CFA - Developments, Setbacks, and Deviations: Printing in Early Modern Europe
CONFERENCE: RSA San Juan 2023, which will be all in-person, 9–11 March 2023
Panel Title: "Developments, Setbacks, and Deviations: Printing in Early Modern Europe"
Knowledge-relaying artifacts do not exist in a vacuum. Because of the multifarious nature of textual transmission and the ever-changing sociopolitical pressures across Europe in the early modern period, it is vital for scholars to continue examining these processes and the agents who participated in them, the typographical features and paratextual devices that shape how texts were engaged with and understood, as well as the (in)direct forces that impacted their production, reception, and survival. Although we lack access to a considerable number of texts that were transmitted in the period, there remains untapped material that embodies unmarked developments, setbacks, and deviations in early modern print culture. The aim of this panel is to reduce that gap, albeit to a limited extent, and encourage continued engagement in the field of textual studies.
This panel invites papers that offer new insight into any aspect of printing in early modern Europe. Proposals may address a range of topics, including but not limited to:
- (Un)Enforced regulations, mediation, and/or censorship
- Publicized disputes and rivalry between authors and/or print agents
- Prefatory/concluding paratexts such as dedications, inscriptions, or letters
- Textual corruptions and/or discourses of error
- Typefaces, page design, and other meaning-making features
- Woodcuts, illustrations, and/or engravings
- Recycled and/or reused texts and print materials
- Marginalia and other readerly interventions
To submit a proposal, please send your full name, university affiliation, PhD completion date (past or expected), paper title (15-word maximum), and an abstract of no more than 150 words to the session’s organizer, Krislyn Zhorne (kzhorne@luc.edu). Submissions are due no later than July 15, 2022.