Histories and Futures of Publication

Histories and Futures of Publication is an interdisciplinary lecture and colloquium series in manuscript, print, and digital cultures. It is organized in conjunction with the Textual Studies Program's three-year plan for curricular revision and research community formation at the University of Washington.

Building on the past two years, which included hosting the annual conference of the international Society for Textual Scholarship and lectures by Jerome McGann (English, University of Virginia), Janice Radway (Communications, Northwestern), and Jeffrey Schnapp (Romance Languages, Harvard), this year’s Histories and Futures of Publication lecture series welcomes scholars to the UW whose work on publication, broadly construed, intersects with big-picture debates about the place of the humanities, innovation in graduate education, and public scholarship. Featured speakers include Jacob Soll (History, University of Southern California) and Elaine Freedgood (English, New York University) in the fall, Deidre Lynch (English, Harvard) and Bonnie Mak (Library & Information Science and Medieval Studies, University of Illinois) in the winter, and Michael Papio (Italian, University of Massachusetts) in the spring.

Histories and Futures of Publication also sponsor seminars in which UW and regional scholars can informally share ongoing work. We are also planning a symposium in spring 2016 on the future of publishing in the Amazon era. These events offer a framework for the launch of a graduate certificate in Textual and Digital Studies and an undergraduate minor track in Literature and Media in early 2016.