Sponsored by the Yale University English Department, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Seminar in the History of the Book at the Mahindra Humanities Center (Harvard), and the Brown University Department of History
The Yale Program in the History of the Book is pleased to announce the thirteenth annual Harvard-Yale-Brown Conference in Book History. The conference will be held on Monday, May 2, 2022, on Zoom. The programs for the previous conferences are available here.
Proposals are invited from graduate students (at any stage), recent PhDs, and postdocs for papers on any aspect of the History of the Book. Priority will be given to current students affiliated with Harvard, Yale, and Brown, though we are happy to receive submissions from postdocs, recent graduates, and students at other institutions in New England. Topics might include manuscript, print, and digital cultures; new media; authorship, forgery, and anonymity; readers and reading practices; publication, circulation, and transmission; censorship, copyright, and piracy; spaces for producing and consuming media; and the history of library and information science.
For our third virtual conference, Communities of Book History, we especially encourage submissions that consider the intellectual, social, and pedagogical communities of book history, or explore new directions in book-historical scholarship. What different individuals and institutions are involved in book history, both in the sense of those who participated in the original production and circulation of the book and those who are engaged in its contemporary study? How do various communities shape “the book” through, for example, composition, transcription, editing, and adaptation? How do books as objects facilitate cultural or social exchange? How might new book historical approaches complicate existing paradigms or expand disciplinary boundaries? In what ways might scholarship on the history of the book be shared with broader publics, whether in the undergraduate classroom or beyond the academy? Speakers may engage with this theme to the extent they see fit.
Papers relating to all time periods and geographical locations are welcome. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions about a proposed paper topic.
Proposals are due Friday, March 4, 2022. These should include a title and a brief abstract (approximately 200 words), as well as your university and departmental affiliation. Speakers will have 15 minutes to present their work, followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
Please submit proposals and questions to graduate coordinators Caitlin Hubbard ([email protected]), Elizabeth Nielsen ([email protected]), and Carly Yingst ([email protected]).
