23^e congrès du Comité international des sciences historiques / International Committee of Historical Sciences

Le 23^e congrès du Comité international des sciences historiques / International Committee of Historical Sciences (CISH / ICHS) et co-organisé avec SHARP, aura lieu à Poznań (Pologne), en 2020. La date de soumission des propositions de communication est le 30 novembre 2018.

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SHARP in Poland 2020: ICHS / CISH conference

As an International Affiliated Organisation of the International Committee for Historical Sciences, SHARP will organize three sessions during the week-long conference to be held in Poznán, Poland, between 23 and 29 August 2020. This is a call for paper proposals with a due date of 30 November 2018.

There will be three half-day SHARP sessions, each with approximately 5 speakers, under the general title ‘Reading, Writing and the Book / La lecture, l’écriture et le livre’, as follows:

1. Histories or Reading and Writing

This session invites a broad discussion on new directions in the history of reading and writing, which may include: the study of the reception of specific titles, or of the interpretations of individual readers; communities of readers and/or writers; the nature of vernacular literacy and ‘literacy acts’; the reading and writing of the poor and semi-literate.

2. What is a Bestseller?

What, in historical terms, has constituted a ‘bestseller’? Today, the recipe for commercial success remains unpredictable. Some formulas seem bound to succeed, but similar ones disappear with a trace. Sometimes unlikely titles enjoy surprisingly good sales. When was the bestseller invented, and how should we categorise the phenomenon in different historical contexts? What does the study of bestsellers teach us about the history of the reading public and of the publishing industry?

3. Digital Humanities and the History of the Book

Digital technologies and the manipulation of ‘big data’ have the potential to recalibrate traditional assumptions about book history. This session will discuss how new, digitally-inflected approaches, methodologies and tools are challenging accepted paradigms and providing new insights by going beyond traditional research in textual sources.

CISH / ICHS meets every five years, and SHARPists participated in the 2010 conference in Amsterdam and the 2015 congress in Jinan, China. This meeting presents a new opportunity to consolidate and extend SHARP’s international presence. Participants will have to find their own funding, and they will be required to register for the CISH Congress as a whole.

Further information about the whole week-long CISH / ICHS congress will gradually become available on-line at the congress website at https://ichs2020poznan.pl/en/

Proposals for papers should be submitted by e-mail to Martyn Lyons at M.Lyons@unsw.edu.au by 30 November 2018. They should include a proposal of up to 350 words, and a brief academic biography (max. 200 words). Papers may be presented in either English or French. A provisional programme for the SHARP sessions will be drawn up in March 2019.