SHARP at RSA

Call for Papers: SHARP @ RSA 2007

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing will sponsor several panels at the Renaissance Society of America's annual meeting in Miami from 22-24 March 2007. Organized by Steven W. May, Anne Lake Prescott and Michael Ullyot, SHARP@RSA links the RSA with scholars studying the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print. Since 2001 we have organized eighteen panels at RSA meetings.

We will have two themes in 2007, and invite submissions that consider English and Continental books and manuscripts from 1350 to 1700 in relation to either of them:

[1] Problems of Evidence in the History of Reading
Reading, writes Roger Chartier, is an activity that "only rarely leaves
traces, that is scattered in an infinity of singular acts." Historians
of reading use traces like marginalia, inscriptions, and commonplace
books to describe largely irrecoverable habits of thought. What evidence
are we missing? How do material elements of books themselves (eg. type,
punctuation, printed marginalia, editorial interventions) influence
readings past and present? And how do we relate essentialized case
studies to broader interpretive communities?

[2] Disputed Canons: Determining Renaissance Authorship
The historicist tenor of Renaissance studies is predicated (partly) on
attributions of texts to authors, associating them with known
intellectual and literary concerns. But un- and mis-attributed works to
authors including Francois Rabelais, the Countess of Pembroke, the Earl
of Essex, and John Donne problematize this historicist framework. What
tests or techniques allow us to add or remove texts, or parts of texts,
from an author's canon with confidence? The organizers are particularly
interested in non-dramatic collaborative texts.

Please send abstracts (150 words) and one-paragraph CVs to *each* of the
organizers: < michael.ullyot@ell.ox.ac.uk > and < aprescot@barnard.edu >
and < steven_may@georgetowncollege.edu > by 5 May, 2006; this is earlier
than the general conference deadline to allow for adjudication. Please
note that all participants must be members of the Renaissance Society of
America by August 2006 or they cannot be included in the programme. For
more information on the RSA, see http://www.rsa.org/
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