bibliography and history of the book

What determines the readership of a text or other medium, and how does such determination occur? Who are the imagined readers of a specific work, or a genre of literature or media, and how is this legible in textual features, modes of dissemination, implicit or explicit intentions of authors, or histories of reception? How do real readers encounter such assumptions or positionings and accept or resist them? Which works reach more homogeneous audiences, which garner multiple or intersecting ones, and how do audiences shift over time? Do readers have the power to choose their identities as readers? Abstracts for 15-20 minute papers: submit to https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/login

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender & Culture proposes to bring out a special number on early women’s magazines in Malayalam. These magazines played a significant role in negotiating the gender dynamics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Keralam. The debates on the lives of women with reference to modernity, colonial or otherwise, have been fraught with paradoxes and contradictions that require detailed interrogation. While the grand narratives of the times were scripted by and for men, women’s lives were punctuated  mostly by  the banalities of everyday lives. The new found interest at the turn of the twenty-first century in micro-narratives that tell alternate stories contesting the dominant has prompted us to undertake the present study.

Novels, Then and Now invites papers on all novel genres, authors, time periods, cultures, and settings. Consider it a safety net for novels that don’t fit neatly into a specific genre or that cross genres. For example, consider the many sub-genres of Romance with a capital “R”—western, thriller, paranormal, religious, romance (with a small “r”), detective, urban fantasy, etc. From Pearl S. Buck to Lee Child, from Laurie King to Tony Hillerman, from Julia Spencer-Fleming to Emilie Richards—all are welcome. Topics for the 2021 virtual conference could include, but are not limited to:

Resources for American Literary Study, a journal of archival and bibliographical scholarship in American literature, invites submissions for our upcoming 2021 double issue. Covering all periods of American literature, RALS welcomes both traditional and digital approaches to archival and bibliographical analysis. 

Founded in 1971, RALS remains the only major scholarly periodical of its kind. Each issue includes, in addition to archival and bibliographical research, related book reviews and a unique “Prospects” essay that identifies new directions in the study of major authors. Our editorial board consists of leading scholars from an array of fields and subfields in American literary study.

Call for Abstracts: Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Annual Conference 2021,  Chicago: Panel on “Transporting Modernism, Modernist bibliomigrancy,” Due April 5, 2021

Transporting Modernism, Modernist bibliomigrancy:

The Victorians Institute is excited to welcome you to Charlotte, NC on 
October 22-23rd 2021 for our rebooted annual conference: 
“Reflections/Refractions: Victorian(ist) Ways of Seeing." This conference 
seeks essays that explore how Victorians saw their world, how they depicted 
what they saw, and the ways that modern scholars, in turn, see the 
Victorians. Papers or panels on poetry, prose, nonfiction, biography, 
digital humanities, or visual art are welcome, as are presentations on the 
pedagogy and ethics of teaching Victorian literature (either during or not 
during a global pandemic).

LITERATURE AND POPULARITY IN THE GEORGIAN/REGENCY ERA

This traditional panel session welcomes submissions on readership and literature, especially popular literature, during the Georgian or Regency period, approximately 1795 to 1837. Abstracts addressing the conference theme, “Social Networks, Social Distances,” are especially welcome and a good fit for the period, when authors and readers can be seen aligning and networking through books. By June 1, 2021, please submit an abstract of 300 words, a brief bio, and any A/V or scheduling requests to Dr. Margie Burns, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at mburns@umbc.edu.

'Nottingham Black Archive as Activism'

Panya Banjoko (Nottingham Black Archive / NTU)

Host: PPCRG New Directions 

Time: 16.30 (GMT) on Thursday, 11 March 2021

Venue: Microsoft Teams

Duration: 60 mins (including 20 mins Q&A)

How to join: Email ppcrg@ntu.ac.uk to request a joining link.

Circuitous Channels: The Communications Circuit at 40

Robert Darnton’s “communications circuit,” proposed in his field-defining 1982 essay “What Is the History of Books?”, has become one of book history’s foundational paradigms. Since 1982, the “communications circuit” has been endlessly reprinted, debated, revised, and amended; it has become a touchstone heuristic for more articles, books, and papers than it is possible to list.

Deadline Extension: Due to an extension of our funding timeline, we are making a significant extension of this CFP deadline, which will now be July 31, 2021 (moving back work on the proposed edition by a semester as well). We hope this gives people more time to develop a proposal than the original tight turnaround, especially after the semester is over and people can take a step back from what is an unusually disruptive year. We are happy to talk to people about possible proposals. Updated CFP text is below.

Academic CFP

‘I liked to read there. One drew the pale armchair to the window, and so the light fell over the shoulder upon the page.’(Woolf 1966)

“The book always aims at installing an order, whether it is the order in which it is deciphered, the order in which it is to be understood, or the order intended by the authority who commanded or permitted the work.” (Roger Chartier, The Order of the Book)

If, according to Roger Chartier, “the book always aims at installing an order,” what does it mean for the book to be out of order? Is it broken? Is it committing some kind of transgression? Is it still a book? What is a book supposed to do, and what does it mean when it falls short of its perceived functions – or overshoots them? 

Archives of Afro-Asia: Excavating the Cultural Politics of the Early Decolonisation Era

Special Issue of Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions (Cambridge University Press)

Returning to the Page: Visualising Design and Desire in Fan Magazines 8-13 February 2021 Keynote: Sally Stein, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine This conference is designed as a sequel to our 2015 event Turning the Page: Digitization, movie magazines and historical audience studies. That conference focused on the development of the study of historical fan magazines in recent decades, with a particular emphasis on the impact of increased digitization (by the Media History Digital Library, among others) on this development.