Association for
Japanese Literary Studies
Fourteenth Annual Meeting
Reading Material:
The Production of
Narratives, Genres
and Literary
Identities
October 7, 8, 9 2005
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
The organizers of the AJLS conference for 2005 invite paper and panel
proposals that explore the relationship between the content of literary
texts (fictional narratives, history, poetry) and the materials by
which texts are produced and disseminated. For guidance in formulating
topics, we ask our colleagues to look at a number of influential
studies that have investigated the manner in which technological
advances have prompted changes in other dimensions of the
reading/interpretive process. Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936) speculates on the links
between the technology of duplication and the formation of
subjectivity. Though his primary concern is film and photography,
his insights apply equally to literary texts. Maeda Ai, in his
Kindai dokusha no seiritsu (1973) locates in the Meiji era shift to
print culture the origins of a very new sort of reader. Peter
Kornicki's The Book in Japan (1998) provides a detailed study of the
evolution of the technology of texts through Japan's history, while
Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983) outlines the way that
the establishment of a shared body of reading material produces a sense
of national identity. Finally, Kôno Kensuke has examined
publishing practices and their influence on modernity in Shomotsu no
kindai (1992).
Topics that might be addressed include:
- modern Japanese narrative modes and the custom of newspaper
serialization
- the impact of technology in the formation of readerships and
communities of writers
- silent reading of modern texts compared with the communal
consumption
of picture scrolls (emaki)
- the relationship between professional "readers" (biwa
hôshi,
"yomi-uri" newspaper salesman, etc) and amateur listeners
- authorial intent and reader response in the age of anonymous
manuscripts/ authorial intent and reader response in the age of
copyright
- the medium as message: the “literary effects” of handwritten
manuscripts, reproducible woodblock texts, printed books
- the sacred materiality of religious texts
- reciting poetry (uta o yomu) vs. composing poetry (shi o kaku)
- the "one-yen book" (enpon) boom and national identity
- lending libraries and the production of community
- manuscript pedigrees and authoritative readings
- broadsheets (kawaraban) and their imagined communities
- kasutori publications and postwar liberalism
- graffiti as literary genre
- imperial poetry anthologies and the production of national poets
- publication practices and the formation of genres
- magazine culture and narrative
We welcome papers and panels on these and other related topics, though
we will give priority to papers and panels that have a clear focus on
literary texts (as opposed to papers that deal primarily with film or
performance arts). We encourage submissions that reflect a wide
range of perspectives and disciplinary methodologies.
Deadline for receipt of abstracts of no more than 250 words is May 1,
2005.
Contacts: Dennis Washburn (dennis.washburn@dartmouth.edu) and James
Dorsey (james.dorsey@dartmouth.edu)