The Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, April 7–10, 2021
Submission Deadline: July 3, 2020
Recent scholarship in the history of the book and reading practices has emphasized the need for a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary investigation of ephemeral print and premodern reading practices. Often seen as ‘the crowd made text’, pamphlets were at once individual items conveying specific messages, and contributory parts to broader movements. They were objects designed to reach a large audience that were engaged with individual readers. Although many have survived down to the present day, we are aware that even more have been lost.
The history of the so-called French political pamphlet as both a material form and cultural object over the course of the early modern period offers a unique opportunity to address the complex and overlapping motivations for writing, publishing, buying, engaging with and keeping pamphlets. In a session planned for RSA Dublin 2021, “The Long History of the French Pamphlet” proposes to explore the printed pamphlet as a material and cultural object in France from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Papers that place French pamphlets in a larger comparative frame, or that focus on the material study, use, or reading practices of pamphlets, are encouraged, as are papers that approach new methodologies in pamphlet studies. Proposals from all disciplines are encouraged.
The session is sponsored by the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies, and is a part of its larger project of expanding the time frame of the Newberry Library’s French Pamphlets Digital Initiative and re-creating it as a research and pedagogical resource in cooperation with a network of scholars interested in the pamphlet as a form. This resource includes over 38,000 digitized French pamphlets from the sixteenth century to the French Revolution, and is free to the public online. The results of these conversations will be made available as a part of this digital resource with author attribution, further widening the conversation of pamphlet studies. For this reason, if Covid-19 prevention measures affect RSA 2021 scheduling, the session will be held virtually.
To apply, please send a 150-word abstract and short CV to co-organizers Elisa J. Jones (jonese@newberry.org), 2019–20 CRS Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of History at the College of Charleston, and Sara Barker (S.K.Barker@leeds.ac.uk), Associate Professor of History at the University of Leeds, by Friday, July 3, 2020.