Important Dates
15 September 2011. Second call for papers.
13 January 2012. Deadline for submissions of abstracts.
13 February 2012. Notification of acceptance of abstracts.
15 April 2012. Registration deadline.
Organisers
The conference is being organised by the Nordic literacy network, Vardagligt skriftbruk
http://www.sprak.umu.se/forskning/vardagligt-skriftbruk/ (Vernacular Literacies) at Umeå University in cooperation with the Nordic
research project Reading and Writing from below
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-corp/ at the University of Helsinki.
Contact
Email:
vardag2012@sprak.umu.se
Follow us on Twitter:
@VerLit2012
Conference website: http://eventus.trippus.se/vernacularliteracy2012
Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden:
http://www.umu.se/english/?languageId=3D1
Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues who may be interested in attending the conference.
Ann-Catrine Edlund & Susanne Haugen for the organising committee
Department of Language Studies
Umeå University
Sweden
Can the digitization of cultural heritage help us realize the old Enlightenment vision of 'A Republic of Letters'? And may the demand for free and open access to knowledge and information someday lead to the building of an international digital public library? Professor Robert Darnton is currently working toward establishing an American digital public library. In Europe, both Dr. Paul Ayris and Jill Cousin are involved in making the European cultural heritage available via the new digital media and in Denmark, Erland Kolding Nielsen has been engaged in finding ways of preserving the Danish Cultural Heritage via digitization.
This seminar offers the chance to discuss the pros and cons of digitization with the speakers:
For information about the seminar please contact Helle Porsdam at the SAXO Institute: porsdam@hum.ku.dk
The seminar will be held in English. Attendance is free of charge, but registration is necessary due to the limited number of seats. Please register by email: loej@kb.dk. Closing date for registration is June 1.
Professor Robert Darnton
Blogging, Now and Then (250 years ago)
Long before the Internet, Europeans exchanged information in ways that anticipated blogging. The key element of their information system was the 'anecdote,' a term that meant nearly the opposite then from what it means today. Anecdotes, dispensed by 'libellistes' and 'paragraph men,' became a staple in the daily diet of news consumed by readers in eighteenth- century France and England. They were also pilfered, reworked, and served up in books. By tracking anecdotes through texts, we can reassess a rich strain of history and literature.
The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication, in association with Scottish Insight, is co-organising a Programme of Enquiry: 'Independent Publishing: Making and Preserving Culture in a Global Literary Marketplace' from June-August 2011, in Glasgow. For full details, see the Programme website: http://www.independentpublishing.stir.ac.uk/
We will be holding three separate themed conferences:
Digital Technologies and Publishing (9-10 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Chris Meade (Institute for the Future of the Book): 'The Amplified Author in the Unlibrary'
Globalisation and Independent Publishing (23-24 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Simon Gikandi (Princeton): 'Scenes of Reading in the Global Literary Marketplace: Some Postcolonial Reflections'
Cultural Policy (22-23 August 2011)
Keynote speaker, in association with Publishing Scotland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: Andre Schiffrin, author of The Business of Books and Words and Money.
The conferences are free, but you need to register and places are limited. To register, please email publishing@stir.ac.uk and we will send you details. You can register directly for the first two keynote lectures via these links: Chris Meade (9 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/ChrisMeadeAmplifiedAuthor.aspx Simon Gikandi (23 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/SimonGikandiLecture.aspx
The London Rare Books School (LRBS) is a series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, University of London.
The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London Research Library Services, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections. Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books.
In 2011, the LRBS will run for two weeks: 27 June to 1 July and 4 July to 8 July. The courses planned are:
Each course will consist of thirteen seminars amounting in all to twenty hours of teaching time spread between Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon. There will be timetabled 'library time' that will allow students to explore the rich resources of the University's Senate House Library, one of the UK's major research libraries. The evening programme will include an opening reception and talk, a book history lecture, and receptions hosted by major London antiquarian booksellers.
See also The History and Practice of Hand Press Printing 1450-1830
Postgraduate credit is available for these courses at the Institute, which is one of the ten member-Institutes of the University of London's School of Advanced Study. In order to achieve the award of credit a student will have to complete and pass a 5,000 word essay within two months of the course (an extra fee to cover marking and other costs will be charged).
The fee will be £550 which will include the provision of lunch, and coffee and tea throughout the week. A small number of bursaries are available.
A range of different sorts of accommodation will be available including cheap student housing (on a bed and breakfast basis) close by Senate House; Senate House is next to the British Museum in the heart of Bloomsbury.
Further details and application forms can be found at: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/cmps/events/courses/LRBS/index.htm
Plenary speakers:
David Pearson, Director, Libraries, Archives & Guildhall Art Gallery
Mark Towsey, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of Liverpool
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 explores a wide variety of encounters with the book: from different cultural and geographical sites of production, circulation and reception to various disciplines and periods within early modernity.
Conference fees: £30; £20 students (note: a conference subvention covering fees for students has been generously provided by The Bibliographical Society; students interested in attending the conference should contact Chris Ivic c.ivic@bathspa.ac.uk)
For more details please contact:
Conference website: http://www.cmp-bathspa.co.uk/bookencounters/
Information on the Book, Text and Place (1500-1750) Research Centre is available at http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/schools/humanities-and-cultural-industries/research/book-text-and-place/
Twelfth Biennial Conference of the Early Book Society in collaboration with the Twelfth York Manuscripts Conference in honour of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya
The Early Book Society will hold its twelfth biennial conference in collaboration with the York Manuscripts Conference, at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, from the 3rd to the 7th of July 2011. The theme of this year's conference will be Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350-1550. This theme may be interpreted literally or figuratively: papers might consider unbound or rebound MSS and books, or MSS and books without bindings (rolls), or marginalia beyond the boundaries of the text, or the ways in which such boundaries might be created, or even MSS and books that travel from their place of origin. Secondary threads running through the conference will be related to Prof. Takamiya's manuscripts or Nicholas Love (the conference includes a visit to Mount Grace Priory). Please submit proposals for 20-minute papers relating to the conference themes either to Martha Driver or Linne Mooney by 1 December 2010. Proposals sent via email should be copied to both (LRM3@york.ac.uk and MDriver@pace.edu) or by post to Martha:
The London Rare Books School and St Brides have joined together to offer a practice-based five-day course to take place both in Bloomsbury and just off Fleet Street in what was the heart of the London book trade from 1500 to the 1980s. Students will be taught how to compose type, proof, and print, and will then be given an opportunity to work on a small-scale project of their own.
The course, which is part of the second week of LRBS, will run 4 to 8 July 2011. The course can take a maximum of 12 students, so early booking is advised. Further information and a booking form can be found at: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/cmps/events/courses/LRBS/index.htm
This conference, timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Bible, will look at the reception of the Bible in the early modern era. It will bring together an impressive range of scholars from a variety of disciplines, to assess the significance of the scriptures to cultural, political, theological and philosophical history throughout the long seventeenth century.
Call for papers deadline: June 1st 2010
Papers are invited on any aspect of the reception and use of the Bible in the early modern era and might include: political, cultural or literary uses of the Bible; the history of reading and the early modern scriptures; the reception of biblical figures; the role of individual biblical books; translation and biblical scholarship in the era; theology and the Bible; Old Testament / New Testament reception; the Bible and other religions; women and the bible; anti-Catholicism and the Bible; the Radical Bible; the Bible and class.
Speakers Include: Sharon Achinstein, Hugh Adlington, David Appleby, Gordon Campbell, Elizabeth Clark, Karen Edwards, Lori Anne Ferrell, Christopher Haigh, Paul Hammond, Hannibal Hammlin, Tom Healy, Mark Knights, Peter Lake, Barbara Lewalski, Erica Longfellow, Judth Maltby, Scott Mandelbrote, Peter Marshall, Peter McCullough, Nick McDowell, David Norton, Roger Pooley, Joad Raymond, Anne Prescott, Jane Shaw, Jonathan Sheehan, Alison Shell, Yvonne Sherwood, Deborah Shuger, Nigel Smith, Peter Stallybrass, Alex Walsham, Helen Wilcox, Susan Wiseman, Blair Worden, Stephen Zwicker.
Please see: http://www.york.ac.uk/projects/bible/
Contact: Dr Kevin Killeen - bible@events.york.ac.uk
Call For Papers
It has become customary in documenting the world of early printed books to rely primarily on surveys of survivors: that is, books that have weathered the buffeting of history to reach the comparative safety of modern library collections. Most national bibliographical catalogues are aggregates of the holdings of library catalogues; faute de mieux these are taken to offer a reasonable account of the original output.
But the urge to list, catalogue and advertise the wealth of the new printed book culture was just as strong in the first age of books. Printers made lists of their available stock; owners proudly catalogued their libraries; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings. In an age of religious discord, censorship required the publication of lists of forbidden books (though at the risk of advertising their contents); book-sellers' shelves, private and public libraries were examined for forbidden material.
These various classes of lists contain indispensable material on various aspects of the 16th century book trade: on cost, retail pricing, second hand values, binding and library practice. They allow the reconstruction of lost or dispersed libraries. They also document many thousands of titles and editions that have now disappeared altogether.
The third St Andrews book history conference will engage a wide-ranging discussion and analysis of contemporary book lists, manuscript or printed. Participants, who will be invited to pre-circulate the lists in question, are asked to propose contributions to Dr. Natasha Constantinidou (nac21@st-andrews.ac.uk) by 30 November 2010.
The papers presented at this conference will form the basis for a volume in the Brill book history series, The Library of the Written Word.
Submissions are invited for the nineteenth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) to be held in Washington, DC, Thursday, 14 July through Sunday, 17 July 2011. The sponsors of the conference are the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library and Institute, and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.
Evoking Washington's status as an artistic and scientific center, "The Book in Art & Science" is a theme open to multiple interpretations. Besides prompting considerations of the book as a force in either art or science or the two fields working in tandem, it also encourages examinations of the scientific text; the book as a work of art; the art and science of manuscript, print, or digital textual production; the role of censorship and politics in the creation, production, distribution, or reception of particular scientific or artistic texts; the relationship between the verbal and the visual in works of art or science; art and science titles from the standpoint of publishing history or the histories of specific publishers; and much more. As always, proposals dealing with any aspect of book history are welcome.
If you want to propose a session with an alternative format, please email the program committee at the address below to obtain a special form for such submissions.
Sessions will be 90 minutes in length, including three twenty-minute papers and a discussion period. In addition, the program committee will consider proposals for sessions using other formats, for example, roundtables or demonstrations of resources and methods. We encourage proposals for fully constituted panels, but we also welcome proposals for individual papers. While SHARP membership is not required to submit a proposal, all presenters must be members of SHARP before the registration deadline for the conference.
The deadline for both panels and individual proposals is 30 November 2010. Proposals for panels should list the session chair and names of participants along with abstracts for each talk. All abstracts should be no more than 400 words. The program committee will determine which proposals to accept and will notify proposers about its decision.
