The Epistolary Research Network

“…’silent’ objects and materials can fill some historical and literary silences…”
Colleen Taylor, Irish Materialisms. Oxford University Press, 2024, xvii.

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“Technology and writing are not distinct phenomena; that is, writing has never been and cannot be separate from technology.”
Christina Haas, Writing Technology Studies on the Materiality of Literacy. Routledge, 1996, x-xi.

 

Before reading the contents, many confront, or understand, letters as objects fabricated from a wide range of materials, usually including a support, writing implement and ink. The acts of writing, handling, archiving letters involve choices and decisions. Each aspect of a letter’s material form is imbued with significance; thus each is able to convey or conceal meanings. TERN2025 welcomes proposals that address what a letter’s materiality can reveal about emotions, interpersonal relationships, epistolary habits and social conventions, as regards letter creation, delivery and preservation, with a particular focus on the atypical, hidden, misunderstood and little-known.

 

We are interested in sharing research that covers diverse geographical locations, time periods and societies.

 

Topics might include but are not limited to:

• when changes in physical form alter, add or omit meaning, i.e. letters included in edited collections, manuals, literary or creative works

• stripping away materiality, digitizing originals

• new materialist approaches, letter-object as agent

• erasure, blotting, damage, destruction of a letter’s materiality

• the interaction between letters and machinery

• methods of hiding contents, including folding, sealing, locking

• meaning derived from objects or documents placed, found or stored with letters (clothing, court records, family papers, archives)

 

Both individual and panel submissions are accepted. Abstracts of 250 words (maximum) for 20-minute papers should be sent as a DOCX or PDF document to ternetwork@hotmail.com by 1 June 2025. This conference is online only and will be held 3-4 October 2025.