Call for papers: The Eighth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Studies Workshop

Mixed Media, Mixed Messages: Media and Mediality in the Eighteenth Century

The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University is pleased to announce the eighth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop, to be held on May 13-15 2009. The workshop is part of a series of annual interdisciplinary events that has been running since 2002, with 20-30 scholars presenting and discussing papers on a broad topic in a congenial setting.

Our topic for 2009 is "Mixed Media, Mixed Messages." In declaring an eighteenth-century "media revolution" most scholarship has focused on the circulation of new printed forms and the emergence of a public sphere. In this workshop we would like to go beyond well-established narratives of print culture, the effects of the printing press and the history of the book, to consider "the media revolution" --if there was one in the eighteenth century-- in a wider sense. We are especially interested in the relationships between media, their differences, their limits, and their cultural, social, and/or political ramifications. How are messages affected when the medium changes? To what extent were eighteenth-century actors/agents/cultural producers aware of mediality and mediation, or of the implications of placing form above content? Did the eighteenth century witness a "media revolution"? How effectively can we, in the twenty-first century, assess the cognitive or affective impact and significance of messages first sent in the eighteenth century (and since transmitted through multiple media)?

Papers might address topics such as:

• the relationship between the textual and the visual
• the eye, the ear, and the voice (also inner voice)
• spatiality and temporality in different media
• the afterlife of Horace's ut pictura poesis
• pragmatic aspects of new media, such as new forms of teaching (e.g. Alphabetisierung), of reading, of circulation, of institutionalization
• intersections of new media with 18th-century religious practices and spirituality
• the global and local consequences of seriality, repetition and synchronicity
• the implications of media for running and experiencing empires
• the effects of media forms on information and narration
• how are media regulated, and how do media change regulation?
• remediation and a heightened sense of immediacy
• money as medium

The workshop format will consist of focused discussion of four to six papers a day, amid socializing and refreshment. The workshop will draw both on the wide community of eighteenth-century scholars and on those working in this field at Indiana University-Bloomington. The workshop will cover most expenses of those scholars chosen to present their work: accommodations, travel (up to a certain limit), and most meals.

We are asking for applications to be sent to us by Thursday, January 8, 2009. The application consists of a two-page description of the proposed paper as well as a current CV. Please email or send your application to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, Weatherly Hall North, room 122, Bloomington, IN 47405, Telephone 812/855-2856, email voltaire@indiana.edu. Papers will be selected by an interdisciplinary committee.

For further information please refer to our website, www.indiana.edu/~voltaire , or contact the director of the Center, Dror Wahrman, Dept. of History, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, email dwahrman@indiana.edu.