SHARP has allotted $5,000 to fund 7 to 10 travel grants to help scholars with limited funds attend the conference. Grants typically will not exceed $500, although one or two awards may be slightly higher if circumstances warrant. Scholars interested in being considered for such grants should complete the appropriate section of the proposal form.
For proposal questions, please email the Program Committee (SHARP2011proposal@gmail.com). For all other questions, please email the Organizing Committee (SHARP2011@gmail.com)
The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years, proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on the most interesting developments and research in any aspect of early modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world.
The informal theme of the conference this year will be Communication and Exchange. We hope that this might provoke new thinking and debate on such questions as:
Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200-word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career. Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the Conference Committee, Professor Richard Hoyle, by 31 January 2011, r.w.hoyle@reading.ac.uk.
Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.
Details of the 2011 EMRC conference are available at: http://www.reading.ac.uk/english/research/deal-EMRC.aspx
CFP for strand on 'Miscellanies and Commonplacing': Papers are invited for panels on miscellanies and commonplace traditions, focusing on early modern poetry. We would particularly welcome papers which explore the ways in which print and manuscript miscellanies reveal patterns of exchange, circulation and influence. We would also be interested in papers on the ways in which miscellany and commonplace collections suggest the popular or elite status of particular poems and poets. Lastly, we would welcome papers which combine a focus on the material culture of miscellanies and commonplace books with attention to formal issues, such as rhetoric and poetic form, genre and influence.
Please send 200-word abstract to Dr Michelle O'Callaghan (Reading) (m.f.ocallaghan@reading.ac.uk) and Dr Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Oxford) (elizabeth.scott-baumann@ell.ox.ac.uk)
Closing date for submissions to this strand: 7 January 2011
To complement panels on 'Miscellanies and Commonplacing': papers are invited for a panel addressing the notion of 'the gathered text'. Papers on this panel are likely to be bibliographical in focus, but it is hoped that they will also engage with broader literary or historical ideas. Texts might be drawn from a wide range of different genres, both literary and non-literary. Topics for discussion could include (but are not limited to) the sequences of gatherings or quires in particular early modern texts; the construction of composite volumes out of two or more previously independent texts; the use of gatherings as a unit of literary composition or production; gatherings as evidence of censorship or marketing practices; gatherings as a register or index of the production process.
Please send a 200-word abstract to Dr Rebecca Bullard (Reading), r.bullard@reading.ac.uk
Guest speaker: Professor Cathy Shrank, University of Sheffield and Eryn White, Aberystwyth University.
Booking is now open. For details, booking form and provisional programme, please see the British Book Trade Index website: http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk/Print%20Networks/index.htm
Tuesday 19th July
1.00p.m. Registration
1.50-2.00p.m. Welcome by Andrew Green, Librarian
2.00-3.15p.m. Session 1: chaired by John Hinks
Caroline Archer and Barry McKay: Black letters in the heart of Rome
Marja Smolenaars: Religion and the Anglo-Dutch book trade in the 17th century
Charlotte Panofré (conference fellow): Printing Protestant propaganda under Mary Tudor: the role of Antwerp
3.15-3.45p.m. Tea
3.45-5.00p.m. Session 2: chaired by Barry McKay
Paul Bryant-Quinn: A tale of two cities: the text and context of Gruffydd Robert's Dosparth Byrr and Morys Clynnog's Athrawaeth Gristnogawl (1567-8)
Geraint Evans: Robert Southwell's 'Letter to his Father': a rediscovered Welsh edition printed in Paris in 1612
John Hinks: The distribution of Catholic texts in Jacobean England
5.15-6.00p.m. Cathy Shrank (guest speaker): chaired by Victoria Gardner
"The ambition of a Good Compositor"": balancing 'The Authors Genius' and 'the capacity of the Reader'
6.00-7.00p.m. Dinner
7.30p.m. Work in progress: chaired by Catherine Armstrong
Wednesday 20th July
8.00-9.00a.m. Breakfast
9.30-10.45a.m. Session 3: chaired by Lisa Peters
Keith Manley: "They never expected the Spanish Inquisition!": James Kirkwood (ca. 1650-1709) and Scottish parochial libraries
Diana Patterson: Bindings as an indication of religious dissent
Annemarie McAllister: Onward: how a temperance magazine for children used material strategies to survive and flourish
10.45-11.15a.m. Coffee
11.15-12.30p.m. Session 4: chaired by Catherine Armstrong
Adam Coward: "So many of the good old Author's of the last Century, have Tumbled from London into the farthest Parts of Wales": Edmund Jones and the continued existence and use of 17th-century texts in 18th-century Wales
Toby Barnard: Print and confession in 18th-century Ireland
Thomas Power: The evangelical book trade in an Irish mining community in the mid-19th century
12.30p.m. Lunch
2.00-6.00p.m. Visit to Roderic Bowen Library, Lampeter
7.00p.m. Drinks reception
7.30p.m. Conference dinner
Thursday 21st July
8.00-9.00a.m. Breakfast
9.30-10.45a.m. Session 5: chaired by Timothy Cutts
Huw Owen: Calvinistic Methodists and the visual cultural heritage of Wales
Philip Henry Jones: "Ac yn llefaru eto": publishing Welsh sermons in the 19th century
D. Ben Rees: The influence and contribution of the Peter Williams Welsh Bible to religious publishing in Wales from 1770 to 1900
10.45-11.15a.m. Coffee
11.15a.m.-12.05p.m. Session 6: chaired by Lucy Lewis
David Williams: Some Cistercian books from Wales and Herefordshire
Rhidian Griffiths: Sir John Ballinger and The Bible in Wales
12.15-1.00p.m. Eryn White (guest speaker): chaired by John Hinks
The Bible and the book in early modern Wales
1.00p.m. Lunch and departure
The Twenty-Ninth Print Networks Conference on the history of the British book trade will take place at the National Library of Wales on 19th-21st July 2011. En-suite accommodation will be provided on the attractive campus of Aberystwyth University overlooking Cardigan Bay. In addition to a full programme of papers, there will be a Conference dinner and a visit to the Roderic Bowen Library in Lampeter.
2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and so "Religion and the Book Trade" has been chosen as the theme for the conference.
For more details, please contact:
The Print Networks Conference also offers an annual fellowship to a scholar whose research falls within the parameters of the Conference’s brief, and who wishes to present a paper at the Conference. The fellowship covers the cost of attending the Conference and some assistance towards costs of travel. A summary of the research being undertaken accompanied by a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor should be sent to the above address by 31st January 2011.
The papers presented will be considered for publication in the Print Networks series. It is understood that papers offered to the Conference will be original work and not delivered to any similar body before presentation at this Conference. Furthermore, it is part of the agreement with the publishers that papers will not be published elsewhere.
Advance notice is given that the 2012 Print Networks Conference will be held at the University of Leicester on 10th-12th July. The theme will be 'Cheap Print and the Book Trade'.
Council: Catherine Armstrong (C.M.Armstrong@mmu.ac.uk), Matthew Day (M.Day@newman.ac.uk), John Hinks (jh241@leicester.ac.uk), Lucy Lewis (lch08@aber.ac.uk), Barry McKay (barry.mckay@virgin.net), Lisa Peters (L.Peters@chester.ac.uk)
This interdisciplinary one day symposium will explore meanings and dynamics of the structures of early modern female micellanies and commonplace books, the histories of reading they reveal, notions arising of authorship and miscellaneity, the role of women as 'vouchers' or adjudicators of literary materials, and the transmission of knowledge in these female compilations.
Keynote: Professor Margaret Ezell, Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts, University of Texas A&M
Speakers include: Helen Hackett, Gillian Wright, Elizabeth Clarke, Sarah Ross, Jayne Archer, Rebecca Bullard, Johanna Harris, Sajed Chowdhury, Elizabeth Scott Baumann
For full programme and registration see website: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/femalemiscellanies
For more information contact Dr Femke Molekamp f.s.molekamp@warwick.ac.uk
A one-day conference to celebrate the launch online of Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 (CELM)
Compiled by Peter Beal in collaboration with John Lavagnino and Henry Woudhuysen
Papers on subjects relating to English manuscripts of this period, taking no longer than 15/20 minutes each, will be delivered by scholars including: Carlo Bajetta, Peter Beal, Joshua Eckhardt, Germaine Greer (keynote speaker), Elizabeth Hageman, Grace Ioppolo, Gerard Kilroy, Tom Lockwood, Arthur Marotti, Steven May, Richard Serjeantson, and Ray Siemens.
This conference, sponsored by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, is FREE and, besides coffee breaks, will include lunch and a drinks reception in the evening.
Please note, prior registration is required. For registration and further details please contact: Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington@sas.ac.uk.
The Comics and Conflicts Conference is aimed at comics scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts. Invited conference speakers and guests will include: Pat Mills (Charley's War); Martin Barker and Roger Sabin on Doonesbury; Garth Ennis (Troubled Souls, War Story).
More on website: http://www.comicafestival.com/index.php/site/news/comics_conflicts_conference_call_for_papers/
Papers for the conference are welcomed that explore the ways in which comics around the world represent and articulate the experience and impact of war and conflict. For example, topics may include:
In the first instance please email abstracts of 250 words, with a brief author biography, to a.kahn@roehampton.ac.uk, including 'Comics & Conflicts 11' in the subject heading. The deadline for submissions is 31 March, 2011.
The Comics & Conflicts Conference is organised by Ariel Kahn (Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University), Alex Fitch (presenter of Panel Borders, the UK's only weekly broadcast radio show about comics) and Paul Gravett (Comica Director).
The Comics & Conflicts Conference will form part of a literary festival being held from 13-21 August 2011, which accompanies the Imperial War Museum's new exhibition Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children. For more information about the exhibition and the festival visit the Imperial War Museum web site.
The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication, in association with Scottish Insight, is co-organising a Programme of Enquiry: 'Independent Publishing: Making and Preserving Culture in a Global Literary Marketplace' from June-August 2011, in Glasgow. For full details, see the Programme website: http://www.independentpublishing.stir.ac.uk/
We will be holding three separate themed conferences:
Digital Technologies and Publishing (9-10 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Chris Meade (Institute for the Future of the Book): 'The Amplified Author in the Unlibrary'
Globalisation and Independent Publishing (23-24 June 2011)
Keynote speaker: Simon Gikandi (Princeton): 'Scenes of Reading in the Global Literary Marketplace: Some Postcolonial Reflections'
Cultural Policy (22-23 August 2011)
Keynote speaker, in association with Publishing Scotland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: Andre Schiffrin, author of The Business of Books and Words and Money.
