Daily Archives: 17 January 2014

Error and Print Culture, 1500-1800 – Call For Papers

Error and Print Culture, 1500-1800
A One-Day Conference at the Centre for the Study of the Book
Oxford University
Saturday 5 July, 2014

Recent histories of the book have replaced earlier narratives of technological triumph and revolutionary change with a more tentative story of continuities with manuscript culture and the instability of print. An abstract sense of technological agency has given way to a messier world of collaboration, muddle, money, and imperfection. Less a confident stride towards modernity, the early modern book now looks stranger: not quite yet a thing of our world.
What role might error have in these new histories of the hand-press book? What kinds of error are characteristic of print, and what can error tell us about print culture? Are particular forms of publication prone to particular mistakes? How effective were mechanisms of correction (cancel-slips; errata lists; over-printing; and so on), and what roles did the printing house corrector perform? Did readers care about mistakes? Did authors have a sense of print as an error-prone, fallen medium, and if so, how did this inform their writing? What links might we draw between representations of error in literary works (like Spenser’s Faerie Queene), and the presence of error in print? How might we think about error and retouching or correcting rolling-press plates? What is the relationship between engraving historians’ continuum of difference, and letter-press bibliographers’ binary of variant/invariant? Was there a relationship between bibliographical error and sin, particularly in the context of the Reformation? How might modern editors of early modern texts respond to errors: are errors things to correct, or to dutifully transcribe? Is the history of the book a story of the gradual elimination of error, or might we propose a more productive role for slips and blunders?
Proposals for 20-minute papers are welcome on any aspect of error and print, in Anglophone or non-Anglophone cultures. Please email a 300-word abstract and a short CV to Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@balliol.ox.ac.uk) by 14 April 2014.

Print Networks Conference – Call For Papers

Print Networks Conference
St Anne’s College, Oxford
22-23 July, 2014

Keynote speaker: Professor Simon Eliot

The conference will take education and the book trade as its theme. Papers are invited on any aspect of printing, publishing, distribution and bookselling for education, broadly defined, since the beginnings of print until the present. How did the book trade and education mutually profit from and shape each other? What was the book trade’s impact on the the development of institutions of learning; the organization of knowledge; pedagogies and technologies of instruction; and on both formal and informal education, including self-help? Papers with an interest in the provincial book trades in Britain are particularly welcomed, as this has been the historical theme of the Print Networks series, but so too are papers on the relationship between metropolitan and provincial book cultures, national and transnational print economies, and on interactions between print and other media. Papers will be considered for publication in Publishing History, the journal of Print Networks.

An abstract of no more than 400 words of the proposed paper (of 25-30 minutes duration) should be submitted by 31 January 2014 to Giles Bergel via email (giles.bergel@ell.ox.ac.uk) or at the address below:

Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
Manor Road
Oxford
OX1 3UL
United Kingdom

It is understood that papers offered to the conference will be original work and not delivered to any similar body before presentation at this conference.

Fellowship

The Print Networks Conference offers an annual fellowship to a postgraduate scholar whose research falls within the parameters of the conference brief, and who wishes to present a paper at the conference. The fellowship covers the cost of attending the conference and some assistance towards costs of travel. A summary of the research being undertaken and a recommendation from a tutor or supervisor should also be sent to the above email or postal address by 31 January 2014.

Accommodation and dining will be available at St. Anne’s College: information on this will be provided along with the conference programme after the closing date for submissions.