CFP: Texts, Forms and Readings in Europe (18th-21st Centuries) [SHARP; France] (Dec. 7; May 22-24)

While this CFP doesn't explicitly mention comics, there certainly seems to be room for work on the form here...

Call for Papers

Texts, Forms and Readings in Europe

(18th – 21st Centuries)

22-24 May 2013 - Université du Maine, Le Mans, France

(SHARP International Focussed conference)

This conference will question the relevance of the notion of a common European reader with regard to the evolution of reading practices from the so-called reading revolution in the 18th century until the current digital revolution. Europe is known as the birthplace of books, and it remains a major seat of book publishing and translating. Since an early stage its strongly established book culture has implied the durable circulation of books. This tradition has contributed to cultural exchanges and to the creation of reading communities across national borders. A relationship to the book and to reading, as well as their promotion and enhancement, seems to be a common value and a significant component of European identity. However, book policies and reading practices in Europe have varied from one region to another throughout history. Such idiosyncrasies – whether regional, national, social, economic, cultural or legal – make European identity recognizable even though nowadays globalization and the digital revolution tend to reduce those specificities.

Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier’s A History of Reading in the West (Polity Press, 1999) has taught us that reading is not an abstract action: it realizes itself through practices, situations, and readers, who “are never faced with an abstract, ideal text detached from everything material: they manipulate objects; they listen to words whose modalities govern the way they read or listen, but in the process also govern ways of comprehending the text.” Taking into account the strong link between texts, forms and readings as well as the fact that reading has not remained immutable, this interdisciplinary conference will study the elements of continuity and disruption that are characteristic of the uses of texts and of reading practices in 18th-21st-century Europe.

The conference welcomes proposals on the following topics:

• The relationship between reading practices and the evolution of printed material forms.
• The effect of new formats (audio, digital etc.) on reading theories and practices.
• The relationship between new social issues, new groups of readers and new kinds of reading practices.
• The correlation between cultural policies, educational policies, national identities and reading.
• The existence, resistance or erosion of potential European reading models.
• New and former sites of communal or solitary reading.
• Access to science and knowledge through books and reading.
• The role and issues of image and non-book printed material in informal reading practices.
• The representation of reading in the arts (film, literature, painting, photography).

We have planned a pre-workshop for early career researchers (including PhD students and post-docs) interested in all aspects of children’s, teenagers’ and young adults’ reading practices. This pre-workshop will consist of a poster session with a moderator.

Recommendations:

• Proposals should adhere to the aforementioned spatiotemporal frame and may consist of a case study or of a broader theoretical approach.
• Papers with a comparative approach are particularly welcome.
• The languages of the conference are English and French.
• The proposals (a 500-word abstract in French or in English, specifying the theoretical and methodological context, sources, etc.) will be reviewed by the program committee.
• Papers will be considered for further publication.

Proposals for 20-minutes presentations should be sent to the program committee before December 7th, 2012: Prof. Brigitte Ouvry-Vial Textes-Formes-Lectures2013@univ-lemans.fr

Proposals of posters (A1) for the pre-workshop should also be sent to Corinna Norrick-Rühl norrick@uni-mainz.de

Schedule:

• Deadline for submission of proposals: 7th December 2012
• Notification of acceptance: 15th January 2013
• Deadline for confirmation of participation: 1st February 2013Practical details (registration fees etc.) will be sent with the notification of acceptance

Guest speakers:
Opening lecture by Prof. Roger Chartier (Collège de France)
Closing lecture by Prof. Bernard Lahire (Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines)

Program committee: Laurent Bazin (University Versailles - Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), Jean-François Botrel(University Rennes II), Lodovica Braida (University Milano), Hans-Jurgen Lüsebrink (University Sarreland), BrigitteOuvry-Vial (University Maine), Nathalie Richard (University Maine), Jürgen Ritte (University Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Institutional partners: SHARP; Université du Maine (Le Mans) ; Lab « Langues, Littératures, Linguistique » Universities of Angers and Maine; Dipartimento di Studi storici from Università degli Studi Milano and APICE; Ville du Mans ; Carré Plantagenêt, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (le Mans).

Location: Le Mans is located 50 mn from Paris by train. In the middle of Region Pays-de-la-Loire, it is famous for its white wines, its Rillettes special pâté, and aside from the formula One race « 24 heures du Mans », it features several theater companies and a stunning historical district, Cité Plantagenêt (the film Cyrano de Bergerac was shot there), where conference participants will enjoy crawling.

Thank you for your attention and proposals,

Yours,
Brigitte Ouvry-Vial
Professeur des Universités
Université du Maine (Le Mans, France)

CFP: Comics and the History of the Book - SHARP/APA (Nov. 15; Jan. 3-6 2014)

Call for Papers

SHARP/AHA Affiliate Panel:

Comics and the History of the Book

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) seeks participants for its affiliated panel session at the January 3-6, 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington D.C. Participants will take part in a roundtable conversation on the panel’s theme: “Comics and the History of the Book.”

