CFP: POPULAR CULTURE – SERIAL CULTURE: NINETEENTH-CENTURY SERIAL FICTIONS IN TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE, 1830S-1860s. 28-30 APRIL 2016, UNIVERSITY OF SIEGEN
This call for papers may be of interest for scholars of 19th-century popular print culture. Daniel Stein and Lisanna Wiele (American Studies, Universität Siegen) are inviting submissions for the conference “Popular Culture – Serial Culture”. From the CfP:
Recent publications such as Transnationalism and American Serial Fiction (Okker 2011) and Serialization in Popular Culture (Allen/van den Berg 2014) remind us that serial modes of storytelling, publication, and reception have been among the driving forces of modern culture since the first half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, as studies of Victorian serial fiction, the French feuilleton novel, and American magazine fiction indicate, much of what we take for granted as central features of contemporary serial fictions traces back to a particular period in the nineteenth century between the 1830s and the 1860s. This is the time when new printing techniques allowed for the mass publication of affordable reading materials, when literary authorship became a viable profession, when reading for pleasure became a popular pastime for increasingly literate and socially diverse audiences, and when previously predominantly national print markets became thoroughly international.
The conveners encourage interdisciplinary and transnational approaches that may go beyond the North American context.
250-word abstracts are due on September 1, 2015.
Further information available on the conference website: