SPECIAL EVENTS

In conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America will present two special events featuring:

Gary Taylor, Professor of English and Director of the History of Text Technologies Program at Florida State University &

Both are free and open to the public.

The CHPC Annual Lecture by Professor Taylor:
What is an American Book? From Movable Type to Downloadable Files
Friday, October 20 4:00 - 4:50 PM
Auditorium, Wisconsin Historical Society-Library Mall

New digital technologies have called into the question textual boundaries gradually established over the centuries since the invention of movable type. In "What is an American Book?" Professor Taylor will examine the relationship between two questions, usually treated separately: "What is a book?" (nowadays usually asked in relation to the emergence of new digital media) and "What is American?" (nowadays usually asked in relation to international corporate conglomerates and/or immigration). He will argue that the answers to such questions require a much longer and wider historical focus, and a critique of the prevailing norms in the study of book history.

Panel Discussion:

New Technology in Book Publishing: Horseless Library?
Saturday, October 21 10:00 - 11:30 AM
Auditorium, Wisconsin Historical Society-Library Mall

• Gary Taylor, Professor of English, Florida State University.
• James P. Danky, Director, Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Peter Osnos, Executive Director, The Caravan Project, funded by MacArthur Foundation, developing plan for multi-Platform publishing of books.
• Ken Frazier, Interim Chief Information Officer, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Gwen Walker, Acquisitions Editor, University of Wisconsin Press.

Is there a future for print? What is the economic viability for print editions of non-blockbuster bestsellers? Earlier this year, UW Press experimented with its first simultaneous release of print and online versions of the same book. Meanwhile, a consortium of publishers and book retailers is developing "The Caravan Project," a venture to provide a new range of text delivery in stores: from print and audio to e-books, podcasts, etc. Join the folks behind these projects for a panel discussion of the current status, as well as visions for the future of books.

Both events are co-sponsored by the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America, the Department of English, the General Library System, the Department of History, and the School of Library and Information Studies.

For further information contact Irene Hansen: ihansen@wisc.edu
Details of the Wisconsin Book Festival are at: http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/

Visiting Speaker Bruno Latour:

Monday, October 23: 4:00pm, in 8417 Social Science Building. (Reception at 3:30pm)

Professor Latour will give a lecture entitled "Knowledge as a Mode of Existence."

Further inofrmation here.

Straub Symposium on Literature and Popular Culture: 'Post'-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and Culture

Friday and Saturday, October 20-21. Featured Speakers:

• Professor Carl Freedman is from Louisiana State University and works in the fields of critical theory, modern literature, science fiction, film, and 20th Century American politics. His talk will be on the two films, Double Indemnity and Body Heat.
• Professor Rita Raley from UC-Santa Barbara. Professor Freedman Professor Raley's interests are in digital texts, new media, and " Global English." Her talk will deal specifically with gaming.

Conference Website

The Contemporary Literature Colloquium, along with its co-sponsors the Anonymous Fund and the Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle, is pleased to announce a campus visit by Professor Paula Geyh (English, Yeshiva College).

All are invited to attend a public lecture:

"Cosmopolitan Interiors: Derrida, Haneke, and the Politics of Hospitality"
Thursday, November 2nd
4:00pm, 7191 Helen C. White Hall

Jacques Derrida's "On Cosmopolitanism" raises the possibility of a new instantiation of the historical "cities of refuge," an "open city" emerging out of and requiring a new "cosmopolitics" that encompasses both the duty of and the right to hospitality. Michael Haneke's 2000 film Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys offers a compelling depiction of our current distance from such a vision of the city and of the difficulties we would have to overcome to bring it about in our era of heterogeneous globalization. To speak of cosmopolitanism and hospitality, Geyh will argue, is inevitably to speak of what is simultaneously a politics and ethics of exteriority and interiority, of otherness both without and within. This problematic also compels us to develop a more complex understanding of "exteriority" and "interiority" themselves.

We would also like to encourage interested graduate students in all fields to r.s.v.p. for the brownbag lunch roundtable:

Roundtable with graduate students:

"Postmodernism and the City"
Friday, November 3rd
11:00am, 7101 Helen C. White Hall

The discussion will be chaired by Brian Williams and the readings include Paula Geyh's "From Cities of Things to Cities of Signs: Urban Spaces and Urban Subjects in Dreiser?s Sister Carrie and Dos Passos?s Manhattan Transfer" and "The Situationist City: D?ve and New Urban Spaces," as well George Saunders's short story "My Flamboyant Grandson," from In Persuasion Nation.

Downloads of the roundtable readings can be found on the CLC website.

Please r.s.v.p for the roundtable by Thursday, October 26th by emailing Brian Williams (bjwilliams4@wisc.edu).

If you have any questions about the CLC or either of these events, please contact Taryn Okuma (tlokuma@wisc.edu).