CFP: The Archive, the Book, and the Library (Modernist Studies Association)
Proposed Panel for Modernist Studies Association 8 (2006)
October 19-22, 2006, Tulsa, OK
This panel seeks proposals on modernist critiques of (and experimentation with) the technology and institutions of the book. In what ways did modernist authors and movements address the material manifestations of literature, both old and emerging, in an effort to "make it new"?
Papers might address the relationship between print and manuscript, the role of the printing press, the relationship between modernist authors and publishers, booksellers, libraries, and universities, the use of the typewriter, methods of reading, and experimental or utopian bookmaking. Some examples might include: Pound's advocation of a "loose-leaf" system instead
of bound anthologies, to keep the best material in front; the influence of late 19th-century sentence diagrams on modernist poetry (e.g., Stein, Williams); the burning of the library in Williams's *Paterson*; avant-garde (especially Futurist and Constructivist) experimentation with printing and typesets; Olson's use of the typewriter (or O'Hara's use of the telephone)
and other new technologies; and other related topics.
Please send a maximum 500-word abstract along with a brief bio/CV to Timothy
Carmody at carmody@sas.upenn.edu by April 20. Inquiries welcome.