The conferences are free, but you need to register and places are limited. To register, please email publishing@stir.ac.uk and we will send you details. You can register directly for the first two keynote lectures via these links: Chris Meade (9 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/ChrisMeadeAmplifiedAuthor.aspx Simon Gikandi (23 June): http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/IndependentPublishing/SimonGikandiLecture.aspx
This international conference is organised by Claire Clivaz (IRSB, FTSR), Jérôme Meizoz (FDi, Lettres) and François Vallotton (SHC, Lettres). It seeks to demonstrate the major impact of the Digital Era on knowledge, by studying the history of cultural technologies. The present evolution of the ancient manuscript allows one to detect this turning-point, notably with the digital editions of Homer and the New Testament. The notions of authorship and critical edition are questioned : modern history and contemporary analysis have to be embedded in ancient memory to reflect upon the digital turn. A public evening will conclude the conference on the 25th August; it will be prepared by three meetings 'Digital Humanities@Unil' during the spring semester 2011.
Call for Papers
Deadline : 30th April 2011 ; a summary of 250-300 words has to be submitted to Claire Clivaz (claire.clivaz@unil.ch). The call for papers is for researchers and PhD students. If a paper is not selected for a lecture, it could be presented as a poster. Publication of the papers has been agreed with Peeters, in English, German or French. English contributions are particularly encouraged.
In the various fields, papers dealing with the following are looked for:
Specific call for papers: 'What kind of digital edition of the New Testament do we need?'
Conference website: http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/digitalera2011/practical-informations/place/?lang=en
Call for Papers:
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:
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.
The monumental Parker on the Web project has now been up and running for several years, with constant updates and improvements. The Parker Library and the EIRI Project at Keio University (Tokyo) are co-organising a one-day conference focusing on new and future advances in digitisation and digitial resources and on the ways in which they are creating new research environments for medieval manuscripts and rare books. Papers will range from individual research papers to institutional projects. More information about speakers and the registration can be found at: http://parkerkeio2011.wordpress.com/
For further information, please contact:
A one-day workshop organized by the Centre for Material Texts, University of Cambridge
Some of our most material interactions with texts are grounded in the very food that we eat. Comestibles are eloquent objects; they come stamped with words, festooned with decorative designs, and wrapped in packaging that is at once visually and verbally loquacious. The kitchen has long been a textual domain, regulated by cookery books and recipe collections and noisy with inscriptions on pots, pans, plates and pastry-moulds. This one-day colloquium will explore numerous aspects of the relationship between writing, eating and domestic life across a broad swathe of history, in order to illuminate the unsuspected power of words and pictures in a paradigmatically practical locale and to shed light on the textual condition more broadly.
Questions to be addressed include:
Speakers include: Deborah Krohn (Bard Graduate Centre), Sara Pennell (Roehampton University)
This one-day workshop will take place under the auspices of the Centre for Material Texts, University of Cambridge, on 13 September 2011. Please submit 250 word proposals for 20 minute papers by 1 May to Melissa Calaresu (mtc12@cam.ac.uk) and Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk).
Keynote speakers: Professor Ann Ardis (University of Delaware, USA), Professor Adina Ciugureanu (Ovidius University Constanta, Romania)
The increase in modernist and avant-garde cultural manifestations in the early years of the twentieth century displaced realist and traditional literary works from, in Bourdieu's sense, 'legitimate' culture. The former came to represent 'highbrow', with a concomitant exclusion of all that highbrow was not. Even influential and critically acclaimed writers, such as H. G. Wells, were derided for maintaining their realist style as well as for catering to popular taste. Retrospectively, the conception of modernism has been expanded in order to be able to accommodate less obviously avant-garde works, but this expansion may not be continued indefinitely. Lines of demarcation between high, low, mass, and middle, in their varying media and forms, need to be identified to enable a more nuanced understanding of the evolution of literary and other cultural forms in this period, and the contemporary reception of the texts and ideas expressed therein.
This conference seeks to examine the emergence of modernism outside elitist, avant-garde notions, particularly focussing on middlebrow literature in its relation to these socio-cultural developments. We assume that, even though middlebrow fiction usually adheres to conspicuously affirmative structures of plot development in order to meet genre expectations and publishers' requirements, this narrative framework is often in a disintegrative state, in form and subject. Such narratives raise disturbing issues concerning the crumbling Empire, collapsing class structures and the deterioration of the Victorian family ideal. For women, in particular, the middlebrow novel provided a space for the negotiation of and experimentation with alternative social and gender roles. In this sense, middlebrow writing can be regarded as a domestication of modernist themes also prevalent at the time; allowing unsettling issues to be raised while maintaining at least a superficial impression of (narrative) stability and security. Based on the assumption that such works reached a far wider audience than those of the avant-garde, by exploring such issues of stability and disintegration this conference aims to advance research on the production, dissemination and reception of middlebrow and popular fiction between 1890-1930.
The conference is organised by Professor Christoph Ehland (University of Paderborn) and Dr Kate Macdonald (University of Ghent): kate.macdonald@ugent.be.
Registration fees: £65 standard; £45 Speakers/Students/IES members/Unwaged
Conference website: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2011/Middlebrow2011/index.htm
In 1712, the antiquary and diarist Thomas Hearne was appointed Keeper of the Anatomy School, now the main reference area in the Lower Reading Room of the Bodleian Library
In 1721, he wrote a list of its contents, among which was "A very odd mapp of China. Very large, & taken from Mr. Selden's."
This is what we now know as the Selden Map of China. It was left to us by the London lawyer John Selden in 1659, and has been famous as an interesting curiosity ever since. But only in January 2008, when the visiting scholar Robert Batchelor noticed the very faint lines indicating trade routes and compass bearings from the port of Quanzhou to all parts of East Asia and beyond, was the immense significance of the map realised.
The map was in a very bad state, having been backed with linen in the early 20th century. A number of generous donors have sponsored its conservation, and a Colloquium will be held on Thursday, 15 September in the Convocation House, Bodleian Library, to present the map to a wider audience and to enable a number of specialists in the field to pool their knowledge of it.
View the Colloquium programme http://seldenmap.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/colloquium
The event is free, but places are limited. Please register to attend by e-mail: bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
The Institute of English Studies, The Centre for Hermeneutical Research of K´roli Gá´sp´r University of the Reformed Church in Hungary (http://www.kre.hu) and The Hungarian Bible Society are proud to announce an interdisciplinary conference on The King James Bible (1611-2011): Prehistory and Afterlife
Proposals related to any literary, linguistic, cultural or theological aspects of the subject are invited from scholars wishing to contribute.
Our institution is named after the 16th century Reformed Pastor G´sp´r K´roli who published the first complete Hungarian Bible in 1590. The K´roli Bible's influence on Hungarian language and culture is as significant as the King James Bible's impact on the English-speaking world. A session for comparing these two outstanding national icons is also encouraged.
Please send the proposed title and an abstract of ca 300 words of the proposed paper by April 15, 2011
All applications should be sent to: kingjamesbible.budapest@kre.hu
Sessions run 11:00am–6:00pm Saturday and 11.00am–4.00pm Sunday (lunch break 1.00–2.00pm)
Class Size: 6
£245 standard fee
£195 concession (over 60 or full time student)
This practical workshop introduces participants to letterpress printing and relates the techniques involved today to some of those used in the fifteenth century. Suitable for letterpress beginners who would like a contextual, yet practical introduction to the craft, students of book history, conservators and those with an interest in letterpress or printing history.
Day 1
Type. Introduction to moveable type; hand setting type; printing a broadside on a handpress. Relating this hands-on experience to the study of early printed books, their layout and design.
Day 2
Press. Looking at the press in the 15th century: how paper was placed cleanly on the press for printing and removed cleanly, efficiently and repeatedly. Discovering clues in early printed books about methods used by 15th-century printers.
Paper. Introduction to handmade paper: how it is made; 15th-century paper sizes; damping paper for use. Clues from 15th-century books about paper damping and the one- or two-pull press.
Course leader: Dr Claire Bolton
Book: http://gutenbergweekend.eventbrite.com/
More details: http://printworkshop.stbride.org/#gutenberg_weekend
Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2011
The objective of this international congress is to explore traditions and innovations in book design and typography from the manuscript era to the age of the electronic book. The following questions will be addressed: How did the design of books evolve during the Middle Ages, the early modern period and beyond? Which traditions survived the successive transitions from manuscripts to hand press books in the early modern period, at the end of the eighteenth century (the period of mechanization and automatisation), and at the end of the twentieth century from the paper book to the electronic book? How did the changing conditions of production and use affect the appearance and content of books? Which elements endured and which ones were altered or disappeared? How is the design of books embedded in culture and how do the arts interact where the presentation of texts is concerned? Twenty-minute papers are invited addressing different aspects of book design, typography and book layout from a comparative or long-term perspective. They may deal with single aspects, such as title pages, type and illustrations, or with strategies for the articulation of texts, such as rubrication, colour, typographical white, ornaments and initials. Contributions should focus on traditions and the long-term evolution of book design, or explore the interaction of different cultures that have influenced the typography of books in neighbouring regions.
Keynote speaker: Prof David McKitterick (Cambridge University)
Confirmed speakers include Dr Erik Kwakkel (Leiden University) & Prof Gerard Unger (Leiden University)
The congress will be preceded by a Miræus Lecture in the Nottebohm Hall of the Antwerp Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience, and will be followed by a guided tour of the Museum Plantin Moretus in Antwerp on Saturday 1 October.
For further information & questions, please contact Dr Goran Proot, University of Antwerp, Grote Kauwenberg 18, room d218, b-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. Please send twenty-line abstracts by 28 February 2011 to goran.proot@gmail.com
The conference of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (IBG) will be held in Mainz this fall. The topic is 'Verlagskultur(en)' and will deal with the recent history and developments of publishing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The keynote will be held by André Schiffrin, who will speak about 'Saving the word. New structures and new options'.
The conference will be held mainly in German, though the keynote will be in English. More information on the program can be found at http://www.buchwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/ibg2011.
Conference e-mail: IBG2011@uni-mainz.de
The conference theme is 'Writing the Press into History'. For Further information please visit http://www.newspapersperiodicals.org/index.html. The conference fee is €60 (student rate €30) and includes lunch and refreshments and annual membership of the NPHFI.
To register please contact either Mark O'Brien, DCU, (Secretary) mark.obrien@dcu.ie or Caroline Connolly, DCU, (Membership Secretary) caroline.connolly26@dcu.ie.
Book History Research Network: a one-day colloquium
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. Please email papers to the organisers: Cynthia Johnston (Research Student, Institute of English Studies): cynthia.johnston@postgrad.sas.ac.uk; Dr Wim Van Mierlo (Lecturer in Textual Scholarship and English Literature, Institute of English Studies): wim.van-mierlo@sas.ac.uk
Topics may include:
Organisers: Robin Myers, Michael Harris, Giles Mandelbrote and The Antiquarian Booksellers Association
This year's conference will describe the training and apprenticeship in the various trades associated with book production and shew how each branch of the trade served and was dependent on the others.
