SHARP 2025
"Communities and Values of the Book"
Rochester, New York (University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology)
July 7 - 11, 2025
Abstracts due December 8, 2024
The theme of SHARP 2025 is "Communities and Values of the Book." We invite participants to explore the ideas of communities and values separately or together, and to interrogate the idea of value and its intersection with the idea of communities within book culture and bibliographic history.
The city of Rochester and the regions of Western and Central New York have a rich history of book culture, including the vibrant written culture associated with the Burned Over District and the spiritualism, abolition, and suffrage movements, independent presses such as BOA and Open Letter Press, historic presses and printing and reproduction companies -- including Roycroft-Hubbard, Leo Hart, Xerox, and Eastman Kodak -- and major institutional collections and programs, such as the Visual Studies Workshop and the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Rochester area's history is also one of dispossession and disenfranchisement. Marginalized and non-mainstream communities in the area have their own rich and vibrant book cultures, including textual, oral, and performative texts, such as those of the Haudenosaunee people, or those of the Deaf community. Who is included when we think expansively about values, communities, and the definitions of texts and objects?
We invite proposals for individual papers, lightning talks, workshops, and fully-planned panels. The full CFP is here. Abstracts should be submitted via our Indico site.
International scholars: while our aim is to notify attendees of their acceptance by early February 2025, we recognize that might not be adequate time for visa processing. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us now for any supporting documentation that you may need for your visa application.
Please note: you do not need to be a member of SHARP to submit an abstract; however, you will need to be a member to present or otherwise attend the conference.
Questions? Please contact us at sharp.rochester2025@gmail.com.
