Call for papers--Conference on frakturs

I am posting this on behalf of Janine Pollock, Head of the Rare Book
Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I suspect the
deadline is somewhat flexible if you contact Janine.

Call for Papers

"Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the
    Atlantic World, 1683-1850"
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
5-7 March 2015

Deadline 15 April 2014

This conference seeks to expand the usual boundaries of discussion
on this topic and the committee is interested in proposals that
address material aspects of Pennsylvania German imprints and
manuscripts such as bindings, paper, and inks.

Paper and panel proposals are invited for a conference on "Fraktur
and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic
World, 1683-1850" to be jointly sponsored by the McNeil Center for
Early American Studies, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the
Philadelphia Museum of Art and to be held in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 5-7 March 2015. The conference will coincide with
major exhibitions at both the Museum and the Free Library.  The
Philadelphia Museum will be exhibiting fraktur from the collection
of Joan and Victor Johnson, featuring many extraordinary manuscript
and printed examples from southeastern Pennsylvania along with other
objects, and will also be publishing a comprehensive scholarly
catalogue of the Johnson collection.  The Free Library will feature
historically significant, rare and unique examples of Fraktur,
manuscripts, broadsides, and printed books from the Henry Stauffer
Borneman Pennsylvania German Collection.  Presently many of these
items are available to scholars in an online database at

    <URL:http://libwww.freelibrary.org/fraktur/>

and are featured on the Free Library's PA German Collection Blog

    <URL:http://libwww.freelibrary.org/blog/?tag=Pennsylvania+German+Collection>

These two exhibitions and their accompanying digital and printed
components offer a tremendous opportunity for boundary-crossing
discussion and analysis.  While German-speaking people in
Pennsylvania are often conceptualized as a distinctive and isolated
group, the exhibitions and this conference encourages efforts to see
them as a common subject of inquiry that provides a point of entry
for a much broader understanding of the significance of art and
culture and for how we understand human experience in the past and
the present.  Among the potential themes that the conference hopes
to explore are:

    The place of ethnicity within the Early American Republic

    Philadelphia's historic and on-going relationship to its rural,
    small-town, and suburban hinterlands

    Pennsylvania Germans and acculturation

    Varieties of German culture in European, Atlantic, and
    non-Pennsylvania contexts

    Digital projects as a transformative force for studying art,
    material culture, history, genealogy, and our understanding of
    the past

    The relationship of libraries, museums, and university-based
    academic programs to the general public

    The strengths and weaknesses of art and material culture for
    understanding the past

    The role of the collector in preserving the past for the future

Proposals are welcome for papers of 25-30 pages in length, which
will be pre-circulated to all conference participants.  Suggestions
for complete panels will also be considered, but the organizers
reserve the right to accept, reject, or reassign individual papers.

Please submit proposals of approximately 500 words, along with
curriculum vitae, to mceas<-a t->ccat< . >sas< . >upenn< . >edu no later than 15 April
2014. Accepted panelists will be notified by late May 2014.  Papers
will be due for pre-circulation no later than 15 January 2015.  Some
support for participants' travel and lodging will be available for
paper presenters.

    Janine Pollock
    Head, Rare Book Department
    Free Library of Philadelphia
    1901 Vine Street
    Philadelphia, PA 19103
    215-686-5416
    pollockj<-a t->freelibrary< . >org
    freelibrary.org/rarebooks

Meg Newburger
Collection Care
Materials Management Division
Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine St.  Room 2A, Philadelphia, PA 19103
215-686-5379


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