CFP: Composition: Making Meaning through Design / symposium, UC Santa Barbara (Jan. 15; May 15-16)

Call for Papers:
Composition:

Making Meaning through Design
An interdisciplinary symposium on material texts 
15-16 May 2014
University of California, Santa Barbara

"Composition" can refer to the content of a text, piece of music, or work of art, to its visual and material manifestations, as well as to the act of production. As form relates to function, so each sense of composition influences the other. From inscriptions and scrolls, to broadsheets and serials, to graphic novels and e-books, design elements inform reading practices and structure meaning.

Composition: Making Meaning through Design is an interdisciplinary symposium that asks how design features (such as format, material, type font/ script, and imagery, to name but a few) can alter, enhance, or otherwise affect the transmission of meaning and shape a text's use. This symposium aims to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to promote engaging new dialogues in book history. We warmly invite submissions for papers which may consider a broad scope of topics including, but not limited to:

• the relationship of materiality and content
• how a text’s format or design shapes reading practices
• the interplay of text and image
• how the author-reader relationship is mediated through design
• design interventions by readers
• changes in form or design over time
• how a text's format expresses space, time, sound
• how media borrow and adapt formal or design elements from one another
• how archival practices affect or interact with design

Proposals of approximately 300 words (for 20-minute paper presentations) should be submitted along with a CV to materialtexts@gmail.com by January 15, 2014.

We are able to offer limited funds to offset travel costs for participants. If you wish to be considered for such funding, please indicate this when submitting your proposal.

This symposium is organized by the History of Books and Material Texts Research Focus Group at UCSB, convened by Charlotte Becker, English; Sophia Rochmes, History of Art and Architecture; and James Kearney, English.

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, with co-sponsorship from UCSB’s History of Books and Material Texts Research Focus Group, and UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

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.

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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.