What strategies can paper ephemera teach us in the digital age? This panel invites conversations by writing instructors, educators, poets, and artists exploring the work that happens at/within the margins of writing. Both literally and figuratively, we take an expansive scope to the term “margins,” imagining not only the writing that appears on the space of the printed page, but writing that would normally be scrapped, discarded, remixed, or ephemeralized. This can include digital ephemera, such as “disappearing” messages in Instagram or other communication services. At another angle: margins can also mean the liminality of writing, the furthermost edges of what’s often standard and visible. We hope to solicit work that focuses on the lessons, teachings, and experiences within these margins, and/or transformative meanings in papercraft and exchange.

We welcome abstracts that take a renewed interest into contemporary (and historical) margins of writing; teaching nontraditional genres that emphasize process over product, or papers that focus on other sites of interest that could include matchboxes, valentines, receipts, scrapbooks (fan or personal), junk journals, diaries, newspaper clippings, transit tickets (MTA cards, other paper transit passes now unused), magazine adverts, calling cards, business cards, postcards, zines, bookmarks, bookplates, collectible cards (Magic The Gathering, Baseball, etc.), stamps, menus, holiday cards, wanted posters, and so on.

Interested scholars and artists should send an abstract of 250 words to Onur Ayaz (ayazo@mccc.edu) no later than September 30th. Please include a biographical note as well as any academic affiliation.