News

Announcing: Authorship 3.2 (Fall 2014)

We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Authorship went live today and is available as always in open access here. This general issue features exciting contributions from Adam White, Andrea Selleri, Claire Battershill, and Mary Laughlin. Our scope is broad as usual, ranging from Romantic notions of "genius," over a discussion of writerly spaces, to the problematic co-authorship of criminal confessions.
This issue was also the last issue conducted and edited by our managing editor Prof. Dr. Yuri Cowan, whose three-year term as the journal's editor has now come to a close. We are hugely grateful for Yuri's painstaking professionalism and his kind sincerity in all editorial communications to reviewers and contributors alike. His generous and tireless efforts were instrumental in establishing Authorship.

Our next issue, scheduled to appear in the Spring of 2015, will be edited by Dr. Gero Guttzeit, whom we are welcoming as Authorship’s new managing editor!

Announcing: Authorship 3.1 (Spring 2014)

We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Authorship went live today and is available as always in open access here. This issue contains a special topic section on "Reconfiguring Authorship," which is guest-edited by Ingo Berensmeyer, Gert Buelens, and Marysa Demoor. The issue covers a broad historical spectrum, from Richard Wilson's discussion of Shakespeare's "anti-authorship," over Margaret Ezell's piece on gallows authorship in the seventeenth century, to Despoina Feleki's work on Stephen King's authorial personae in print and digital culture.

CFP: "The Authorial Kaleidoscope: Textualizations of the Body-Corpus" (December 3-5, 2014)

The "Body and Textuality" group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is inviting proposals for individual papers discussing the relationship between "body," "corpus," and "authorship." The deadline for submission of abstracts is June 1st, 2014. For more information, visit the conference website.

Announcing: Authorship 2.2 (Spring/Summer 2013)

We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Authorship (our fourth) went live last week, and is available as always in open access here: http://www.authorship.ugent.be/issue/current
This issue contains a special topics section on "Remix in Authorship," which is guest-edited by Nelleke Moser of VU University Amsterdam and which covers areas from the early modern period to digital culture. The issue also includes an article on periodical culture in 1920s Argentina by Geraldine Rogers, and our very first book review.

If you or someone you know might be interested in reviewing, or if you have a book for review, please contact journalmanager.authorship[at]ugent.be.

RAP Conference, "Reconfiguring Authorship" (Nov 15-18, 2012)

The RAP team had the pleasure of welcoming five exciting keynote speakers and 56 wonderful panelists to Ghent for a stimulating conference on new directions and developments in the study of authorship. For a poster, conference description, and program, please refer to our conference homepage.

RAP Members on the Move

On November 14, 2012, several of RAP's members will present their work and the project as a whole at the annual meeting of the Vlaamse Vereniging voor Algemene en Vergelijkende Literatuurwetenschap: project co-director Ingo Berensmeyer will deliver the keynote address, and will be joined by the other two directors, Marysa Demoor and Gert Buelens, by postdoctoral researcher Lisa Walters, and by PhD students Alise Jameson and Jasper Schelstraete.

Announcing: Authorship 1.2 (Spring/Summer 2012)

Our second issue (Spring/Summer 2012) has now gone live, with two standalone articles and a special topics section on "The Rebirth of the Author" containing five articles plus an introductory essay. We are very pleased with the work done by all our contributors, and think you will find that the special topics section holds together very well.

We would also like to announce that we have begun a weekly announcement of books relevant to our topic. At this point we are not soliciting books for review, although we may do so in future.

Authorship is now soliciting submissions for future issues. The deadline for inclusion in the fall issue is 1 September 2012. See the website of Authorship for more information and to sign up for email notification of future issues.

Announcing: Authorship 1.1 (Fall 2011)

We are pleased to announce that the Fall 2011 issue of our new peer-reviewed open-access online journal Authorship has gone live, with five articles and an editorial introduction. We are very happy with the quality and breadth of coverage (from the middle ages to the digital age) that these articles offer, and feel that they bode well for the quality of the journal in the future.

The current issue of the journal may be viewed here.

At this point we are looking forward to the second and third issues. For the second issue (a special issue on "The Rebirth of the Author") we are expecting solicited submissions by February 2012 and for the third issue (an open issue) we are hoping for submissions by 1 September 2012. See the website of Authorship for more information and to sign up for email notification of future issues.

CFP: Submissions for panel, "Enduring Grub Street," at Defoe Society meeting (July 14-16, 2011)

We are seeking submissions for a panel that RAP is sponsoring at the biannual meeting of the Defoe Society in Worcester, UK, on the working conditions and legacy of Grub Street. We are especially interested in submissions from a nineteenth-century perspective or those that bridge the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For more information, see the conference website and the full panel description (scroll down).

Upcoming conference presentations by RAP members:

RAP will be well-represented at next year's meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS) in Vancouver, Canada (March 17-19, 2011).

Alise Jameson will discuss "The Influence of Gerard Langbaine's Seventeenth-Century Play Catalogues on Eighteenth-Century Criticism and Authorship Ideals" on the panel, "Eighteenth-Century Reception Studies - I",

while Sören Hammerschmidt will present a paper entitled, "'The best Work, or best character": Intermedial Authorship in Alexander Pope's Letters" on the panel, "The Material Culture of Authorship" and chair the roundtable, "Mediating Richardson".

December 1, 2010

RAP seminar: Andrew King (Canterbury Christ Church University), "Ouida and the Mark of Woman in the Late Nineteenth Century"

3.30-5pm, Blandijnberg 2, Room 1.34

November 22-23, 2010

Literary Networks & Authorship. Putting theory into practice

Seminar of the Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities and Law.

Lecturers: David Brewer (The Ohio State University) and Gisèle Sapiro (Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris).

This seminar will be of interest to students working on aspects of literary networks and/or authorship; it is open to all PhD students at Ghent University, Hogeschool Gent, VUB and other Flemish universities. Those interested in participating should send an abstract of no more than 250 words to or by September 15, 2010, and should keep in mind that the full text of their paper will be due by November 1, 2010. Registration for the course will start on September 15, 2010.

For more information, see the full seminar description.

October 27, 2010

RAP Reading Group Meeting

11am-12pm, English Department (kleine vergaderzaal)

The RAP Reading Group will meet to discuss Sundeep Bisla's "The Return of the Author: Privacy, Publication, the Mystery Novel, and The Moonstone" - those interested are welcome to join us.

October 4, 2010

RAP seminar: Flutur Troshani, "Authorship in the Digital Medium"

2-3pm, English Department Reading Room.

August 17-20, 2010

RAP @ "Book Culture from Below," Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), Helsinki

RAP was well-represented at this conference, too, with two of its members show-casing their work there:

Yuri Cowan, "Scott's 'Minstrelsy' and Victorian Ballad Collections: Authorship, Editing, and Authority"
Alise Jameson, "Enlightenment Authorship or Refining a Profession?: The Case of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning"

Information about the society as well as conference photos are available on the SHARP website.

July 8-10, 2010

RAP @ "Circulating Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Networks, Knowledge and Forms," Royal Society, London

In July, three RAP members travelled to London to help commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society with a RAP-sponsored conference panel:

Ingo Berensmeyer, "Uncertainty in Networks: The Impact of Print Culture on the Diffusion of Ideas in Seventeenth-Century England"
Isabelle Clairhout, "Erring from good Housewifery? Scientific authorship
in Cavendish and Trye"
Alise Jameson, "'I cannot allow all the Wit in his Plays to be his own': Circulating Seventeenth-Century Constructions of Authorship"

A full list of panels and paper abstracts for the conference is available online (PDF).