Archival studies and print histories reveal surprising and complex interactions between manuscript and print in the nineteenth century, and justify continued attention to the manuscript sources that lay beneath the surface of some print, or to the annotations and revisions layered on top of others. The rich discourse surrounding these two mediums can help us scrutinize the competing terms that oftentimes frame them (that is, that print signifies professional, public, and masculine writing while manuscript signifies amateur, private, and feminine writing). In keeping with this year’s INCS theme, “Strata,” Print-Manuscript Layers in the Nineteenth-century Archive seeks papers that explore nineteenth-century authors’ strategic handling of the layers that separate, join, or entangle manuscript and print.

We invite papers that engage with these print-manuscript interactions, broadly. Among other questions, this panel asks: How did nineteenth-century authors layer manuscript and print in their work? Why and when are these layers obscured, revealed, leveraged, or inverted? How does manuscript subvert or nuance its associated published texts? How do authors engage with the page as both writer and reader? Collectively, this panel will explore the interactive layers of manuscript and print to pressure ideas about finished, stable texts; about authorship and collectivity; about the teleologies of manuscript to print; and/or about the space of the archive. 

Submit abstracts of 200 words and a one-page CV to sewalton@live.unc.edu and elshand@live.unc.edu by October 1, 2021.

You may send any questions to Sarah Schaefer Walton (sewalton@live.unc.edu) or to Elizabeth Shand (elshand@live.unc.edu)