Call for papers ACLA Conference (Utrecht, 6-9 July 2017)

Gerard Bouwmeester, Nina Geerdink en Laurens Ham willen tijdens het congres van de American Comparative Literature Association (voor het eerst in Europa!) een seminar organiseren over schrijvers en verdienmogelijkheden. Wie dit onderwerp in diachroon en internationaal perspectief wil bespreken is van harte uitgenodigd een abstract in te dienen.

Comparative Perspectives on Profitable Authorship – CfP

During this seminar, we aim to bring together scholars from medieval, early modern and modern literary studies, focussing on profitable authorship. Up until recently, international scholars in the fields of literature, book history and economic criticism seemed to agree about a linear and teleological narrative of the development of profitable authorship in early modern Europe. In this narrative, the predominance of patronage until the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was replaced by professionalism once authors were able to profit from the emerging book market during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was assumed that from that moment onwards, an author originated who was in his or her creativity and autonomy the predecessor of the modern author. (Bennett 2005, Hammond 1997, Woodmansee 1984)
In the last decades, parts of this narrative have been refuted. Researchers of authorship showed that patronage was not replaced by professionalism, but co-existed in alternate forms, and that both the professional authors of the eighteenth century and the authors relying on patronage could be seen as predecessors of modern authors. (Griffin 2014, Smith 2012, Turnovsky 2010, Wall 1999, Woodmansee & Osteen 1999) Also, the possibility to create a universal teleological authorship narrative has been questioned. (Berensmeyer, Buelens & Demoor 2012, Wall 1993)

For many national literatures, there is much work to be done in the field of literature and economy, especially when it comes to factual information about authors’ possibilities to earn something with their writings (British literature is the exception here). In this seminar, we discuss the research that has been done and is to be done within this field with specialists of different periods and languages, in order to compare sources, methods and theories. How can we rewrite the narrative of profitable authorship? Is it possible to come to one international narrative or one international method of research, or do the different language areas differ too much? Could we learn from each other’s use of sources, methods and theories?

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a short CV via the ACLA website (www.acla.org) bySeptember 23th, 2016. Feel free to contact the panel organizers for more information:l.j.ham@uu.nl and/or n.geerdink@uu.nl.

http://www.acla.org/comparative-perspectives-profitable-authorship