[Update: Deadline Extended] Mediating Objects, Remediating Texts: Reading Material Culture in Transition (Grad)

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University of Victoria English Graduate Student Society

Mediating Objects, Remediating Texts: Reading Material Culture in Transition (Grad)

The University of Victoria's English Graduate Students' Society invites proposals for this year's graduate conference: Mediating Objects, Remediating Texts: Reading Material Culture in Transition. The conference will be held at the University of Victoria from May 13 to 15, 2010.

In Culture is Ordinary (1958), Raymond Williams wrote the following: "Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning." We would argue that every society also expresses these purposes and meanings materially. Whether taken to mean the printing of a book, the carving of a sculpture, or the maintaining of an archive, we seek to interrogate the ways in which divergent groups have engaged with material culture in the past, as well as how we, as scholars and academics, do so in the early 21st century.

This conference invites submissions for papers or presentations of approximately 15-20 minutes in length on any aspect of material culture from postgraduate and graduate scholars working in any area; all submissions will be considered on merit rather than from a disciplinary standpoint.

Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

• Projects that work with the principles of Digital Humanities and Literary Computing (with an emphasis on new forms of mediating print culture)
• Book history and manuscript studies
• Engagement with non-textual forms of cultural production (i.e. painting, sculpture, mixed media)
• Theorizing the study of material culture
• The preservation of material culture (including, but not limited to, library and government archives, film preservation, museums, etc.)
• The poetics of materiality
• Issues of Adaptation (film, printing new editions of canonical (and non-canonical) texts, graphic novels, etc.)

The above suggestions are starting points, meant to inspire and not to proscribe. We welcome submissions on any aspect of material culture, drawn from all chronological periods. As a goal of this conference is to foster trans-disciplinary and diachronic dialogues, we welcome topics ranging from the Classical to the Postmodern, from the Fine Arts to the "New" Bibliography. We are particularly interested in receiving proposals from the following disciplines/concentrations: Art History, Media Studies, History, Literary Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy, Historic Preservation, Medieval Studies, and Political Science.

Please submit proposals (in docx, .doc, or .rtf format) of approximately one page (500 words) in length to the following email address: uvic2010conference@gmail.com

Extended Deadline: March 14

Please direct all inquires to: uvic2010conference@gmail.com