Call for papers: Print Networks: The British Book Trade History Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS & CONFERENCE FELLOWSHIP

Guest speaker: Ann Thwaite, Whitbread Award-winning biographer, will speak on Edmund Gosse, author of Father and Son and sometime Librarian of the House of Lords.

The Twenty-Seventh Annual conference on the History of the British Book Trade will take place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University on 28-30 July 2009.

Papers are invited on any aspect of the production, distribution and reception of print and manuscript in Great Britain. However, provincial-metropolitan inter-trade connections will be acceptable or on aspects of trade relations with any part of the former colonies & dominions. The theme of the 2009 conference will be Collectors, Librarians and the Book Trade, so papers within that area are encouraged, although others will be considered.

The papers presented will be considered for publication as part of the Print Networks series, published jointly by the British Library and Oak Knoll Press.

Papers should be of up to 30 minutes duration. An abstract (of c.300 words) of the offered paper and a brief CV (no longer than one side of A4 in total) should be submitted by 31 January 2009 to:
Lucy Lewis at the following email address: lch08@aber.ac.uk

The Print Networks Conference also offers two annual Fellowships to scholars whose research falls within the parameters of the Conference’s brief, and who wish to present papers at the conference.
The fellowships cover the cost of attending the conference and some assistance towards costs of travel. A detailed submission of the research being undertaken accompanied by a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor should be sent to Lucy Lewis by 31 January 2009

Visit the website at http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk/Print%20Networks/

Conference: Envisioning Utopia: British Art and Socialist Politics, 1870-1900

On December 5 and 6, 2008, the Whitworth Art Gallery at the University of Manchester will host a conference to examine the dynamic between the urban and the pastoral in utopian visions of a socialist future and explore the role of visual art in formulating and articulating these political ideals.

Keynote address Friday at 5:30 by Professor Tim Barringer (History of Art, Yale University).
Speakers include Dr. Matthew Beaumont (English, UCL), Dr. Jo Briggs (Yale Center for British Art), Professor Michael Hatt (History of Art, Warwick), Dr. Ruth Livesey (The Victorian Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London), Sarah Turner (Courtauld Institute), and Dr. Anna Vaninskaya (King’s College, Cambridge University Victorian Studies Group).

Registration fee £20, concessions £10. Registration includes reception on Friday and refreshments and lunch on Saturday. For more information, email waltercranearchive@gmail.com. This event is funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Call for papers: Transnationalism and Visual Culture in Britain: Émigrés and Migrants, 1933-1956

9-11 September 2009 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2008

Keynotes:

Dr Marian Malet (Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London)

Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta (Synema – Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, Vienna)

Historically British visual culture has been shaped by trans-cultural cooperation, exiles, émigrés and migrant workers. Besides multi-faceted collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries, the political situation in the mid-twentieth century in continental Europe prompted various migration movements. Many professionals, artists and intellectuals left their home countries as a response to the establishment of totalitarian regimes first by Italian, German and Spanish fascists and later by communists in central and Eastern Europe. Others arrived in Britain almost by chance – caught out by war or redrawn national boundaries. To a significant number Britain offered a new – often permanent – home. Among the large group of émigrés who helped to change the face of visual culture in Britain were film producers such as Alexander Korda, art historians such as Nikolaus Pevsner, filmmakers such as Karel Reisz and Lotte Reiniger, ceramic designers such as Grete Loebenstein and Agnete Hoy, architects such as Walter Gropius and Erich Mendelsohn, avant-garde artists such as László Moholy-Naghy, and photographers such as Bill Brandt.

This international and interdisciplinary conference looks at the cross- fertilisation and trans-national contact of British visual culture from the year the Nazis seized power in 1933 to the uprising in Hungary in 1956. Its wide focus invites papers on the avant-garde as well as on popular culture, centres of immigration as well as marginalised communities.

Presentations may feature analyses of individual émigrés, trajectories of migrants, specific studies of cross-cultural contacts, specific artefacts, schools of thought and theory, places of migration and trans-national cultural life, film, photography, material visual culture, fashion, journalism, television, architecture, academic life, the avant-garde, design, race, gender, national identities, etc.

