Manicular, 13th Century English Bible
The First International Making Books, Shaping Readers Conference
University College, Cork, April 18th - 20th 2007
Theme: "Making an Audience"
This conference encourages a broad interpretation of the notion of an audience in keeping with the etymology of the word. (The term audience, which derives from the Latin audenita, "a hearing, listening", from awis, "to perceive physically, to grasp", and from the nineteenth century transformation of the sense of the word to "readers of a book", reflects the way in which technologies of the word have changed throughout history, from oral, to manuscript, to print).
The research project Making Books, Shaping Readers invites papers for a conference on "Making an Audience". This conference will explore how different publications of the material text posit not only different audiences, but also different notions of an audience. Papers might focus on the kind of audiences texts invite; on how shifts in the methods of textual production record a shift in the role of the reader from medieval to contemporary times; on how the act of reading is inscribed in the book; ways in which the production of a text defines its ideal audience; and on how a text's transmission over time effects how it is read. We are also concerned with tracing the actual reader / audience of a text through, perhaps, marks and annotations in the text. The analysis of how audiences are both inscribed in, and inscribe, the material book demands an interdisciplinary approach, therefore we invite papers from scholars in all disciplines. We are interested in all aspects of how audiences are made via the various forms of textual materialities, including e-texts.
Selected papers may be included in an edited volume of essays, and accepted abstracts will be published on the MBSR website prior to the conference.
Abstracts (300-500 words) should be sent to: Making Books, Shaping Readers Conference, Dept. of English, University College Cork, Ireland, or (preferably) by email to mbsr@ucc.ie, by Friday, October 27th 2006. All queries can be directed to the organisers, Siobhán Collins, Carrie Griffin and Mary O' Connell, at mbsr@ucc.ie.