Sunday 27 November
10.00 - 10.30 am Registration and coffee
10.30 - 11.45 am William Alden - The Alden Press (1875-2008)
11.45 - 12.15 am Coffee
12.15 - 1.30 pm Robin Myers - The role of the Stationers' Company in the training of apprentices
1.30 - 3.15 pm Buffet lunch; The Clerk and Robin Myers will lead tours of the building. There will also be an opportunity to view s special exhibition of the Stationers' archives put on for the conference
3.15 - 4.30 pm Julian Pooley - Nichols and Sons: apprenticeship and networking within the book trade
4.30 - 5.45 pm Sébastien Morlighem - From the Didots to John Bell: publishing and typefounding in Paris and London during the 1780s
6.00 - 7.00 pm Reception at Stationers' Hall
Monday 28 November
10.00 - 10.30 am Coffee
10.30 - 11.45 am Moreen Green - The Papermaking Trade and the Original Society of Paper Makers: Labour and Customs in the nineteenth century
11.45 - 12.15 pm Coffee
12.15 - 1.30 pm David Alexander - How did they learn? The training of British engravers (1714-1830)
1.30 - 2.30 pm Lunch. Michael Harris will lead a tour of the area surrounding Stationers' Hall
2.30 - 3.45 Mirjam Foot - The training of bookbinders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
4.00 pm Conference ends
Speakers
William Alden is Clerk to the Stationers' Company. Alden is Clerk to the Stationers' Company and 6th generation of the Oxford printing, the Alden Press, which he ran until 2008. He is High Sherriff elect and Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire. He was Chairman of the National Training Organisation for the Printing Industry in the late 1990s.
David Alexander is honorary Keeper of Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and has been studying British prints for many years. He has organised many exhibitions in Britain and abroad. He is currently bringing to a conclusion a Dictionary of British and Irish engravers (1714-1830).
Mirjam Foot is the foremost historian of bookbinding. She is Professor emeritus of Library and Archive Studies at UCL and was formerly Director of Collections and Preservation at the British Library. She has published six major studies of bookbinding and innumerable articles in learned journals. She has read papers at a number of the history of the book conferences
Moreen Green, paper historian and museum exhibition designer has worked on many projects relating to printing and papermaking; her publications include Papermaking and the Art of Watercolor in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2006) and Papermaking at Hayle Mill (2008); she is currently completing a Ph.D. at the Institute of English Studies, University of London
Sébastien Morlighem teaches the history of graphic design and typography and is co-director of the post-graduate program 'Typography and Language' at the École Supérieure d'Art et de Design in Amiens.He created and curates the Bibliothèque typographique collection for Ypsilon Éditeur. He is currently preparing a PhD for the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.
Robin Myers, co-founder with Michael Harris of the Book Trade History conferences, is archivist emeritus of the Stationers' Company. She has lectured widely on the Company's history and published three books and more than thirty articles on the subject.
Julian Pooley is an archivist and manager of Surrey History Centre in Woking. He is preparing an analytical guide to the papers of the Nichols family of printers and antiquaries and is a leading authority on their business and research interests. He has published a range of articles about the Nicholses' links with the book trade and antiquarian network.
Notes
Members of the conference will view a special exhibition, visit the other parts of Stationers' Hall, and have a guided tour of the environs led by Michael Harris during the conference.
The conference also includes a reception at Stationers' Hall on Sunday evening.
The proceedings of previous conferences and a selection of antiquarian books will be available for purchase during the conference.
Fees
Registered students may apply for a limited number of reduced rate places, sponsored by the Bibliographical Society.
Conference fee: £80
Conference fee, student: £50*
Single-day fee: £50*
Single-day fee, student: £30*
* Limited availability in each category
Early booking is recommended and places will be offered in order of receipt.
A booking form is available on the website of The Antiquarian Booksellers Assocation at http://www.aba.org.uk/news/83-a-skilled-workforce-
The research group Book, Library and Information of the University of Antwerp and the Plantin-Moretus Museum are organising a book-historical research seminar conducted by Professor Nicholas Pickwoad, Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts, London on 'Unfinished business: incomplete bindings made for the booktrade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century' on Friday, 2 December 2011, at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.
From the end of the 15th century booksellers, acting both as publishers and as retailers of books printed by others, used a variety of strategies to protect their books as they were moved from printer to customer. The varieties of inexpensive parchment- or paper-covered bindings used for this purpose are relatively well-known, but the booktrade also made use of unfinished bindings that held the text leaves together, thus reducing the risk of loose sheets going astray, but adding little additional weight to the textblock, and thus minimising transport costs. These bindings also provided a permanent structure, both with and without boards, that could be completed to the final customer's specifications. The evidence for this practice is hard to find, as such bindings were never intended to remain in their first, incomplete, state, but enough survive to suggest that the practice was in widespread use for the first three centuries of the trade in printed books. The library of the Plantin-Moretus Museum has a substantial collection of such books that will form the focus of a wider exploration of such books found in libraries across Europe and the U.S.A.
Professor Nicholas Pickwoad has a doctorate from Oxford University in English Literature. He trained in bookbinding and book conservation with Roger Powell, and ran his own workshop from 1977 to 1989. He has been Adviser on book conservation to the National Trust of Great Britain since 1978, and was editor of the Paper Conservator. He taught book conservation at Columbia University Library School in New York from 1989 to 1992 and was Chief Conservator in the Harvard University Library from 1992 to 1995. He is now project leader of the St Catherine's Monastery Library Project based at the University of the Arts, London and is director of the Ligatus Research Centre, which is dedicated to the history of bookbinding. He gave the 2008 Panizzi Lectures at the British Library, was awarded the 2009 Plowden medal for Conservation and is a Fellow of the IIC and of the Society of Antiquaries and a Council Member of the Bibliographical Society of Great Britain. He also teaches courses in the UK, Europe and America on the history of European bookbinding in the era of the hand printing press, and has published widely on the subject.
The research seminar is the third in the internationally-focussed series of seminars titled The Antwerp Chapters.
Programme
10.00am reception and coffeeThe research seminar is directed at everyone with an active interest in the history of the book: historians, book historians, librarians, art historians, historians of literature, doctoral students. Participants will be asked to read, beforehand, two articles that have been selected by N. Pickwoad, and they will be invited to participate in the discussion. The articles will be sent to you after confirmation of registration. The seminar will be given in English.
The number of participants is limited to 25. Timely registration is therefore necessary. Registration is possible through 20 November 2011, and costs 25 Euro (this includes materials, drinks, and sandwich lunch).
Send an email to pierre.delsaerdt@ua.ac.be, with your full name, affiliation, and street address. You will receive a confirmation of registration and a payment request. Your registration will only be definite after payment. Payments will not be refunded. A certificate of participation can be offered to doctoral students by request.
An initiative of the research group Book, Library and Information of the University of Antwerp and the Plantin-Moretus Museum /Print Collection Unesco World Heritage with support of Cultura s.o.n. (Brussels).
Conveners
Ad Stijnman (University of Amsterdam)
Elizabeth Upper (University of Cambridge)
Assistant convener: Emily Gray (Courtauld Institute and British Museum)
The absence of colour has been long been considered a defining characteristic of early modern printmaking. Colour printing from the hundreds of years between the invention of the printing press and 1700, when Christophe Le Blon developed the three-colour method we use today, has been thought of as rare and extraordinary. However, new research has revealed that bright inks added commercial value, didactic meaning and visual emphasis to subjects as diverse as anatomy, art, astronomy, biology, cartography, medicine, militaria and polemics in both single-sheet prints and books.
Despite the significance and scale of these discoveries, the bias against colour continues to dominate print scholarship; the colour in colour prints is often ignored. As the technology to disseminate images in their original colour has spread, much important material has suddenly become available to scholars. Now that techniques that were thought to have been isolated technical experiments seem to have been relatively common practice, a new, unified history of, and conceptual framework for, early modern colour printing has become necessary, and significant aspects of early modern print culture now must be reconsidered. This conference aims to explore new methodologies and foster new ways of understanding the development of colour printing in Europe through an interdisciplinary consideration of the production.
Proposals considering diverse aspects of early European colour printing in relief and intaglio from the middle ages to the turn of the eighteenth century are welcome, including those dealing with textiles and book illustrations. Please send a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute paper to impressionsofcolour@gmail.com by 29 June 2011. Conservators, rare book librarians and practising printers also are encouraged to apply.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
The conference will feature a demonstration of early colour printing techniques in the Historical Printing Room, a display of books with early colour printing at the University Library and a display of early colour prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum
Online registration will be available closer to the event. In the meantime, please email impressionsofcolour@gmail.comto express your interest.
Full details at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1659/
The editing and transmission of old mathematics have long been of scholarly concern, and the translation of mathematics into new languages or new media has regularly raised explicit anxieties. In the twentieth century, editorial practice in this area has changed rapidly, influenced by models of editorial scholarship developed for classical texts, by the impact of new typesetting technologies over the last several decades, and now by the new agendas surrounding the creation of electronic and online texts.
This symposium will bring together about ten scholars to discuss their own experiences as editors in the light of older approaches to mathematical texts, and to discuss some of the 'classic' mathematical editions of the last hundred years, as well as such related issues as the role of learned journals and the meaning of canonicity for mathematics.
Confirmed speakers and provisional topics:
A limited number of places are available for observers: these will be allocated on a strictly first-come basis. The cost will be £50, and will cover attendance at the conference sessions, with tea and coffee, and at the conference dinner on 16 December. Unfortunately accommodation cannot be provided for observers.
To reserve a place, or for any enquiries, please contact Benjamin Wardhaugh at: benjamin.wardhaugh@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
Dr Benjamin Wardhaugh
All Souls College
Oxford OX1 4AL
UK
‘Shabby old man leaves collection worth millions’, Chicago Tribune, Dec 14, 1973
‘Organist dies at 90 in Home Filled with Rare Sheet Music’, New York Times, Dec 14, 1973
‘Pauper’s Collection for Oxford Library’, New York Times, Jan 18, 1975
These were some of the newspaper headlines announcing Walter Harding’s legacy to the Bodleian Library.
Walter Newton Henry Harding was not an academic or a book dealer. He worked as a ragtime pianist in Chicago. Yet he was able to build an enormous collection of poetry and song, sheet music, and opera scores. His important collection of music ranged from French and Italian opera scores to English music hall songs, and his legacy enriched Bodleian collections in such print genres as broadside ballads, chapbooks and poetic miscellanies.
At an event in the Bodleian Library on 18 January 2012, Abigail Williams (English Faculty) will recount the surprising history of how Harding’s collection came from the basement of his family home in Chicago to the Bodleian. Michael Burden (Music Faculty) assesses the legacy of Harding in the Bodleian music collections.
The event takes place in the Divinity School and Convocation House, 5-7 pm. The talks will be followed by music from the Harding Collection, performed by Alva (voice and violin duo), including ballads and songs from an 18th-century collection, ‘The Yorkshire Garland’.
An invitation is attached. Tickets are free but places are limited. Please telephone 01865 277000, or email rsvp@bodleian.ox.ac.uk, with Subject line: HARDING MUSIC to reserve a ticket.
Selected material from the Harding Collection will be on display in the Bodleian Library Proscholium during the month of January 2012.
Principal Investigator Dr Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
Outline of the Research Network
There is much work currently being undertaken in the history of newspapers in
the USA and the UK and it is the purpose of this network to bring leading
scholars in the field together to discuss how their research interrelates and
how it can be enhanced by broader disciplinary dialogue drawing on the
traditions and methodologies of history, language studies, literary studies,
and journalism studies. This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by
the growing number of digital newspaper archives from the 19th and 20th
centuries from the USA and the UK. As we move from a research economy of
archive scarcity to one of plenty, we need to be able to set out a new, more
integrated set of methodologies which enable the wealth and diversity of these
resources to be more appropriately mined.
Each of the seminars will seek to attract high quality, publishable research which contributes to the themes of the Research Network. The seminars, located as they are in the UK, the USA and Switzerland will aim to bring together leading researchers and emerging scholars so as to enhance the international and interdisciplinary ambitions of the project. The Research Network will also co-ordinate publication with the Media History Exchange, an archive and social network sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Aims and Objectives
Core Group
Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield
Kevin Barnhurst, University of Illinois at Chicago
Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield
David Copeland, Elon University
Bob Franklin, University of Cardiff
Jane Hodson, University of Sheffield
Andreas H. Jucker, University of Zurich
Chandrika Kaul, St Andrews
Ed King, Head of Collections, British Newspaper Library
Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
David Machin, University of Cardiff
John Nerone University of Illinois
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Terry Threadgold, University of Cardiff
Joel Wiener, CUNY
Key Dates
14 January 2011 (Sheffield) -
Exploring digital newspaper archives
12 March 2011 (New York) -
The long popularization process: Anglo-American perspectives
18 January 2012 (Zurich) - Historical pragmatics and the language of popular newspapers
28 March 2012 (Cardiff) -
The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view
8 July 2012 (Sheffield) -
Research methodology and digital newspapers: feasibility and sustainability
What are the competences needed for the heritage librarians of the future, and how can these competences be taught at different levels of library education? Those questions will be discussed during an international conference at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), on 1 and 2 February 2012. During two days, librarians and people in charge of library teaching programmes will be invited to confront their ideas. It is hoped that presentations of best practices during the conference will serve as inspiring models of new programmes in the future, and that at the end of the conference, some consensus may be reached about the range of competences needed.
The conference is organized by the Library and Information Science Department of the University of Antwerp and Flanders Heritage Library, with the collaboration of the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB, Lyon), FARO - Flemish interface centre for cultural heritage, and under the auspices of the IFLA-Rare Books and Manuscript Section, the LIBER Steering Committee for Heritage Collection and Preservation, and the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL). The conference will be held in English.
Submissions
Submissions are invited for 30 minute presentations on the competences that librarians in charge of special (or heritage) collections should acquire during their training, and how library training programmes can teach these competences. Participants may also want to discuss related issues such as the re-training of library staff or the ways in which skills can be kept up-to-date. We welcome both presentations of best practices (e.g. discussions of existing programmes) and papers discussing these matters at a more fundamental level.The deadline for submission is 31 August 2011. Submissions received after this date will not be considered for acceptance.
If you wish to put forward a paper for the conference, please send the following information in the form of a Word-document to prof. dr. Pierre Delsaerdt, chair of the organizing committee, at pierre.delsaerdt@ua.ac.be:
Deadlines
August 31, 2011: Deadline for submission of proposals
September 30, 2011: Notification of acceptance or rejection of proposals
October 15, 2011: Deadline for confirmation of acceptance by presenters.
Background
It seems trivial, these days, to state that libraries have been challenged by recent technological, social and economic developments. On the other hand, these developments have not minimized the library's mission as a memory institution, quite the contrary. Among the many roles that libraries will continue to play in the 21st century and beyond, their responsibility for the preservation of the written heritage is perhaps the one that is questioned least.
This role of libraries, ancient as it may be, implies that library staff be trained adequately to meet the specific requirements of heritage collections in libraries. These requirements are multiple. Expertise in preservation and conservation is a major one, but it certainly has to be supplemented - and perhaps even preceded - by other competences, e.g. an insight into heritage policies, a profound knowledge of the management of collections and acquisitions, a familiarity with the material aspects of books and manuscripts, with the history of libraries and book collecting and with techniques of bibliographical description, an awareness of the need to open the collections to the public and of the challenges of digitisation, an understanding of the marketing of heritage collections... Will heritage librarians who are equipped with such diverse qualities be able to serve as the future Ambassadors of the Book?
In the context of a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (http://www.dfg.de/index.jsp) the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in cooperation with the Centre for the Study of the Book of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, (http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/) organizes the international conference 'An experimental phase in the history of early printing: Fifteenth-century blockbooks'. During the conference, the exhibition "From the ABC to the Apocalypse. Life, Faith and Death in Late Mediaeval Blockbooks" will be opened which will be on show until 6 May 2012 in the treasure room of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Blockbooks (xylographs) are books with a comparatively small number of pages which were produced in the fifteenth century from woodcuts and represent a form of transition between hand illuminated manuscripts and illustrated printed books. They count among the rarest and most precious items collected by libraries. Up to today, they raise numerous questions for bibliographical, art historical and philological research. Until recently, the problematic state of conservation of many blockbooks has severely hindered their scholarly examination. While cataloguing projects abroad, most recently in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, have produced important new insights regarding blockbooks, a systematic analysis of the xylographic holdings of German libraries is still outstanding.
Since 2009, all c. 90 copies of blockbooks owned by Bavarian institutions have been digitized after restoration of the damaged copies in the course of a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The watermarks in the paper were documented with a newly developed technology (thermography or infra-red photography). The project thus constitutes an organic continuation of the projects funded by the DFG for digitizing the incunabula and 16th-century books printed in German territories held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The digital reproductions of all blockbooks are accessible on the website of the Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online: http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/blockbooks
Alongside digitization, scholarly descriptions of the blockbooks are created which aim at a high bibliographic standard equivalent to the more recent international catalogues which reflects the importance of the items. After the end of the project, the descriptions will be made accessible in electronic form via the internet as well as in a printed catalogue.
The conference will provide an opportunity to discuss the results achieved by the project so far with representatives of various academic disciplines. The first day will focus on questions with regard to the materiality of the blockbooks, while the second will be devoted to questions of content, function and reception relating to a selection of examples.
Prospective participants are asked to register by 31 January 2012 online: http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/Veranstaltungen-fuer-Fachpublikum.339.0.html Participation in the conference is free.
Conference programme:
http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/xylographa-tagung
http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/images/blo/startseiten/Blockbuecher/Blockbuchtagung_Programm.pdf
A one-day event exploring all aspects of Street Literature and Popular Print Traditions
Organised jointly by the English Folk Dance & Song Society and Traditional Song Forum
Contact Jo Breeze - jo@efdss.org - to be put on the mailing list for further information - with 'Broadside Day 2012' in the subject line. Even if you came last year, please still register your interest so that we get all the information in one place.
or contact Steve Roud - sroud@btinternet.com - with questions, suggestions, or to volunteer a paper or presentation.
The year 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of J. C. T. Oates, editor of the incunabula catalogue of Cambridge University Library. To commemorate Oates's contribution to incunabula studies, the Cambridge University Library Incunabula Cataloguing Project and the EIRI Project of Keio University are co-organising a one-day conference, Incunabula on the Move.
Papers will cover a diverse range of topics including the production of incunabula in Germany and England, Henry Bradshaw, the provenance of individual copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the exchange of incunabula between London and Cambridge, and J. C. T. Oates and Bibliophiles in Cambridge. Confirmed speakers include John Goldfinch (British Library), Lotte Hellinga (formerly British Library), Paul Needham (Scheide Library, Princeton University), Toshiyuki Takamiya (Keio University), Eric White (Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University), and Satoko Tokunaga (Keio University). For more details, please visit the conference website: http://incunabulaonthemove.wordpress.com/.
If you would like to attend, please return your completed registration form (available from http://incunabulaonthemove.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/regist-form-26.doc) and the registration fee (not refundable) to the conference organiser. The full registration fee is £30 (£25 for students), which includes lunch and refreshments. The registration deadline is 14 February 2012. For further information and enquiries please contact Dr Satoko Tokunaga (satoko@flet.keio.ac.jp).
Organised and Sponsored by:
The EIRI Project of Keio University, Tokyo
http://www.eiri.keio.ac.jp/
Cambridge University Library Incunabula Cataloguing Project
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rarebooks/incunabulaproject.html
Morning: Bilateral agreements in the mid-nineteenth-century: France, Britain and Belgium
9h30-10h30
Jean-Yves Mollier, Université Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines: De
la contrefaçon belge aux accords de 1852-1854.
Laurent Pfister, Université Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines :
Internationalisation du droit d'auteur et droit comparé: la
convention franco-anglaise du 3 novembre 1851.
10h30-10h45 Discussion
10h45-11h15: coffee break
11h15-12h15
Blaise Wilfert, ENS: Droit d'auteur et stratégie d'éditeur :
Hachette, Dickens et la Bibliothèque des meilleurs romans étrangers.
Susan Pickford, Université Paris 13 : Les traducteurs face aux enjeux
du copyright au 19ème siècle.
12h15-12h30 : discussion
12h 30: Lunch
Afternoon: Copyright and the United States
14h-15h30:
Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin: Napoleon Comes to
America: The Publishing of Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon Buonaparte
(1827)
Will Slauter, Université Paris 8: Marks of Ownership and
Acknowledgment: The Transformation of Newspaper Texts in 19th-Century
America.
Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University: Mark Twain's
Self-Pasting Scrap-Book, the Authorship of Blank Books, and
Intellectual Property
15h30-16h: discussion and conclusion : future perspectives for the field
Contacts:
Claire Parfait claire.parfait@univ-paris13.fr
Susan Pickford, susan.pickford@univ-paris13.fr
Getting to Université Paris 13: http://www.univ-paris13.fr/acces-aux-campus.html
Campus map: http://www.univ-paris13.fr/images/stories/plans_des_campus/acces_v.pdf
Conference presented by Bodleian Libraries, Centre for the Study of the Book
The territorial and temporal map of the dissolved collections
CHAIR: Richard Ovenden, Associate Director, Bodleian Library, Oxford
The political and economic context that led to the phenomenon of monastic dissolution -- mapping the different territorial processes in a longue durée perspective
Fiorenzo Landi, Professor of Economic History, Università di Bologna: The dissolution of monasteries in Europe – an overall look and the economic implications
Richard Sharpe, Professor of Diplomatic, University of Oxford: The consequences of an early dissolution: the English experience in the sixteenth century and after
Different ways of breaking up monastic libraries: confiscation, destruction or clandestine removal of books
Rudolf Gamper, Librarian, Kantonsbibliothek Vadiana, St. Gallen: From Reformation to Säkularisation: the dissolution of religious houses in Switzerland and the fate of their libraries
Martin Germann, Zuürich: Zurich and the books of the monasteries: from the Reformation to the 19th century.
