[KS] Call for Papers: New Perspectives on the History of Books and Reading in Korea

[Si Nae Park]

Call for Papers: New Perspectives on the History of Books and Reading in
Korea

Dear all,

We invite paper proposals for a conference to shed new light on the history
of the book and reading in Korea from the Chosŏn period to the early
twentieth century.

            Ever since Maurice Courant, a French diplomat-turned-scholar,
published his monumental Bibliographie Coréenne in 1894, much ink has
been spilled on the study of books in Korea. But where is the field headed
now? In current research on the history of the book, especially in
English-language scholarship, the Korean experience is more often than not
written out or treated as an aberration: How was it that a country that had
developed and widely used the technology for movable metal type printing as
early as the thirteenth century had to wait until the turn of the
nineteenth century to witness the rise of commercial printing of
vernacular-language materials? The Eurocentric, print-oriented view tends
to overlook the historical validity of various non-print forms of the book,
as well as the physical instantiation of literacies and practices of
writing and reading that flourished in Korea from the fourteenth to the
early twentieth centuries.

            We propose that the Korean historical experience is uniquely
positioned to generate exciting new conversations about the global history
of the book and of reading because it allows us to de-universalize the
teleological narrative of evolution from manuscript to movable-type
printing shaped by the European experience. We are interested in exploring
the following issues. How can we better perceive the material habitat of
written words in Korea by considering the entanglements within,
co-existence of, and competition among book-making technologies and diverse
forms of “bibliographical documents” (Adams and Barker 1993) in the Korean
context—including print (xylography and movable type made of metal, wood,
and clay), manuscript, and a plethora of primarily non-codex materials now
categorized under the term* komunsŏ *(lit. “old documents”)? How can we
better chart the technologies of literacy that Koreans deployed within
a socio-textual universe shored up by the privileged status of Literary
Sinitic and sinography? How did written (alphabetical) and spoken
vernacular Korean, alongside vernacular reading and compositional methods (
*kugyŏl/t’o* and *idumun*, respectively), complement and co-opt the textual
authority of Literary Sinitic and sinography? How can we better examine the
ways in which the materiality of the book as a communicative space—book
cover, front matter (title page, table of contents, dedications, and so
on), mise-en-page, and binding—was shaped, reoriented, and recomposed not
simply as physical containers of text but also as expressive media as
object, idea, and interface? What reading and interpretive practices did
the physical shape of the book dictate and develop? For heuristic purposes,
we adopt Amaranth Borsuk’s (2018) proposal of the book as object, content,
idea, and interface, and we are also interested in how the book as a
communicative space underscores a variety of somatic and affective
experiences—visual-ocular, auditory-oral/aural/vocal, haptic, and
olfactory.

We invite papers committed to twin projects: critically revisiting existing
characterizations of Korea’s book culture while also conducting in-depth
bibliographical examinations of original texts that register genres,
cultural habits, and institutions. For example, we look forward to
receiving proposals that will shed light on questions like the following:
What cultural perceptions and attitudes were reflected in books and the
wide range of activities pertaining to their production (paper supply,
carving, binding, design, illustration, etc.), circulation, collecting,
commercialization, transcription, personalization, de- and re-construction,
honoring and discrediting, vernacularization, translation, annotation
(glossing, marginalia, commentary, illumination, etc.), documentation,
note-taking, anthologizing, republication, reprinting, and digitization?
What books were involved in the defining events that shaped the materiality
of books and changed practices of reading? We accept paper proposals that
will venture into terra incognita as well as proposals that aim to
rechart well-trodden territory.

The conference will take place on December 8, 2022 at Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. The one-day conference will have three
components: a workshop to discuss each paper hands-on examination of select
materials held by the Harvard-Yenching Library, and a roundtable
discussion. We envision a publication of papers in a journal special issue
after the conference.

As we get closer to the conference date, we will coordinate presentation
modes with all accepted participants, depending on the Covid-19 pandemic
situation.

If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send a
paper proposal (250–300 words) accompanied by a CV to Si Nae Park
(sinaepark at fas.harvard.edu) and Suyoung Son (ss994 at cornell.edu) by March
1, 2022. Selected participants are expected to send in a paper draft by the
end of August 2022.



Timeline:

Paper proposal (250–300 words) due on March 1, 2022

Completion of draft paper (6,000–8,000 words) due on August 31, 2022

Conference: December 8, 2022.



Thank you very much.



Conveners:

Si Nae Park, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations,
Harvard University

Suyoung Son, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, Cornell University
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