Save the date.  The Department of English and Linguistics and the Centre for the Book are pleased to welcome Prof. Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections, Victoria & Albert Museum, London to deliver this year’s Margaret Dalziel Lecture at 5:30 pm on Tuesday 20 September.  More details will be posted once room and lecture title are confirmed.

Bill Sherman is Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum and Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of York.  He was Director of the Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies (CREMS) from its creation in 2005 to 2011, and Associate Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly from 2001 to 2012.  He has held visiting positions at Caltech, Queen Mary (University of London) and Keio University (Tokyo), and fellowships at the Folger, Huntington, New York Public Library, National Maritime Museum and Bard Graduate Center.  He has received grants from the NEH, AHRC, Mellon Foundation and Bibliographical Society and has served on a range of boards, trusts and councils on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sherman’s research is driven by a love of archives and other collections, and an interest in how objects from the past (textual and otherwise) come down to us, what they pick up along the way and how they speak across periods. He has published widely on the history of books and readers, the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the interface between word and image and the relationship between knowledge and power.

Recent publications include Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England and a special issue of The Huntington Library Quarterly on Prison Writings in Early Modern England (winner of the inaugural Voyager Award of the MLA’s Council of Editors of Learned Journals). His current projects include a study of visual marginalia called The Reader’s Eye, a collection of essays on Renaissance Collage (edited with Juliet Fleming and Adam Smyth), a reconstruction of the art- and book-collections of Walter and Louise Arensberg (with Mark Nelson) and an edition of Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (edited with Chloe Preedy) for Arden Early Modern Drama.

The Centre for the Book, Monash University, in collaboration with the Centre for the Book, University of Otago and The State Library of Victoria, are hosting:

Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins.
A One-Day Conference & Masterclass

Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Prof. Pat Buckridge, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland

Conference date: Friday 23 September.

Venue: State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

There are margins to both traditional print- and paper-based texts as well as virtual texts. Whatever text they surround, encompass, define or limit, margins are the spaces in which ideas are contested and debated. Historically, readers have used the physical margin as a space in which to respond to the voice of the author, and to communicate with other readers. As it has become increasingly easy to add marginal notes to virtual texts, and for readers to share their electronic marginalia with each other, scholars are able to scrutinise marginalia in new ways and to reconstruct social reading practices on an unprecedented scale. While contemporary and historical annotation practices have much in common, and there is much to be learned about historical practices from studies of contemporary marginalia, historical practices raise unique and challenging interpretative issues of their own. And, although a range of recent studies have increased our knowledge concerning the distribution and availability of books, the identity and diversity of readers and annotators, the spread and even the nature of literacy in the early modern and modern periods, there remain significant challenges for scholars encountering marginalia.

This conference will investigate marginalia in texts from the early modern period to the present, with a particular focus on the interpretative challenges posed by marginalia in the literal margin—whether encountered directly, via digital surrogate or in mediated form.

Topics may include:

• Studies of historical marginalia and annotation
• Theoretical models and methodological protocols for conceptualising marginalia
• The reproduction of marginalia in virtual environments
• The location and use of marginalia via digital surrogate
• Studies of virtual marginalia that shed light on historical practices
• Changing or limiting contemporary reader practices in virtual environments
• Marginal notations as “signs of engagement”
• The nature and interpretative challenges of pictures, doodles, stains and traces etc.
• Interpretative issues posed by anonymous vs. celebrity marginalia
• Particular annotators, or particular annotated texts
• Marginalia as literary work
• Commentary as writing, writing as commentary
• Marginalia as (auto)biographical record or life writing
• Annotation in combination with inter-leaving and grangerising

It is anticipated that the papers from the conference will form the basis of an edited collection to be published by a quality academic press.

Length of papers
Papers will be twenty minutes each (with ten minutes for Q&A).
Please send abstracts of 250–300 words to the convenors by 15 June:

Dr. Patrick Spedding (Patrick.Spedding@monash.edu)
Dr. Paul Tankard (paul.tankard@otago.ac.nz)

To allow for delegates to make their travel plans and/or apply for funding in a timely fashion, proposals will be considered and confirmations issued as they come in.

Masterclass: Prof. Bill Sherman will conduct a masterclass at the State Library of Victoria, using items from the Rare Books Collection to demonstrate some of the interpretative challenges that annotated material presents to scholars and librarians. Seating is limited. For further details, or to book a seat, please contact Dr. Patrick Spedding (Monash University): Patrick.Spedding@monash.edu.