In recent years scholars have investigated the significance of comic books and graphic novels. This round table aims to explicate how a book history approach to comics, broadly construed, can enrich our understanding of this medium. Those interested in participating in the panel should submit a short abstract (300 words) describing their current research interests and a statement on the key issues related to this field. Preference will be given to proposals that consider the evolution of comics since the early twentieth century. Additional topics of interest include: authorship, circulation and distribution, advertising, comics and gender, audience, legitimacy of the medium, production technologies, non-linear reading, aesthetics and format, censorship, and copyright.

Please submit abstracts and a brief CV by Thursday, November 15, to Robb Haberman at robb.haberman@du.edu.

Please note that if selected to serve on the panel, all participants must be members of both AHA and SHARP.

Follow us for updates about this panel!

SHARP at the AHA on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SHARPatAHA

SHARP at the AHA on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SHARPatAHA

CFP: Geographies of the Book / SHARP (Nov. 30; Jul. 18-21)

Not specifically about comics, but plenty of room for comics-related proposals, I'd think...!

CFP:

Geographies of the Book

Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing

(SHARP)

July 18 to 21, 2013
University of Pennsylvania

This theme can be approached from at least three perspectives:

1. Recent developments that take particular texts and use them to construct multiple histories including, but not limited to, the circulation of books, the plurality of interpretations and uses of the texts, and the forms of domination and resistance within the political and social spheres made possible by the written word.
2. Case studies exploring geographies of books and geographies within books. Geographies of books can refer to the role of the author, the history of publishing (including pirated editions and false imprints), the book trade (circulation of print, within cities, countries, and across continents), and the translation/transformation of texts into other languages, other forms (adaptations, abridgements, epitomes), and other genres (histories into plays, poetry into prose). Or the subject of the geography of reading might also be contemplated.
3. Geographies within books may invoke imaginative topographies or journeys within fictional works, the place of maps and images in travelogues and novels, or the circulation of type and ornament between print shops and cities, and variations or similarities in the regional or national habits of printers and compositors. Tensions between the universal diffusion of printing and its local instantiation might here be considered. 

The full Call for Papers is posted on the following web page: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/SHARP2013/SHARP2013_papers.html

On the CFP page, you will find a link to the Paper submission online form (note: all proposals must be submitted electronically. Deadline for proposals: November 30, 2012. The URL for the conference web site is: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/SHARP2013/index.html

If you have questions regarding the Philadelphia SHARP conference please contact the organizing team @ sharpupenn2013@gmail.com.

The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in 19th-Century Media (September 1)

This note was posted on SHARP-L by listowner Patrick Leary, who says:

Please let your students and colleagues know about this innovative fellowship, which supports dissertation work that makes use of full-text digital exploration of 19th-century British periodicals.

This CFP is also available as a PDF; and the RSVP website also lists several other awards and fellowships.

Call for Proposals
Deadline: September 1, 2009
The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship
in 19th-Century Media

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) is pleased to announce a new fellowship for 2009, made possible by the generosity of publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, in support of dissertation research that makes substantial use of full-text digitized collections of 19th-century British magazines and newspapers. A prize of $1500 will be awarded, together with one year's subscription to selected digital collections from Gale, including 19th Century UK Periodicals and 19th Century British Library Newspapers.

Purpose: The purpose of the Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship is two-fold, (1) to support historical and literary research that deepens our understanding of the 19th-century British press in all its rich variety, and (2) to encourage the scholarly use of full-text digitized collections of these primary sources in aid of that research.

Eligibility: Eligible for this award is any currently enrolled postgraduate student, in any academic discipline, who by the end of 2009 will have embarked on a doctoral dissertation or thesis that centrally involves investigation into one or more aspects of the British magazine and newspaper press of the 19th century. Preference will be given to projects that are interdisciplinary in approach, and that propose to use methods of exploration that online collections uniquely make possible. The digitized collections used in this research may include those created by any publishers or projects, whether commercial or non-commercial.

Applications: Applicants should send a c.v., and the names and contact information of two scholars who are familiar with the applicant and his or her dissertation project; it is expected that one of these will be the student's dissertation director. The project description (approx. 500-800 words) is the key element of the application. That description should concisely explain the aims of the proposed research and the expected role of full-text digitized collections in that research.

Applications for the Gale Fellowship for dissertation research to be undertaken in 2009-10 must be submitted in electronic form and sent to galefellowship[at]rs4vp.org by September 1, 2009. Any queries about the application may be sent to the same address. Applicants will be notified by November 1, 2009. The successful applicant will be expected to submit a brief report to RSVP at the conclusion of the funded portion of the project, describing the results of the research.

For more information about the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, please visit the Society’s website at www.rs4vp.org

Image Credit: RSVP website.