Mariía Luisa Loópez-Vidriero Abelloó, Librarian, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, Madrid: Dissolved monastic collections in Spain from Philip II’s suppression to the 19th-century Desamortización
Tuomas Heikkilaä, Assistant Professor of History, University of Helsinki, Finland: The Scandinavian situation, including the effect of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany
Jeffrey Garrett, Assistant Librarian for Special Libraries, Northwestern University: The expropriation of monastic libraries in Central Europe, 1773–1814
State policy toward book collections
CHAIR: Ian Maclean, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of Oxford
Different approaches of government policy towards the dissolution of monasteries. Were governments aware of the library treasures and of their patrimonial or cultural value?
Dorit Raines, Dep. Studi Umanistici, Università Ca' Foscari, Venice: From predator to prey: The Venetian librarian Jacopo Morelli under Venetian, French, and Austrian governments, 1778-1819
Vincenzo Trombetta, Professor of the History of the Book, Università di Salerno: La politica delle soppressioni e i nuovi poli bibliotecari a Napoli tra regalismo illuminista e Restaurazione, 1767-1815
Luiís Cabral, Librarian, Câmara Municipal do Porto: State policy concerning the dissolution of monastic book collections in Portugal, esp. during the 19th century
Marie Pierre Laffitte, Dep. MSS, Bibliotheèque Nationale de France, Paris: Napoleon and the sequestration of Italian monastic book collections
Sequestration, redistribution, or contribution to the foundation of public libraries
CHAIR: Kristian Jensen, Head of Arts and Humanities, The British Library, London
Dissolution from the perspective of libraries--How did the dissolution contribute to the opening of new public libraries or influence the contents of those already established?
Jos A. A. M. Biemans, Curator of MSS, Amsterdam University Library: The 1578 foundation of the library due to the confiscation of Catholic book collections Emmanuelle Chapron, Maîre de conferences, Histoire moderne, Université Aix-en-Provence: Libraries and dissolved monastic collections in Tuscany from Pietro Leopoldo to Napoleon
Marina Venier, Dep. Rare Books, Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Roma: Andreina Rita, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, La dispersione delle biblioteche degli ordini religiosi a Roma, dalla prima Repubblica romana (1799) a Roma capitale del Regno d'Italia (1873)
Marek Derwich, Professor of History, Wrocław University & Oleh Duch, Faculty of History, University of Lviv (Ukraina): The dissolution of monasteries in Silesia and Poland (with contemporaries Belorusse, Lithuanie and Ukraine) and the fate of their libraries, 18th–19th centuries
Migration of books, access to new publics
CHAIR: Kasper van Ommen, Coordinator Scaliger Institute, Leiden University
Journeys from religious to secular reading -- changes in reading habits -- new reading publics
Antonella Barzazi, Dep. Storia, Università di Padova: Migration and re-use in the development of Italian religious collections (late 16th - 18th century)
Bart op de Beeck, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels: Jesuit libraries in the Southern Netherlands, their eighteenth-century holdings, and the dispersion after 1773
Javier Anton Pelayo, Universitat Autó́noma de Barcelona: The secularization of books and the change in the habit of reading in Catalonia during XVIIIth and XIXth centuries
Bettina Wagner, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich: 1803 secularization in Bavaria and the book auctions of 1815–50
Impact on book trade and the emergence of private collections
CHAIR: Giles Mandelbrote, Librarian, Lambeth Palace
What was the impact of the massive flow of books and manuscripts into the market? -- The emergence of a new type of collector
Dominique Varry, ENSSIB, Lyon: French book trade after the Revolution [provisional]
Marino Zorzi, Istituto Veneto di lettere, scienze ed arti, Venice: The 19th-century book trade
in Venice [provisional]
Richard Linenthal, Antiquarian bookseller: Monastic collections and the 19th-century English book trade
William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, Harvard University: North American collection building: gathering monastic books from long ago and far away
TOOLS FOR RESEARCH SESSION: Presentation of databases which allow for the reconstruction of dispersed collections: such as Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (MLGB3), Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI), Index Possessorum Incunabulorum (IPI), and CERL Thesaurus.
Conclusions
CHAIR: Nigel Palmer, Professor of Medieval German Literature, University of Oxford
Organised by:
Cristina Dondi, Dept. Modern Languages, University of Oxford, Secretary of CERL
Dorit Raines, Dep. Studi Umanistici Universitaà Ca' Foscari, Venice
Richard Sharpe, Prof. of Diplomatic University of Oxford
Conference website: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/MigrationofKnowledge.htm
Organised by Professor David Finkelstein of Queen Margaret University and Professor Claire Squires
Plenary Speakers will include Dr Danielle Fuller of the University of Birmingham.
A significant development in the environment of literature and the book at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries has been the growth of literary festivals and book towns. As part of the literary marketing mix, book festivals and towns offer publishers the opportunity to promote their authors and sell their products. Such locations also provide physical and sociological spaces in which readers encounter writers and literature, and become book consumers. Book festivals and towns have clear links to regional economies, and are heavily used in the promotion of tourist destinations, as testified by the strategic partnerships and sponsorship arrangements with a variety of agencies. As part of this process, concepts of cultural identity are forged and commodified, conjoining literature to cultural heritage, the creative industries and political ideology. In the era of new media and digital delivery, the opportunity to meet authors and fellow readers face-to-face, to buy books and other merchandise, and to align a liking for literature with travel and tourism, is being taken up by hundreds of thousands of readers every year. Literary festivals and towns, while heavily promoted by digital marketing activities, afford physical meeting spaces for authors, books, readers and ideas.
To explore these events and environments, the Book Cultures, Book Events conference will bring together academic and student researchers from different disciplines with practitioners and stakeholders, to their contemporary perspectives and historical precedents. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
Proposals for papers of 20 minutes are invited. Details of the submission procedure will be available shortly.
This conference is supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and as such registration costs for the conference will be minimal.
The conference is part of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Workshop Book Events: The Transnational Culture, Commerce and Social Impact of Literary Festivals, organised in association with the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication at the University of Stirling, Queen Margaret University, and Bookfestival Scotland.
Conference website: http://www.publishing.stir.ac.uk/2011/10/23/book-cultures-book-events-conference/
For any enquiries, please contact: publishing@stir.ac.uk
To mark the AHRC project: 'The Impact of Distribution and Reading Patterns on the History of the Novel in Britain, 1880-1940' at the University of Reading, 2008-12
Confirmed speakers: Dr Mary Hammond and Dr Nickianne Moody
This one day symposium will examine the role of publishers, readers and the distributing agents of fiction on literary culture and the history of the novel from 1880-1940. It will investigate the impact that the literary marketplace had on the production of fiction in this period and consider the role that it played in the minds of authors and their publishers. How far were publishers and authors consciously seeking to produce fiction that would be acceptable to the market, and what constraints did this involve? To what extent did changes in reading patterns and in the cultural status of fiction influence what was written and produced? What contribution can the analysis of changes in distribution and reading patterns make to a new understanding of one of the most revolutionary periods in the history of English fiction?
Key areas that we suggest will be covered include:
As with the AHRC project which the symposium is designed to mark, the day aims to be interdisciplinary and will bring together publishing experts, book historians and literary critics. It will be held at the University of Reading Special Collections, where the nationally designated archive of British printing and publishers is held. The significance of publishers' archives lies in the insight they can give into the network of relations between author, publisher, retailer and consumer; the publishers' archives held at Reading have been used extensively as part of our project. The potentialities for research and the use of publishers' and book trade archives in literary studies will form part of the day's focus.
Proposals for papers should be emailed to Dr Nicola Wilson, n.l.wilson@reading.ac.uk no later than 16 December 2011. Proposals should be about 250 words in length. Please include your telephone and e-mail address on your proposal.
Organisers: Professor Patrick Parrinder, Dr Andrew Nash and Dr Nicola Wilson Department of English Language and Literature, University of Reading
http://www.reading.ac.uk/english-language-and-literature/Research/deal-novelproject.aspx
Principal Investigator Dr Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
Outline of the Research Network
There is much work currently being undertaken in the history of newspapers in
the USA and the UK and it is the purpose of this network to bring leading
scholars in the field together to discuss how their research interrelates and
how it can be enhanced by broader disciplinary dialogue drawing on the
traditions and methodologies of history, language studies, literary studies,
and journalism studies. This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by
the growing number of digital newspaper archives from the 19th and 20th
centuries from the USA and the UK. As we move from a research economy of
archive scarcity to one of plenty, we need to be able to set out a new, more
integrated set of methodologies which enable the wealth and diversity of these
resources to be more appropriately mined.
Each of the seminars will seek to attract high quality, publishable research which contributes to the themes of the Research Network. The seminars, located as they are in the UK, the USA and Switzerland will aim to bring together leading researchers and emerging scholars so as to enhance the international and interdisciplinary ambitions of the project. The Research Network will also co-ordinate publication with the Media History Exchange, an archive and social network sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Aims and Objectives
Core Group
Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield
Kevin Barnhurst, University of Illinois at Chicago
Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield
David Copeland, Elon University
Bob Franklin, University of Cardiff
Jane Hodson, University of Sheffield
Andreas H. Jucker, University of Zurich
Chandrika Kaul, St Andrews
Ed King, Head of Collections, British Newspaper Library
Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
David Machin, University of Cardiff
John Nerone University of Illinois
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Terry Threadgold, University of Cardiff
Joel Wiener, CUNY
Key Dates
14 January 2011 (Sheffield) -
Exploring digital newspaper archives
12 March 2011 (New York) -
The long popularization process: Anglo-American perspectives
18 January 2012 (Zurich) - Historical pragmatics and the language of popular newspapers
28 March 2012 (Cardiff) -
The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view
8 July 2012 (Sheffield) -
Research methodology and digital newspapers: feasibility and sustainability
When William Stead died on the maiden voyage of the Titanic in April 1912, he was the most famous Englishman on board. He was one of the inventors of the modern tabloid. His advocacy of ‘government by journalism’ helped launch military campaigns. His exposé of child prostitution raised the age of consent to sixteen, yet his investigative journalism got him thrown in jail. A mass of contradictions and a crucial figure in the history of the British press, Stead was a towering presence in the cultural life of late Victorian and Edwardian society.
This conference marks the centenary of his death. We aim to recover Stead’s extraordinary influence on modern English culture and to mark a major moment in the history of journalism. In 2012 the British Library will open its state of the art newspaper reading rooms. In Stead’s spirit we will also investigate our own revolution in newspapers and print journalism in the age of digital news.
With Stead as a focal point, we will use aspects of his career to develop multiple avenues into the history of his time and ours. This is not a narrowly focused specialist conference, but one that aims to adopt wide cultural perspectives.
Conference Organizers:
Call for Papers
We are currently calling for initial expressions of interest in this conference. Please send any proposals for papers (tentative is fine), suggestions for topics, or general queries to the organizers at stead2012@googlemail.com. We will accept expressions of interest until the end of July 2010. A full call for papers will follow in 2011.
We welcome initial proposals for papers or expressions of interest in any aspect of Stead's life, career or times. You might address any of the following topics:
Conference website: https://sites.google.com/site/stead2012/home
Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2011
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
Confirmed 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) and Cathy Shrank (c.shrank@shef.ac.uk).
