ESPRit Conference: Periodical Formats in the Market / Periodische Formate auf dem Markt

Periodical Formats in the Market:  Economies of Space and Time, Competition and Transfer // Periodische Formate auf dem Markt: Ökonomien von Raum und Zeit, Konkurrenz und Transfer

07–17 June 2021
organised by the DFG Research Unit 2288 Journal Literature

Deadline for 300-word abstracts: 20 December 2020

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 9th conference of the European Society for Periodical Research at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, will be held online. The virtual event aims to bring scholars together, to present and discuss recent work on periodicals, to meet in virtual coffee breaks, to get in touch, and to keep in touch. We welcome proposals from researchers at all stages of their careers from various disciplines.

Week 1 (07–11 June 2021)

Live kick-off session with keynote lecture on Monday, 07 June 2021

Launch of pre-recorded presentations and panels at the conference website

Postgraduate Workshop

Week 2 (14–17 June 2021)

Keynote, Plenary Panels, Roundtable

ESPRit Business Meeting

Live Q&A-sessions in the afternoon (CET) to discuss the papers of the first week

Social time and virtual coffee breaks

We welcome proposals for pre-recorded original papers of 15 minutes and panels of 3–4 papers, or live roundtables (with up to 6 discussants) concerning the conference topic: Periodical Formats in the Market: Economies of Space and Time, Competition and Transfer. We kindly ask to prepare your pre-recorded presentation by 31 March 2021. Accepted presentations are already part of the program, you don’t need to send a new proposal!

The conference seeks to examine journals from the 18th to the 21th century within the market and its sociocultural, economic, and legal frameworks, exploring two main areas:

(1) economies of time and space, i.e. spatiotemporal aspects of the production, distribution, and reception of periodicals and similar serialized formats, and

(2) facets of competition and transfer between periodicals within localised and regional as well as international markets.

For this purpose, the conference looks at periodicals as agents that react to sociocultural space configurations while simultaneously participating in their nascency, formation, appearance, and perpetual transformation. The conference seeks to advance theoretical approaches, established analytical methods, and analysis oriented towards the spatiotemporal dimensions of periodical culture. To achieve this goal, the 9th ESPRit conference invites theoretical input, case studies, and comparative analysis from philological, philosophical, as well as sociological perspectives from all disciplines (such as philology, media history, history of publishing and printing, comparative literature, cultural studies, gender studies, visual studies, postcolonial studies).

Possible topics and case studies include but are not limited to:

• the formation of periodicals and (international) periodical culture in their relation to space and time;
• the representation and/or production of cultural, temporal, and/or geographic distance in periodicals;
• spaces and geographies of production and distribution: spatiotemporal parameters and frameworks like postal service, newsrooms and pressrooms, relations between editorial boards;
• spaces and geographies of reception: newsagents, cafés, salons, communes, urban/suburban/underground spaces;
• the writing/printing space: private, semi-public and public writing/printing spaces, technological change and its influence on format and layout;
• periodicals and utopias/dystopias;
• cultural, economic, or legal forces of regional, national, or international diversification and exchange within periodical culture, copyright, news agencies, clipping services;
• material dimensions of journals in space and time: volumes and/or issues of periodicals as visual, tangible, and corruptible objects, contaminations between book forms and journals, paratextual strategies for attracting or evolving reading publics;
• specific forms of concurrence, competition, and transfer of/in periodicals within certain epochs and in the market of (often interrelated) cities or countries;
• the translation of periodicals across time and space.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to conference organisers Christian A. Bachmann, Andreas Beck, Mirela Husić, Nora Ramtke, and Monika Schmitz-Emans (espr-it2020@ruhr-uni-bochum.de) no later than 20 December 2020. Please include name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a short CV (150 words). Individual pre-recorded presentations should be 20 minutes long. We especially welcome proposals for pre-recorded panels of 3 or 4 speakers and live roundtables with up to 6 discussants. The conference language will be English; German presentations are also welcome. Further information, including details regarding registration, will be published on the conference website: www.rub.de/esprit2020.

We look forward to welcoming you to this virtual ESPRit conferece!

Contact:espr-it2020@ruhr-uni-bochum.de    www.rub.de/esprit2020