Conference

Launched under the leadership of Paragraph Laboratory of the University of Paris 8, the Excellence Arts-H2H Lab, and Laboratory Music and Computer Marseille (MIM), "Locating the Text" is the most important international events of digital literature with cultural, artistic, scientific and educational purposes, never been organized in France.

Quatre journées pour explorer comment le développement réel ou imaginaire des machines numériques, de Babbage à Internet, modifie la conception du sujet et ses représentations, dans son statut comme dans ses attributs. Ce colloque international est le deuxième volet d’un projet de recherche pluri-annuel et pluri-disciplinaire sur la recomposition de la notion de sujet à l’épreuve du numérique. Après l’hypermnésie en 2012, il explorera en 2013 la question de l’inscription, soit de l’acte d’écriture numérique dans sa triple acception de production d’objet, de façonnement du sens et d’avènement du sujet. Mobilisant des points de vue aussi divers que la philosophie, les lettres, les neurosciences ou l’archivistique, ces échanges aborderons également les notions de signature, d’annotation, de télé-scription ou encore le concept d’ex-cription forgé par Jean Luc Nancy.

During the last decades we have seen a change in the research on literacy, literature and reading towards issues relating to the experience of reading. The affective and performative, the bodily and sensual aspects of reading have gained importance along with the cognitive and social perspectives.

For this first conference on the reading experience, we invite submissions from researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines. The main requirement is that the work focuses on the experience of real readers, past or present, and especially on reading that is done voluntarily for pleasure.

This conference puts the reader at the center, with the goal of investigating the relationship between readers and texts, between readers and the institutions of reading such as libraries, and between readers and the circumstances, contexts, and outcomes of reading. For this purpose, texts are defined broadly to include a wide variety of formats and genres that people chose to read, both fiction and non-fiction, printed and digital, including evolving forms such as graphic novels, videogame-associated text, wordless picture books, and fan fiction. 

Many different methods may be used to study the reading experience, all of which are welcome: readers’ talk/ writing about their own reading experience in interviews, questionnaires, diaries, marginalia, and postings on fan sites and discussion groups; traces of readerly activity to be found in library circulation records and publishers’ sales records; longitudinal case studies of individual readers; ethnographic and observational studies; etc.  We are interested in the experience both of private reading and of shared, public reading such as that done in the context of book clubs, reading circles and mass reading events. Anything that is central to investigating the experience of readers is within scope, including but not limited to: studies of readers who prefer specific kinds of reading both privileged and denigrated, such as literary fiction, series books, romances, crime fiction, young adult fiction, memoires and biographies, non-fiction read for pleasure, etc.; studies of particular demographic groupings of readers selected by gender, age, educational level, social class, etc.; studies of the precursors of reading or the aftermath of reading.

We invite Scholars from different backgrounds to submit papers focusing on empirical, theoretical or methodological aspects.

Oslo and Akershus University College is in charge of the conference, in collaboration with The University of Western Ontario, London Canada.

Source: cfp to conference

Date uncertain (not Jan 1)