Lise Jaillant

As Liaison Officer for SHARP (the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing), it is my role to organise our annual sessions at the Modern Language Association convention. The next MLA convention will take place in Toronto (7 to 10 January 2021). This time,  SHARP  is sponsoring three sessions: 1) A guaranteed session: "Towards sustainability for digital archives and projects" Book historians and other scholars rely on digitised and born-digital archives. How can we make digital archives and digital projects more sustainable? Environmental sustainability; longevity, permanence, availability, Open Access. 300-word abstracts + CV to Lise Jaillant. E-mail Address: l.jaillant [at] lboro.ac.uk Submission Deadline: March 1, 2020 2) A joint session with the Modernist Studies Association "Modernism, Copyright and Public Domains" Impact of early 20th-century works coming out of copyright; Archives now publicly open, includi...

The next MLA convention will take place in Seattle (9–12 January 2020). As usual, SHARP is sponsoring two sessions: 1) A guaranteed session on Databases and Print Culture Studies Mass-digitized archives of newspapers and books have revolutionized print culture studies. Data-rich collections and their impact on knowledge production and methods. Including use of data science and artificial intelligence. 300-word abstract + 1-page CV. E-mail Address: l.jaillant [at] lboro.ac.uk Submission Deadline: Friday, March 1, 2019 2) A joint session with the International Spenser Society Spenser and the Digital Humanities New book history/ digital humanities projects on Edmund Spenser. Digitization and data-driven research/pedagogy. 300-word abstracts/ CV by 15 March 2019. Lise Jaillant (l.jaillant [at] lboro.ac.uk) and David Baker (davidbak [at] email.unc.edu) Submission Deadline: Friday, March 15, 2019

The Modern Language Association Convention will take place in Chicago (3–6 January 2019). SHARP is sponsoring two sessions: (1) A guaranteed session on New Perspectives in Book History. New perspectives that are altering the way we do book history. Including global perspectives and digital humanities. 300-word abstract – CV by 1 March 2018; Lise Jaillant (l.jaillant@lboro.ac.uk). (2) A joint session with the William Morris Society: Publishing William Morris and his Circle Perspectives on publishing William Morris and his circle; Morris as publisher; illustrations, printing, and physical book format. Book history/digital humanities approaches welcome. 300-word abstract – CV by 1 March 2018; Lise Jaillant (l.jaillant@lboro.ac.uk) and Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick (kellyann@gatech.edu).

The next MLA convention will be in New York City (4-7 January 2018). Here are the two call for papers for SHARP sessions. Please send us an abstract or share with anyone with might be interested. 1. SHARP guaranteed session Title of session: The Digital Future of Literary Archives Submission requirements: Abstracts, 300 words Deadline for submissions: 10 March 2017 Description: What does the future of literary archives look like? This roundtable will address issues of preservation, discoverability and accessibility following the digital revolution. Contact person information: Lise Jaillant (l.jaillant [at] lboro.ac.uk) 2. Joint session with the Edith Wharton Society   Title of the session : Edith Wharton, Book History and Digital Humanities Submission requirements : Abstract, 300 words Deadline for submissions : 10 March 2017 Description : New approaches in book history and digital humanities to shed light on Edith Wharton...

The next MLA conference will be in Philadelphia (5–8 January 2017). Here are the two call for papers for SHARP sessions. Please send us an abstract or share with anyone who might be interested. 1. SHARP guaranteed session Radical Book History - People, Archives, Methods How do we write radical book history? "Radical" book trade figures, the use of "radical" methodologies or archives. All periods and places. 250-word abstracts by 15 March 2016; Lise Jaillant (l.jaillant@gmail.com). 2. CSE-SHARP Collaborative Session Editions/Author/Readers/Publishers Editor-author relations; editors imagining or constructing readerships; social, interactive, crowd-sourced, translated/bilingual editions; editorial epistemologies, canons, information overload; editions in promotion/tenure; paratext, apparatus, digital/print affordances. 250-word abstracts by 11 March 2016; Anne Coldiron (acoldiron@fsu.edu).

Here are the calls for papers for the two panels sponsored by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) at MLA 2016 - up and available on the MLA's CFP site . 1. SHARP affiliate-organization panel Secret Archives: Privacy, Control and Access “Archive stories” about the difficulties to access certain collections, and what these stories tell us about power and control. 250-word abstracts by 15 March 2015. Lise Jaillant ( L.Jaillant@uea.ac.uk ) Note: this is a guaranteed session. 2. Joint panel, co-sponsored with the Faulkner Society Faulkner in the Digital Age Roundtable: New book history/ digital humanities projects on Faulkner; Use of digital resources to teach Faulkner's work. 250-word abstracts by 15 March 2015. Lise Jaillant ( L.Jaillant@uea.ac.uk ) or Deborah Clarke ( Deborah.Clarke@asu.edu ) The MLA convention will take place in Austin, Texas (7-10 January 2016).

The program for the next Modern Language Association conference in Chicago is now available. The SHARP-sponsored roundtable on Book History & Digital Humanities that I am organizing will take place on Sunday 12 January at 10.15am (Lincolnshire, Chicago Marriott). I hope to see lots of fellow book historians/ digital humanists there!

I'm back in Vancouver, but only for a few weeks. In August, I'll be presenting a paper on the British writer 'Sapper' at the SHARP conference in Helsinki. The program of the conference is HERE . 'Sapper' is mostly remembered for his Bulldog Drummond series, but he also wrote short stories during the First World War. Since the 1950s, Sapper's fiction has often been dismissed as unworthy of serious scholarship. Even scholars who have recently explored the popular literature of the Great War continue to view Sapper as a second-rate writer whose fiction sold to the mass-market. My presentation focuses on the way the publisher Hodder & Stoughton marketed Sapper first as a realistic writer of war stories, and then as a bestselling writer of thrillers. By examining dust jackets and the advertising strategy of Hodder & Stoughton, I show that Sapper's fiction was sold as entertaining and unproblematic literature. Viewed as a "literary genius...