Technology and the Printed Media in Italy between 1870 and 1914

TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRINTED MEDIA IN ITALY BETWEEN 1870 AND 1914

Cultural historians and literary critics have in the last few decades highlighted the historically contingent nature of literary productions and discursive formations. According to this approach, the book is viewed as a cultural object, that is, the cultural intersection of a triangular relationship between author, publisher, and reader. The conference will explore this approach in the context of late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century Italian literary texts, a period associated with an unprecedented growth of the print industry and of the reading public. These changes transformed the way in which literature, and more broadly culture, was understood, a transformation that resulted in a fundamental modernization of the very processes of cultural production, along with a professionalization of the figure of the writer and a redefinition of the dichotomy between popular and elite culture.

Who were the writers and other intellectuals most closely associated with this process of transformation? What ideas and debates accompanied this cultural transformation? What were the technological, social and political developments that shaped the way culture was produced and consumed? How can we map out a more detailed geography of the culture, understood in its most comprehensive sense, that marked this crucial time in the history of modern Italy? These are among the questions that will be explored in this conference.

Organizers: Ann Hallamore Caesar (University of Warwick) and Gabriella Romani (SetonHallUniversity).

The conference will be held at SetonHallUniversity (14 miles from New York City in South Orange, NJ) on Oct 16-17, 2008.

We invite submissions of papers both in Italian and English which address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Technology and the book (photography, plates, illustrations, etc.)

Word and image

The book as artifact and consumer’s item

Magazines, periodicals, literature and journalism (la terza pagina, strenne natalizie, serialized novels, etc.)

Relationships between writers, publishers, editors

Law, censorship and publishing

Education, public libraries and new reading communities.

Those interested in participating are invited to submit a 250-word abstract with name and, where applicable, professional affiliation and a brief biography by December 15, 2007 to Ann Caesar (A.H.Caesar@warwick.ac.uk ) and Gabriella Romani (romaniga@shu.edu).