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CFP: Literacy’s Material Histories: American Sites and Scenes (Roundtable)Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Boston, March 21-24, 2013Deadline: September 30, 2012This roundtable will explore the cultural ecologies of literary formsand practices in America, and invites submissions that explorematerial places of American literary production, circulation, orconsumption. Relocating critical significance not only in the materialform of the text, but also in the local environments in which literaryproducts were produced, through which they circulated, and withinwhich they were consumed—in bookstores or on the subway, among librarypatrons or on the road—this roundtable asks how particularities ofplace condition social meanings of the literary.  By fostering afocused exploration of literature and place across time periods, weseek not only to expand the historical forms of literary practice butalso to question the critical boundaries and definitions of whatforms, practices, and spaces constitute “literary culture.”We intend the roundtable to be as much an examination of method as adiscussion of discipline in literary and cultural studies. We hope togive special attention to the emerging ways in which digitalhumanities and archival practices may mutually elucidate the textures,contours, and material histories of literacy by showing us new ways ofconceptualizing physical, social, and cultural networks. Key terms andquestions under consideration in this roundtable may include the formand function of such networks and circles of influence, the role ofplace in constructing literary communities, the relationship betweenspatiality and temporality in American literary studies, the ways inwhich books mediate the formation of cultural institutions, and thetools and methodologies we can use to evoke new spatial readings ofAmerican print culture. Other specific topics may includenon-traditional literary spaces, geography and print culture, or genreas literary place.Please send a 300-500 word abstract and brief biographical statementto Jane Greenway Carr at jgc219@nyu.edu or Kristen Doyle Highland atkdh253@nyu.edu by September 30.