The Paperology Reading and Activity Group will take
place during the 2020-2021 academic year. While the most common of everyday
materials, paper has received less critical attention than it deserves. The
objective for this group is to engage with the emerging research and growing
literature on paper as material. In working towards an expansive approach to
paper, we are less invested in what is on the page than we are in the page
itself (Stamm, 2018). Instead, we want to better understand the material
histories, forms, practices, and possibilities of paper.
Paper has been of
interest to artists, art historians, and book historians, but it has been
surprisingly under examined as media and technology from the broader
perspective of fields such as media and communication studies. The recent surge
of publications on paper reflects an effort to fill this gap. This includes
research on paper as substrate (Dworkin, 2015; Calhoun, 2020); environmental
stories of papermaking through case studies of the pulp and paper mill industry
(Baxter, 2020); works interested in the phenomenologies and affective
experiences of paper (Michelon, 2016; Barnes, 2017); considerations of
artefacts and practices that accompany paper (Garvey, 2013; Robertson, 2019;
Senchyne, 2020) —and much more.
The Paperology RAG will be engaging with paper as
material through a variety of literatures that consider how paper is made, how
it is used, and the practices it affords. This includes thinking through an
assortment of paper-based artefacts with texts from various disciplines. As a way
to start, we offer the following questions: What exactly is paper? What
experiences are unique to paper? In what ways is paper valuable? Why paper now?
Is paper still a relevant technology? How has paper in its various permutations
given rise to specific things, systems, and cultures, including certain formats
and genres (e.g. the pocket book, the file, the greetings card), artefacts
(e.g. the rolodex, the paper shredder), and activities (e.g. paperwork,
burning, scrapbooking, marbling)? As we move through the readings, questions
such as these will serve as signposts to foster a space for exploration, for
engaging with novel ways of thinking paper, and for formulating new questions
around media and materiality.
We will meet monthly to discuss readings organized
around themes, which might include: history; ecology; infrastructure;
bureaucracy; sorting and storing; destroying; ephemera; value; intimacy; the
senses; cutting up; aesthetics; labour; gender; or others. The reading list for
each month will be a book-length collection of articles, chapters, or short
works. An indicative bibliography is included below, but we will confirm the
schedule, including themes and readings, in light of participants’ expressed
interests.
Logistics:
We meet once a month on a Thursday from 11:00am - 1:00
pm EST, from September 2020 to April 2021. Exact dates are: September 24,
October 29, November 19, December 17, January 21, February 18, March 18, April
22.
We meet synchronously via Zoom; you’ll get a link to
our individual meetings via email.
This is an informal, seminar-style reading group where
we aim to foster an open and collegial discussion. We would like to create a
sustained conversation over the year so would appreciate your ongoing
participation, but not to worry if you can’t attend all the weeks.
We hope you’ll have a chance to read and come prepared
to chat. If you don’t get a chance to read, you’re still welcome to come listen
in.
We welcome working papers as part of our reading list
if you’d like to discuss your work-in-progress. For those who are interested in
engaging with paper through making, activities will be suggested throughout the
year, including DIY projects or site-visits for those in Montreal.
We welcome researchers and research-creators from
diverse backgrounds.
In order to finalize the schedule please send us a bit
of information about yourself (100 words is plenty): your current affiliation,
your general area of research, and why the interest in paper. Please let us
know if there is a theme, reading, and/or activity you are particularly
interested in or would like to suggest, and if you would like to present your
own work or practice or lead an activity. Please send your information by
August 28th to Alysse Kushinski: alyssek@gmail.com
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