Enquiries should be directed to a.bryson@sheffield.ac.uk.
The Material Texts Network at Birkbeck convenes and encourages innovative work on the materiality of texts. We invite 300-word proposals, from scholars working in any period and discipline, on the theme of ‘Missing Texts’. Papers might consider
Please send 300-word proposals (for a 20 minute paper) and a brief CV to Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@bbk.ac.uk) and Dr Gill Partington (g.partington@bbk.ac.uk), by 1 February 2012.
Papers of 20 minutes or proposals for panels of up to three speakers are invited on any aspect of the theme 'news in early modern Europe', for a multi-disciplinary postgraduate conference to be hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
Please send abstracts of papers (max. 200 words) or panel theme with list of speakers and abstracts to Simon Davies (S.F.Davies@sussex.ac.uk) by 31st January 2012. Please http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cems/emnews/ for more information.
Keynote Speakers:
Helen Berry (Newcastle University) on Sex, Marriage and the Castrato
Joseph Bristow (UCLA) on Oscar Wilde's Sexual Practices
Cora Kaplan (Queen Mary, University of London) on Rape, Representation and Slavery
Richard C. Sha (American University) on Romanticism and the Paradoxes of Free Love
From the publication of John Cleland's Fanny Hill (1748) to D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), literature has imaginatively exploited the relationship between freedom, coercion and sexual pleasure, constantly pushing at the boundaries of what it is permissible to describe, represent and perform. At the same time, the history of print, film and theatre censorship has been told as a story of progressive unshackling from constraint. In this narrative, these ever-widening freedoms and challenges have been understood as positively beneficial to individuals and to societies. Yet the idea of sexual liberty as an unqualified good has increasingly come under scrutiny, giving way to the realization that freedom from sexual constraint can sometimes mean imprisonment in new and alternate structures of power, frustration and denial. This international, multidisciplinary conference seeks to complicate and enrich our understanding of the relation between sex, pleasure and coercion in a liberal context. It will explore the many ways in which literary and visual texts and performances can be understood to create, reinforce, question and/or dissolve these structures, as well as interrogate the complicity of publishing and the law in their framing and dismantling.
Key conference questions are:
We are interested in literary and visual texts/performances from across the cultural spectrum. We welcome papers from English, Drama, Film & Visual Culture, History, Law, Modern Languages, Sociology and Geography. Possible topics include:
Proposals of up to 300 words should be emailed by 1 November 2011 to TakingLiberties@ncl.ac.uk. Other inquiries should be directed to Dr Ella Dzelzainis at ella.dzelzainis@ncl.ac.uk.
The conference is organized at Newcastle University by the Long Nineteenth Century Research Group (School of English), with the support of the Gender Research Group and the Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.
There are still some openings for further participants in the 'From Text(s) to Book(s)' international and SHARP-sponsored conference that we will be hosting on 21-23 June 2012 at Université in Nancy, in France, just before SHARP Dublin. We therefore invite you to send your proposals to 21 - 23 June 2012
href="mailto:monica.latham@univ-nancy2.fr">monica.latham@univ-nancy2.fr and 21 - 23 June 2012
href="mailto:david.ten-eyck@univ-nancy2.fr">david.ten-eyck@univ-nancy2.fr before January 20th. A provisional programme will be available in Spring 2012.
Currently, sixty or so speakers, including our four keynotes, have confirmed their participation in the conference. We have listed their names and affiliations on the updated conference web page, which you can find at the following address:
The London Rare Books School (LRBS) is a series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, University of London.
The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Senate House Libraries, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections. Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books.
The courses planned for 2012 are:
Week 1: 25 June - 29 June
1. The Book in the Ancient World
2. Children's Books, 1470-1980
3. European Bookbinding, 1450-1820
4. A History of Maps and Mapping
5. An Introduction to Bibliography
6. The Medieval Book
7. The Printed Book in Europe, 1450-2000
Week 2: 2 - 6 July
1. The Early Modern Book in England
2. The History and Practice of Hand Press Printing, 1450-1830
3. The History of Writing; a wider view
4. An Introduction to Illustration and its Technologies
5. Modern First Editions; Dealing, Collecting and the Market
6. Reading, Writing and Sending Texts, 1400-1919
7. Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600: palaeography, codicology and contextualisation
Each course will consist of thirteen seminars amounting in all to twenty hours of teaching time spread between Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon. There will be timetabled 'library time' that will allow students to explore the rich resources of the University's Senate House Library, one of the UK's major research libraries. The evening programme will include an opening reception and talk, a book history lecture, and a reception hosted by a major London antiquarian bookseller.
Postgraduate credit is available for these courses at the Institute, which is one of the ten member-Institutes of the University of London's School of Advanced Study. In order to achieve the award of credit a student will have to complete and pass a 5,000 word essay within two months of the course (an extra fee to cover marking and other costs will be charged).
The fee will be £600 which will include the provision of lunch, and coffee and tea throughout the week. A small number of bursaries are available.
A range of different sorts of accommodation will be available including cheap student housing close by Senate House; Senate House is next to the British Museum in the heart of Bloomsbury.
Further details and application forms can be found at: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/cmps/events/courses/LRBS/index.htm
Fourth Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP)
Intellectual property rights are generally supposed to function as means of stimulating and diffusing cultural production. This instrumentalist understanding of how intellectual property works as a cultural technology has survived for more than two centuries; it has been amplified and refined by a long tradition of economic analysis and economic history, and it has now been retrenched as the basic premise of contemporary debates about public domains, digital commons, and the expansion of corporate semiotic power. How plausible or illuminating is this pervasive representation of the agency of intellectual property rights?
There are some familiar ways of testing this representation. Lawyers and economists ask whether patent laws work as they should in the domains of, for example, software or biomedical innovation, they speculate as to the reasons why creativity in the fashion industry seems to flourish in a 'negative space' (a domain unframed by copyright law), and they ask how formal intellectual property rights work with 'social norms'. But these lines of inquiry still reduce culture to what can be rendered in terms of scarcity, efficiency, and instrumentality.
The theme of this workshop seeks to elicit alternative approaches to the cultural implications of intellectual property and cultural property laws. A rubric that turns on the terms 'culture' and 'technology' can only be open-ended, but the following questions might be taken as a rough starting point for reflection:
We invite contributions from established and doctoral scholars working in the broad field of the humanities and the social sciences, including anthropology, economic history, history of science, media studies, literary theory, science studies, and critical theory, as well as legal history and legal theory.
Papers selected for presentation at the workshop will be circulated in advance to registered participants. A maximum length of 9,000 words is recommended. Abstracts of proposed papers (together with a brief author bio) should be submitted by 1 March 2012.
Important dates
Submission of proposal (abstract and bio): 1 March 2012
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2012
Submission of paper: 1 June 2012
Workshop: 25-26 June 2012
Contacts
For information and program updates visit the ISHTIP website at: http://www.ishtip.org.
Please also visit the 2012 LSE workshop website at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/IPconference.htm
Abstracts and author bios can be submitted to any of the following for circulation among the Program Committee:
Alain Pottage -- r.a.pottage@lse.ac.uk
Tatiana Flessas -- t.flessas@lse.ac.uk
Dev Gangjee -- d.gangjee@lse.ac.uk
http://www.tcd.ie/longroomhub/news/announcements/
A full Call for Papers will be circulated after this summer's SHARP conference.
Call for papers: Extended deadline to 17th October 2011
The 4th Media History conference will focus on the ways in which people have understood the social, cultural and political roles of the media from the 15th to the 20th century. The concept of 'the media' will be interpreted broadly, so as to include print culture (including the press and publishing), cinema, broadcasting, and other visual and electronic media.
A great deal of work has been done by scholars on the institutional, political and cultural history of various media. 'Perception, Reception' will build on this literature to explore the ways in which the media have historically been understood, conceptualised, and imaginatively represented. Thus the conference will not focus on the content of the media as such, so much as the depiction, perception and reception of the media in different contexts over time.
How have readers, consumers, and the respective media industries themselves framed arguments about the media as a force for good (or evil) at different points in time? Have contemporaries always seen the media as agents of change, or is there a counter-history of the media to be written in terms of promoting conservatism, deference and order? How have people understood and represented the media in terms of concepts of personal and geographical space, time, or changing belief systems? Can we think 'internationally' about perceptions of the media in different states and nations over time, or is the media still best understood and examined in largely local or regional contexts?
We welcome proposals from a range of chronological, geographical and methodological backgrounds
Abstracts, of around 200 words for papers of between 20 to 25 minutes duration, should be sent by close of business on 17th October 2011 to mediahist2012@aber.ac.uk
'Perception, Reception' is jointly organised by the Centre For Media History, Aberystwyth University http://www.aber.ac.uk/history/research/centreformediahistory.html, the journal Media History http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/13688804.html ,the Trinity Long Room Hub http://www.tcd.ie/longroomhub, Trinity College Dublin and Swansea University. Additional enquiries can be directed to one or more of the following: Dr Sian Nicholas (shn@aber.ac.uk), Professor Tom O'Malley (tpo@aber.ac.uk),Dr Jason McElligott (jmcellig@tcd.ie) , or Professor Kevin Williams (K.M.Williams@Swansea.ac.uk).
Principal Investigator Dr Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
Outline of the Research Network
There is much work currently being undertaken in the history of newspapers in
the USA and the UK and it is the purpose of this network to bring leading
scholars in the field together to discuss how their research interrelates and
how it can be enhanced by broader disciplinary dialogue drawing on the
traditions and methodologies of history, language studies, literary studies,
and journalism studies. This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by
the growing number of digital newspaper archives from the 19th and 20th
centuries from the USA and the UK. As we move from a research economy of
archive scarcity to one of plenty, we need to be able to set out a new, more
integrated set of methodologies which enable the wealth and diversity of these
resources to be more appropriately mined.
Each of the seminars will seek to attract high quality, publishable research which contributes to the themes of the Research Network. The seminars, located as they are in the UK, the USA and Switzerland will aim to bring together leading researchers and emerging scholars so as to enhance the international and interdisciplinary ambitions of the project. The Research Network will also co-ordinate publication with the Media History Exchange, an archive and social network sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Aims and Objectives
Core Group
Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield
Kevin Barnhurst, University of Illinois at Chicago
Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield
David Copeland, Elon University
Bob Franklin, University of Cardiff
Jane Hodson, University of Sheffield
Andreas H. Jucker, University of Zurich
Chandrika Kaul, St Andrews
Ed King, Head of Collections, British Newspaper Library
Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
David Machin, University of Cardiff
John Nerone University of Illinois
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Terry Threadgold, University of Cardiff
Joel Wiener, CUNY
Key Dates
14 January 2011 (Sheffield) -
Exploring digital newspaper archives
12 March 2011 (New York) -
The long popularization process: Anglo-American perspectives
18 January 2012 (Zurich) - Historical pragmatics and the language of popular newspapers
28 March 2012 (Cardiff) -
The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view
8 July 2012 (Sheffield) -
Research methodology and digital newspapers: feasibility and sustainability
A conference organized jointly by ‘Print Networks’ and the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester
Guest speakers:
Adam Fox, University of Edinburgh, Author of Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700
Sheila O’Connell, British Museum, Author of The Popular Print in England
Call for Papers & Conference Fellowship
Offers are invited for conference papers of 30 minutes’ duration. The theme of Street Literature: Cheap Print, Popular Culture and the Book Trade is broadly defined. Papers may relate to aspects of the production, distribution and reception of ‘street literature’ (chapbooks, ballads, broadsides, newspapers, popular prints and other cheap printed matter) in the British Isles, or in other English-speaking parts of the world, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, inclusive.
