Call for Papers

The present seminar aims at considering this interdisciplinary nature of book history, by setting up a platform for scholars, researchers, people from the publishing industry, new media scholars and students to initiate a dialogue regarding the scope and future of this area of study particularly in India. There is no denying that book history is still largely dominated by American and European academies. Jadavpur University, Kolkata was the first institution in India which started teaching book history as an optional course to its post-graduate students. In Pune University, we introduced the course again as an optional module to our post-graduate students in the year 2010. As Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravorty note, “It has been an intriguing feature of book history studies worldwide that most taught courses in this field have originated in departments of literature, rather than say history or economics. On the other hand, much opposition to book history has also emanated from literature departments. One suspects that in India, some constituencies in English studies might feel threatened rather than empowered by the methods of book history. Thanks to a lingering colonial hangover, English studies in India have been unable to reduce its overwhelming dependence on literature produced in the British isles.”

Why has book history as a discipline, not taken off in India? India has a rich literature that extends further back in time than that of any European country. However, the tools of preservation and quantification have been two major obstacles in the development of book history in India. When book history took off in Western Europe, it relied heavily on quantification. The sources were always imperfect, but, however, flawed or distorted, the statistics provided enough material for book historians to construct a picture of the literary culture. Does a comparable source exist in India?

The present seminar intends to raise and address similar questions by focusing on the history of material texts and providing a forum for research across disciplines and across periods, for all those interested in the history of the book, bibliography, histories and theories of reading, and the intersections between intellectual history and material culture, including the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, editing and subsequent history of texts as material objects in manuscript, print, digital media or other forms. The seminar will attempt largely to address the following areas:

• Pre-print cultures
  The advent of print and print-cultures
  Book trade
  Print history in colonial and post-colonial India
  Book illustrations
  Censorship
  The Politics of Publishing and Publishers
  History of Reading and Readers
  Books and the New Media
  Archives (Print and digital)

These topics are only suggestive; one is free to raise and address questions pertaining to other aspects book history in India not mentioned in the list above.