Atlantic World Literacies: Before and After Contact--October 7-9, 2010 (abstracts due March 22, 2010)
For this international, interdisciplinary conference, we seek papers that explore how different kinds of literacy, broadly defined, developed around the Atlantic Rim before the Columbian era; consider the roles of writing, communication, and sign systems in the era of discovery, colonization, and conquest; and/or examine how transatlantic encounters and collisions birthed new literacies and literatures, and transformed existing ones. We will consider aural and visual communication, along with varied metaphorical, cultural, and technological "literacies."