Making Publics: The Past, Present & Future of Publication

Making Publics: The Past, Present & Future of Publication

An Interdisciplinary Conference at the Stanford Humanities Center, Levinthal Hall

Free and open to the public.

How are texts, images, and messages transmitted to their audiences? How does the material form of a message influence and control its reception? How have online and digital publishers used data to respond to and shape their audiences and consumers? "Making Publics: The Past, Present & Future of Publication" will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars for a one-day conference to explore the materiality and meanings of texts, and how they have been, are, and will be published. The conference will be aimed at developing a longue durée narrative of the relationship between media and audiences in a global context.

Janice Radway, English, Northwestern University

Adrian Johns, History, University of Chicago

Arvind Rajagopal, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

Daniela Bleichmar, Art History and History, University of Southern California

Jinah Kim, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

Stephanie Frampton, Classics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Brett Wilson, Religious Studies, Macalester College

Simran Thadani, Pocket

Scott Dougall, Google

John Sack, Highwire Press

Organized by Andrew Bricker (English, McGill) and Hannah Marcus (History, Stanford)

This conference has been generously sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; the Stanford Humanities Center; the Departments of History, English, Religious Studies, Classics, and Communication; the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Program in History & Philosophy of Science; and the Stanford University Libraries.

9:00-9:10: Welcome

9:10-11.10 Panel 1: Publication and Dissemination

Jinah Kim, Harvard University, “A manuscript’s public lives: examples from South Asia”

Daniela Bleichmar, University of Southern California, "The Mutable Book: Producing and Reproducing the Codex Mendoza"

Brett Wilson, Macalester College, “Modernizing the Qur'an: Purity, Printing and Politics in late Ottoman and modern Turkey”

Moderator, Kathryn Starkey, DLCL, Stanford

11.10-11:30 coffee

11:30-1.00: Panel 2: Controlling Reception

Stephanie Frampton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Publishing before Publishing: The Case of the Roman Library"

Adrian Johns, University of Chicago, “Policing Publics: Information Control in the Modernizing Process”

Moderator: Paula Findlen, History, Stanford

1-2:30 Lunch at Stanford Humanities Center

2:30-4:00 Panel 3: Media and Public Identity

Janice Radway, Northwestern University, Girls, Zines, and Self-publishing in the 1990s: Itineraries and Networks of Dissent in Transitional Times or, Notes on the Problem of Tracking the Emergent"

Arvind Rajagopal, New York University, "Law and the Image: Consumer Publicity in an Emerging Market"

Moderator: Tom Mullaney, History, Stanford

4-4.30: Coffee

4:30-6:00 Round Table: The Future of Publication

Scott Dougall, Director of Product Management, Google Play

Simran Thadani, Content / Marketing, Pocket

John Sack, Founding Director, Highwire Press

Moderator: Elaine Treharne, English, Stanford