Network-Conference for German Scholars of Book History and Print Culture
9 - 10 May 2013
Freiburg im Breisgau

Confirmed keynote speaker: Prof. Dr. Bill Bell (Cardiff), author of The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland 1800-1880; currently fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg of the University of Göttingen

The study of print culture or book history is an interdisciplinary challenge that has been met in different ways across the globe. The subject has been burgeoning in the Anglophone academic world for nearly two decades now, and 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of the first annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). While the venerable German tradition in the study of the book was established many decades before, it seems to us that scholars from German-speaking countries are rather thinly represented internationally. We want to change this!

We suggest a network-conference for scholars from German-speaking areas in print culture and book history studies. The primary purpose of this conference should be to find out what people are working on in German-speaking countries, to create synergies through scholarly exchange and networks, and to increase the international presence of German research for instance on the SHARP platform. We would like to invite scholars from the traditional book studies fields (“Buchwissenschaft”) as well as neighbouring fields (communication studies, literature and/or culture studies, history, etc.) to participate in this process.

Short papers (15 minutes) on current research results relating to the production, distribution and reception of written communication in material forms have been invited, as well as brief statements of interest (5 minutes) for possible areas of interest and cooperation.