SHARP 2025 ROCHESTER
“Communities and Values of the Book”
Call for Papers

The SHARP 2025 co-organizers seek abstracts up to 500 words for the 2025 annual SHARP conference: “Communities and Values of the Book.” The conference will be  held July 7 – 11, 2025 in Rochester, New  York,  at the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology. 

We invite participants to explore the ideas of Values and Communities separately or together, and to interrogate the idea of value and its intersection with the idea of community (or communities) within book culture and bibliographic history.  Proposals are due by December 1, 2024, 11:59 pm USA EST.

The city of Rochester and the surrounding  regions of Western and Central New York have a rich history of book culture, including the vibrant written culture associated with the Burned Over District and the spiritualism, abolition, and suffrage movements, independent presses such as BOA and Open Letter Press, historic presses and printing companies, including Roycroft-Hubbard and Leo Hart, and major institutional collections and programs, such as the Visual Studies Workshop, the Eastman Museum Library, the Strong Museum of Play, and the RIT Archives and Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). This region’s history is also one of dispossession and disenfranchisement. Marginalized and non-mainstream communities in the area have their own rich and vibrant book cultures, including textual, oral, and performative texts, such as those of the Haudenosaunee people, or those of the Deaf community. Who is included, or excluded, when we think expansively about value, community, and the definitions of texts and objects? 

A primary goal of this conference is to bring together the broader Rochester bibliographic community, including writers, creators, publishers, archivists, institutions, and sellers. If a primary value of an international conference is the opportunity to build community amongst scholars, an attendant value in holding a conference in a specific location is the opportunity to deepen and broaden community across time and spaces, while also expanding the way in which we imagine communities and the values that color them.  

This conference will leverage a wide array of knowledge and perspectives surrounding literary production and book creation. A key aspect to our conference organization is the intentional inclusion of traditionally marginalized communities and objects in our programming and presentations. This includes, but is in no way limited to, the Rochester Deaf community, the Haudenosaunee community, Black creators in Rochester and the broader region, Latinx creators, diasporic and refugee movements and practices, LGBTQ+ creators and communities, local comics dealers and creators, zine makers and networks, artist cooperatives, community college initiatives, and other local groups of creators, readers, and sellers. We are interested in the expansive and inclusionary ways in which we can imagine and problematize what books are (comics, zines, tattoos, etc.) and what creation and use can look like (self-publishing, DIY, Kickstarters, textiles, etc.). 

Questions and topics to consider

• What is book culture? How is the idea of book culture dependent upon the values of different communities? 
• What are the ways in which geography, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect with politics, culture, and economic systems in the assignment of value to books, makers, authors, and cultures? 
• How do these intersections happen locally in the broader Rochester and Western/Central New York area? This is a complicated region that is urban, suburban, rural, the home of the Seneca people, and the location of multiple prisons and detention facilities. It is the historic home of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, while The University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology are home to the papers of authors Frederick Exley, John A. Williams, John Gardner, Robert Panara, Sam Greenlee, publishers Open Letter Press and BOA Editions, Ltd., Case-Hoyt printers, 19th century lithography companies, the Print Club of Rochester – to name just a few. 
• What is the value of alternative ways of looking at book culture, including printing, publishing, creating, reading, collecting, trading, and selling?
• What are the values that we assign to different book cultures, and what are the implications of those value systems? 
• How can we productively disrupt value systems? How can we productively build value systems? 
• How can we problematize or trouble the traditional value of book culture in a way that is productive and inclusionary? 
• How are the values of intellectual, archival, and commercial communities intertwined? 

Submission of Proposals

We seek proposals for organized panels, for individual presentations (traditional paper, lightning talk, 5-1-5 presentation, workshop), and for hands-on workshops. Panels can take the format of traditional papers, roundtables, 5-1-5 presentations, or lightning talks. We’re particularly interested in proposals for demonstrations and hands-on workshops that expand and have attendees critically examine traditional Western valuation and conceptualization of texts, their creators, and their users.

A limited amount of travel funding is available for students, independent scholars, contingent workers, and the unwaged. If you would like to be considered for travel funding, please indicate this when you submit your abstract.

Individual papers (20 minutes)
All proposals and papers will be written in English. Proposals must include a title and an abstract (max 500 words)  and a specification of A/V needs. 

Lightning presentations (7 – 10 minutes)
Proposals should include the same elements as an individual paper: title, abstract (500 words max), and specification of A/V needs.

5-1-5
5-1-5 sessions are comprised of five presentations, each limited to five minutes and one slide. This format is particularly well-suited for introductions to objects, questions, and conundrums without answers. They are intended to be a low-stakes format for exploration and experimentation. Proposals should include a title, abstract (500 words max), and A/V needs.

Hands-on workshops
We particularly encourage the submission of hands-on workshops and demonstrations. Proposals should include a title, abstract (500 words max), A/V and/or material needs.

Panels
Preference will be given to panels organized in advance by presenters. These panels should consist of either traditional papers, lightning presentations, or 5-1-5 presentations.
Panel proposals must include, for each participant, the required elements for individual papers and a description indicating the title of the panel, the presenters, the panel format, and the theme. All information should be compiled into one document for submission.

Roundtables
Roundtables enable presenters to discuss issues of broad or topical interest, such as theory, methodology, pedagogy, etc. These should include a title, abstract (500 words max), A/V needs, and the names of presenters (with individual presentation titles if applicable). All information should be compiled into one document for submission.

All abstracts must be submitted via our Indico site. Proposals are due by December 1, 2024, 11:59 pm USA EST.