Bibliographical Alterities
What will the future of Book History look like? What should it look like? With the exaggerated claims of the “death of the book,” on the one hand, and publication of major multivolume histories of the book in America, Britain, Canada, and France on the other, it is an opportune moment to reflect on such questions. Early modern print often eludes or exceeds the linguistic or national categories that organize its investigation. Digital tools like image archives, text-searchable databases, and GIS mapping have already changed the way book history is practiced. This conference asks prominent practitioners in the field to reflect on the methodological and theoretical stakes of their own work, and to identify questions in the field that remain unanswered, or even unasked.
The Principles of Meaning: Networks of Knowledge in Johnson’s Dictionary 
Computing Koselleck: Modeling Semantic Revolutions, 1720-1960 
Scott, the Novel, and Capital in the Nineteenth Century 
The Ends of Cultural Studies 
Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship 
Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present