Early Text Cultures at Oxford, Trinity Term 2022
The Early Text Cultures research group based at the University of Oxford invites papers for its Trinity Term 2022 seminar on ‘Textual Cultures in Contact’, which will bring together scholars whose research focus is the interactions between pre-modern textual cultures.
Through sessions comprising paired papers, this seminar series will enable participants and attendees alike to gain fresh perspectives on the nature of ‘contact’ among textual cultures, and on the affordances and limitations of their fields’ methods and approaches to the topic.
Subjects and case studies might include (but are not limited to):
- Texts that embed or are shaped by intercultural textual or literary interaction
- Texts that consciously reflect on that type of interaction (e.g. translations, adaptations, ancient or modern ethnographic accounts)
- Histories of terminology and theoretical frameworks used to conceptualise ‘contact’ between textual cultures
- Investigations into the material, social and intellectual conditions that determined, and were shaped by, these interactions
- Examinations of the power relationships (political or otherwise) implicit in cross-cultural interactions
If you would like to present a 20-minute paper at one of the seminars, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to earlytextcultures.ox@gmail.com by Monday 11 April.
Papers by early-career and graduate researchers are particularly welcome. The seminar will be held in a hybrid form, taking place both in Oxford and on Zoom for those joining us from further afield. Speakers and auditors will be welcome but by no means obliged to come to Oxford to attend.
The organising committee of the Early Text Cultures research cluster includes graduate students and early career researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds such as Classics (Bernardo Ballesteros Petrella, Domenico Giordani), Old-Norse studies (James Parkhouse), Early Chinese (Flaminia Pischedda, Maddalena Poli) and Japanese studies (Tasha Downs), Egyptology (Jordan Miller), and comparative literature (Harry Carter).
More information on our methodology and our past events can be found on our website. To be added to our mailing list, please email earlytextcultures@humanities.ox.ac.uk or earlytextcultures.ox@gmail.com.