CALL FOR PAPERS

Rethinking Early Modern Print Culture

An international and interdisciplinary conference at

The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies

Victoria University in the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

15-17 October 2010

The view that early modernity saw the transformation of European
societies into cultures of print has been widely influential in
literary, historical, philosophical, and bibliographical studies of
the period. The concept of print culture has provided scholars with a
powerful tool for analyzing and theorizing new (or seemingly new)
regimens of knowledge and networks of information transmission as well
as developments in the worlds of literature, theatre, music, and the
visual arts. However, more recently the concept has been reexamined
and destabilized, as critics have pointed out the continuing existence
of cultures of manuscript, queried the privileging of technological
advances over other cultural forces, and identified the presence of
many of the supposed innovations of print in pre-print societies.

This multi-disciplinary conference aims to refine and redefine our
understanding of early modern print cultures (from the fifteenth to
the end of the seventeenth century). We invite papers seeking to
explore questions of production and reception that have always been at
the core of the historiography of print, developing a more refined
sense of the complex roles played by various agents and institutions.
But we especially encourage submissions that probe the boundaries of
our subject, both chronologically and conceptually: did print culture
have a clear beginning? How is the idea of a culture of print
complicated by the continued importance of manuscript circulation (as
a private and commercial phenomenon)? How did print reshape or
reconfigure audiences? And what was the place of orality in a world
supposedly dominated by print textuality? What new forms of
chirography and spoken, live performances did print enable, if any?

Other possible topics might include:

* Ownership of texts and plagiarism; authorship; "piracy"

* Booksellers and printers, and their local, national, and
international networks

* Readers and their material and interpretative practices

* Libraries, both personal and institutional

* Beyond the book: ephemeral forms of print and manuscript

* Text and illustration, print and visuality

* Typography, mise en page, binding, and technological advances in
book-production

We invite proposals for conference papers of 20 minutes and encourage
group-proposals for panels of three papers. Alternative formats such
as workshops and roundtables will also be considered. Abstracts of 250
words can be submitted electronically on the conference website,

http://www.crrs.ca/events/conferences/print/

The deadline for submissions is 15 December 2009.

All questions ought to be addressed to the conference organizers,
Grégoire Holtz (French, University of Toronto) and Holger Schott Syme
(English, University of Toronto), at printconference@gmail.com.