Appel à contributions - Letters et Letter writing. Signed, sealed, delivered
Tuesday 18th March – Thursday 20th March 2014
Prague, Czech Republic
The letter has been one of the most
important forms of communication over thousands of years across many
cultures and continents. Whether personal, professional or an open
statement of intent it can covey the most intimate messages or declare
the most inflammatory of declarations. It can be delivered by hand, by
postman, by pigeon, by bottle, by smartphone, by internet connection or
even by space ship. It can be cherished, collected, published, censored,
blogged, stolen, steamed open, torn up, buried, displayed. It can be
written on paper, papyrus, skin, in the sand, in wax, on sweet wrappers
and on computer screens. It can be written with quills, pens, keyboards,
chalk and in ink, in blood, in lemon juice, in light, with love, with
hate, with desperation, with pride, with humiliation and with
satisfaction. Correspondingly, it can take seconds, minutes, hours,
days, weeks or even years to reach its destination, whether sent to
someone in the next room, or via a time capsule to people 50 years in
the future. A letter is not just the means to communicate to others, but
a way in which we communicate who, what and where we are and the times
that we live in, consequently, being as much about the
interconnectedness of identity, place and culture through time as it is
about the immediate connection to those around us.
A striking example of such
interconnectedness and entanglement survives from ancient Rome in the
Letters to Atticus of Marcus Tullius Cicero written between 68-44 BCE.
Originally hand written on papyri using a reed pen, they were delivered
using a network of slaves often taking up to 4 weeks to reach their
destination. Intended only to be read by his friend, this private
correspondence was published by an unknown editor sometime after
Cicero’s death and enjoyed as a literary work. Now available as both
book and hypertext, its rich contents provide valuable information on
many aspects of Roman life, not to mention the history of his times.
This timely consideration of the forms,
materials and methods used to connect to ourselves and to others in and
through time invites abstracts on the following themes for any
historical period or geographical location:
- The beginnings (archaeology and early human writings)
- The death of the letter (and its reincarnation through technology, email)
- Role in important events (private, public, real, imagined or literary)
- Cultural significance of
- As diary
- As historical source
- As literature or within a literary work
- As biography
- As art or visual significance of
- The physical form (baked clay, waxed wooden tablets, parchment)
- The writing materials (reed pen, quill, ink, biro, typewriter)
- Contents of letters (love, politics, friendship, business, philosophy, consolation)
- Forms of delivery (couriers, private or public postal services)
- Intended readers (individual, family, group) and confidentiality issues
- Letters lost and letters found
- Letters as texts or texts as letters
- Published versus unpublished
- Handwriting and letter writing conventions: construction, syntax, language, spelling and symbols
- Letter-writers: male and female
- Authorship: anonymity or identity statement
- Queering the letter?
- Weaponising the letter?
- Intercepted or “leaked” letters
- The future of letter writing
What to Send ?
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 11th October 2013.
All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where
appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft
paper should be submitted by Friday 17th January 2014. Abstracts should
be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be
in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words.
Emails should be entitled: Letters1 Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and
abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or
emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt
and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a
reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your
proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for
an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Linda McGuire: ue.nojidcse@eriugcm.adnil
Rob Fisher : ten.yranilpicsid-retni@1srettel
The conference is part of the At the Interface
programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting.
(HT: http://blogdurmblf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/appel-contributions-letters-et-letter.html)