Topics of trans-national aspects of visual culture in Britain not included in the above list are also welcome. Panel proposals are also welcome but we ask each presenter to submit his or her own paper proposal. Roundtable sessions and international participation are strongly encouraged.

Please send 150-250 word proposals to

Dr Tobias Hochscherf Conference Co-organiser Northumbria University School of Arts and Social Sciences Lipman Bldg. Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST United Kingdom Phone: ++44(0)191-227-4932 Email: tobias.hochscherf@northumbria.ac.uk

Call for papers: The Cultural Industries in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Britain and Germany Compared

Conveners: Christiane Eisenberg (Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin) and Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute London)

Place and date: London, 20–21 Nov. 2009
Deadline: 31 Oct. 2008
__________________________________________________________________________ Increasingly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, patrons, associations, courts and the other public purveyors of culture were joined by private enterprises that approached the organisation of cultural events as a business, using professional methods such as targeted advertising and cooperation with the mass press, and employing professional artists and managers. These methods were applied not only to new cultural forms such as film, cinema and sport, but also to such traditional ones as theatre, concerts, choral performances and variety shows. The growing popularity of commercial culture irritated social reformers and politicians, and stimulated discussion of political interventions and new opportunities for social engineering.

As cultural industries of this sort had a long history in Britain, going back as far as the early modern period, they had become an accepted part of modern society by the late nineteenth century, like industrial production or the consumption of goods, and legal copyright was established early. By contrast, the literature on the cultural industries in Germany gives the impression that the breakthrough came later there, not until the end of the nineteenth century. It suggests that socially and politically, commercial culture was regarded in a highly critical way, some aspects of it being strongly rejected, and that the legal basis of commercialization was established with some delay. On the other hand, from the start political parties, churches and other ideological interests seem to have been readier to intervene politically and to nurture the cultural industries in Germany than in Britain—an aspect that is of interest in relation to the formulation and political instrumentalisation of mass culture during the interwar period.

A conference organized jointly by the German Historical Institute London and the Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin, to be held on 20–21 November 2009 in London, will investigate the context within which the cultural industries were created in Britain and Germany, and ask whether the paths of development and modes of reaction were really as different as the literature suggests. In addition, it will analyse perceptions and mutual cooperation between the actors. Survey papers and case studies devoted to individual cultural industries, comparative and single country studies are equally welcome. Contributors should ideally focus on one of the following core themes:

A) Cultural Industries as Business in Britain and Germany • The scope of markets (including competitors such as the state or the churches).
• Marketing methods and relations with the press.
• Sources of funding (public or private, subscriptions or ticket sales) and modes of organisation (firms, clubs, public events).
• Copyrights and the ‘economics of culture’; comparisons of specific cultural industries.

B) Cultural Industries in British and German Society • The social and economic context and the forces driving development.
• The interplay between the traditional and the modern; problems of periodisation.
• Interference of the state, political parties and private ‘vested interests’ (e.g. social control, security aspects, access for everybody, anti-capitalism).
• Motives, functions and dysfunctions of cultural policies.

The conference will be organised jointly by Christiane Eisenberg (Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin) and Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute London). The organisers would like to receive proposals for presentations of no more than one or two pages in length. The participation of scholars working in fields other than history, such as sociologists, economists or cultural scientists is most welcome.
Please send your proposal in Word or pdf format to the e-mail addresses below. Closing date for submission is 31 October 2008.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg Grossbritannien-Zentrum / Centre for British Studies Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin Mohrenstr. 60 10117 Berlin christiane.eisenberg@rz.hu-berlin.de

and
Prof. Dr. Andreas Gestrich German Historical Institute 17 Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2NJ reception@ghil.ac.uk

The planned conference is a follow-up to the annual conference of the German Association for the Study of British History and Politics (Arbeitskreis Deutsche Englandforschung, ADEF) held on 2–4 May 2008. A report of this first conference, which focused specifically British aspects of the cultural industries, is available at: HSozuKult