An abstract (up to 650 words) of the offered paper and a biographical statement (up to 100 words) should be submitted, preferably as an email attachment, by 31st January 2012 to: jh241@le.ac.uk A Conference Fellowship is offered to one or two postgraduate students (or independent scholars of equivalent status) whose research falls within the conference theme, who wish to present a paper. The fellowship covers the cost of attending the conference and assistance towards costs of travel. A summary of the research being undertaken, accompanied by a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor, should be sent to jh241@le.ac.uk or posted to the address below by 31st January 2012.
The papers presented may be considered for publication and must therefore comprise original work not presented or published elsewhere.
Organizing committee: Susanne Bauer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany; Maria Rentetzi, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece; Martina Schlünder, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany
The topic:
We invite proposals from scholars in the history of science, technology,
and medicine, science and technology studies, the humanities, visual and
performing arts, museum and cultural studies and other related
disciplines for a workshop on the uses and meanings of mundane things
such as boxes, packages, bottles, and vials in shaping knowledge
production. In keeping with the conference theme, we are asking
contributors to include specific references to the ways in which boxes
have played a role--commercial, epistemic or otherwise--in their own
particular disciplinary frameworks.
Boxes have always supported the significance of the objects they contained, allowing specific activities to arise. In the hands of natural historians and collectors, boxes functioned as a means of organizing their knowledge throughout the eighteenth century. They formed the material bases of the cabinet or established collection and accompanied the collector from the initial gathering of natural specimens to their final display. As 'knowledge chests' or 'magazining tools' the history of box-like containers also go back to book printing and the typographical culture. The artists' boxes of the early nineteenth century were used to store the paraphernalia of a new fashionable trend. In the late nineteenth century the box became the pharmacist's laboratory and a device for standardizing and controlling dosage of oral remedies. In the twentieth century radiotherapy the box was elevated to a multifunctional tool working as a memory aid to forgetful patients or as 'knowledge package' that predetermined dosages, included equipment, and ready-made radium applicators.
Focusing on medicine, boxes have played a crucial role since the eighteenth century when doctors ought to bring instruments to their patient's house for surgical or obstetrical interventions. In modern operating rooms boxes organize the workflow and build an essential part of the aseptical regime. Late twentieth century biomedical scientists store tissue samples in large-scale biobanks, where samples contained in straws are placed in vials, then the vials in boxes which in turn are stacked up in 'elevators'. This storage system facilitates retrieval with barcodes, indexing each individual sample so that additional variables can be retrieved from a database. Thus the container and its content are tied up in a close epistemic and material relationship.
As it is usually the case the box embodies the knowledge that goes into the chemical laboratory and its function; it classifies objects into collections of natural history; it meaningfully orders letters in a printer's composition or painting equipment for the artist' convenience; it standardizes pharmaceutical dosage forms and allows pharmacists to control the production and consumption of their remedies; in the commercial world it misleads or informs customers; it persuades consumers for the integrity of the product that they enclose; it hides the identity of the object(s) that contains, it shapes professional identities and is essential for mobilizing, transporting, accumulating and circulating materials and the knowledge they produce and embody.
Furthermore, if we do understand matter and materiality not as given, solid, continuous, and stable but rather as something being done, performed, shaped and embedded in practices, then we should examine closer how bottles and boxes themselves materialize differently in a set of diverse practices. How do they change their ontologies by migrating from the kitchen to the laboratory, from the workshop to the operating room?
We welcome innovative understandings of the role that boxes and containers have played historically and continue to play in technology, medicine, and science. We see the workshop as contributing to an ongoing interest in science and technology studies on the importance of mundane things in scientific practice and technological innovations.
Submission guidelines:
Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2012 Please submit a 300-words
abstract along with your name, institutional affiliation, email and
phone number as a word or pdf attachment to the organizers of the
conference
Proposals will be reviewed and notification of the outcome will be made in February 15, 2012. We are pursuing publication outlets for selected papers from the workshop. Therefore we expect full papers from those that will participate by May 30, 2012. Details will be provided after notification.
Conference registration fee: 50 euros
Place
The venue of the conference is a wonderful tobacco warehouse renovated
to host the tobacco museum of the city of Kavala in northern Greece.
Contact info
For further information please contact the organizers: Susanne Bauer
sbauer@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de, Maria Rentetzi mrentetz@vt.edu, Martina
Schlünder m.schluender@gmx.de
Between the Hall of Memory and Baskerville House in Birmingham, stands a sculptural tribute to John Baskerville. On the columns of Portland Stone are reversed bronze letters spelling 'Virgil', the Roman poet whose works were printed by Baskerville in 1757 in the famous typeface that bears his name. A poem in praise of the printer appeared in Aris's Gazette in 1751, entitled 'Industry and Genius' from which the sculpture takes its name.
The contribution made by printers, processes and products to their industry and the wider political and cultural world will be examined in this two day conference organised jointly by the Printing Historical Society and the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.
Papers are invited on any aspect of the 'industry and genius' of printing, including trade networks, structure of businesses, relationships with booksellers, publishers and authors, political and cultural significance = and technical innovations. Chronologically, papers will be welcomed covering any period. Papers about Birmingham and Midlands printing will be especially encouraged.
Papers should be of up to 30 minutes duration. An abstract (of c.300 words) of the offered paper should be submitted by 31 January 2012 preferably by email to Francis Cave, Hon. Secretary, Printing Historical Society at this
address: SECRETARY@PRINTINGHISTORICALSOCIETY.ORG.UK
Or by post to: Francis Cave, Hon. Secretary, Printing Historical Society, St. Bride Library, St. Bride Institute, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8EE
Call for papers
The parameters and interiors of British middlebrow writing and reading
have increasingly received scholarly attention in recent years.
Middlebrow writing, in fiction in particular, has been identified in
terms of a particular kind of novel, produced by a combination of
particular conditions: the writer, the market, the reader, the
publisher, the critics, the period, the theme, the setting, and the
message. Middlebrow is now understood as a highly complex sociological
phenomenon, with boundaries that are almost too flexible. It is
getting harder to be able to say: 'this, and not this, is middlebrow',
since in a certain sense, middlebrow can be demonstrated to permeate
all aspects of creative production and consumption from the early
twentieth century. While accepting that definitions are useful, it is
important to recognise that a precise definition of the boundaries of
'the middlebrow' may in reality be unhelpful for its exploration. By
focusing too fixedly on the interfaces between middlebrow and that
which is clearly, or not so clearly, not middlebrow, we lose sight of
the fluid nature of the middlebrow state of mind, and of the social
and literary contributory conditions that enabled such texts to evolve.
This conference aims to investigate the complex relationship between middlebrow writing and categories of space and place. For the exploration of this topic we seek to encourage discussion along two main trajectories: firstly, we would like to invite participants to consider the spaces and places where middlebrow writing was supported. This includes the social geographies of middlebrow as well as the topography and archaeology of middlebrow production and consumption. We are interested in hearing about research on middlebrow culture that encompasses spaces of refuge, spaces of social power, and spaces of industry and production. We want to hear about loci for writing: areas in a country, a county, a town, a village, even of a building. Where did middlebrow happen?
Secondly, we invite papers that explore the literary representation of place and space in middlebrow writing. Participants are invited to discuss the contribution of middlebrow writers to the spatial discourses that harbour the collective's sense of national, cultural and social identity. How do middlebrow writers image the places of gender, ethnicity, and class? What are their strategies for the appropriation of space and place for generating cultural meaning? We are particularly interested to learn about the experience of Empire in the first half of the twentieth century and middlebrow conceptions of home and exile, the country and city, the centre and the margins. How does middlebrow reflect and negotiate the spatial practices of society?Abstracts
The conference will be organised by Professor Christoph Ehland of the University of Paderborn, Germany, and Dr Kate Macdonald, Ghent University, Belgium. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be
sent to kate.macdonald@skynet.be and cornelia.waechter@uni-padeborn.de by 15 February 2012. Those abstracts selected for presentation will be announced not later than 5 March 2012.
The 'Research on Authorship as Performance' project at Ghent University invites proposals for 20-minute papers as well as for complete panels, for a conference on the theme of 'Reconfiguring Authorship'. This three-day conference will explore facets of authorship in the Anglophone world from the Middle Ages to the present; confirmed keynote speakers include Richard Wilson (Cardiff), Margaret Ezell (Texas A&M), Dame Gillian Beer (Cambridge), and Paul St Amour (Pennsylvania).
The conference program will include keynote talks and concurrent sessions as well as a conference dinner and an optional museum excursion on the final day of the conference.
Proposals
The Romantic concept of the solitary genius (if indeed such an entity
ever existed) has for decades now been the subject of intense critical
scrutiny and revision. Recent work in the burgeoning field of
authorship studies has turned to the analysis of cultural formations
of 'authoriality' as they developed historically in a variety of
geographical locations, in relation to cultural networks and social
change, to transformations of the media, as well as to changing
perceptions of gender and personhood. The notion of authorial agency
is therefore now submerged within an elaborate tissue of critical
feedback, textual instability, editorial intervention, and accidents
of publishing, branding, and spin. And yet the Author persists, as a
nomenclature, as a catalogue entry, as a biographical entity, as a
popular icon, and as an assumed agent of creativity and innovation. As
a result, current studies of authors and authorship have to contend
with the complex issues of authorial authority, independence or
interdependence, and self-fashioning in a large variety of historical
and discursive settings.
'Reconfiguring Authorship' aims to showcase the latest, most exciting developments in authorship studies by providing a venue in which to debate theoretical and historical understanding of the complex ideological, technological and social processes that transform a writer into an author. For that purpose, we take a wide view of the notion of 'authorship' and the figure of the 'author' to include a broad range of approaches and topics. Possible topics that participants might discuss include (but are by no means limited to):
Proposals for 20-minute papers are due via email (authorship.conference@gmail.com) by March 31, 2012, and should take the form of a 1-page abstract accompanied by a short CV; in the case of complete panels, proposals should consist of an abstract and short CV for every panelist together with a short CV for the chair (if different). We aim to inform participants in late April.
Due to the way that the Provincial Book Fairs Association now presents its calendar on its website, it has become too time-consuming to import the data over to HoBo. Consequently, I'm afraid that I won't be including PBFA fair information in future...
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