SAMLA 2015 / Special Section: The Novel, Typography, and Graphic Design - Abstracts due 05/15/15
"We badly need a new way of thinking about novels that acknowledges their technological reality. We have to learn how to look at fiction as lines of print on a page and we to ask whether it is always the best arrangement to have a solid block of print from one margin to the other running down the page from top to bottom, except for occasional paragraph indentations."
—Ronald Sukenick, The New Tradition in Fiction
This panel welcomes papers that consider "new ways of thinking about novels," particularly ones that address the relationship between the novel, typography, and graphic design as a way of addressing the novel's materiality and its "technological reality." From Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759) to Edward Abbott's Flatland (1884) to Adam Thirwell's Kapow! (2012), writers and publishers have experimented with various methods of presenting text on the page. But how is the presentation of written text in the novel influenced by the visual arts (broadly conceived)? How have authors and publishers been influenced by graphic design or design technologies as a way of presenting written text? What types of forms exist between the (typographically standard) novel and the (highly visual) graphic novel?
Papers that address works composed after 1900 are especially welcome, as are paper that consider how typography and graphic design represent the "other arts" referenced in SAMLA 87's theme—In Concert: Literature and Other Arts.
By May 15, 2015, please submit a 500-750 word abstract, CV, and A/V requirements to Michael Griffin, Chair at michael.griffin@lmc.gatech.edu. The 87th annual SAMLA Convention will be held November 13-15, 2015, at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center, located in Durham, North Carolina.