New Perspectives on the History of Books and Reading in Korea
December 8, 2022
Massachusetts, United States
We invite paper proposals for a conference to shed new light on the history of the book and reading in Korea from the Chosŏn period to the early twentieth century.
Ever since Maurice Courant, a French diplomat-turned-scholar, published his monumental Bibliographie Coréenne in 1894, much ink has been spilled on the study of books in Korea. But where is the field headed now? In current research on the history of the book, especially in English-language scholarship, the Korean experience is more often than not written out or treated as an aberration: How was it that a country that had developed and widely used the technology for movable metal type printing as early as the thirteenth century had to wait until the turn of the nineteenth century to witness the rise of commercial printing of vernacular-language materials? The Eurocentric, print-oriented view tends to overlook the historical validity of various non-print forms of the book, as well as the physical instantiation of literacies and practices of writing and reading that flourished in Korea from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
We propose that the Korean historical experience is uniquely positioned to generate exciting new conversations about the global history of the book and of reading because it allows us to de-universalize the teleological narrative of evolution from manuscript to movable-type printing shaped by the European experience. We are interested in exploring the following issues. How can we better perceive the material habitat of written words in Korea by considering the entanglements within, co-existence of, and competition among book-making technologies and diverse forms of “bibliographical documents” (Adams and Barker 1993) in the Korean context—including print (xylography and movable type made of metal, wood, and clay), manuscript, and a plethora of primarily non-codex materials now categorized under the term komunsŏ (lit. “old documents”)? How can we better chart the technologies of literacy that Koreans deployed within a socio-textual universe shored up by the privileged status of Literary Sinitic and sinography? How did written (alphabetical) and spoken vernacular Korean, alongside vernacular reading and compositional methods (kugyŏl/t’o and idumun, respectively), complement and co-opt the textual authority of Literary Sinitic and sinography? How can we better examine the ways in which the materiality of the book as a communicative space—book cover, front matter (title page, table of contents, dedications, and so on), mise-en-page, and binding—was shaped, reoriented, and recomposed not simply as physical containers of text but also as expressive media as object, idea, and interface? What reading and interpretive practices did the physical shape of the book dictate and develop? For heuristic purposes, we adopt Amaranth Borsuk’s (2018) proposal of the book as object, content, idea, and interface, and we are also interested in how the book as a communicative space underscores a variety of somatic and affective experiences—visual-ocular, auditory-oral/aural/vocal, haptic, and olfactory.
We invite papers committed to twin projects: critically revisiting existing characterizations of Korea’s book culture while also conducting in-depth bibliographical examinations of original texts that register genres, cultural habits, and institutions. For example, we look forward to receiving proposals that will shed light on questions like the following: What cultural perceptions and attitudes were reflected in books and the wide range of activities pertaining to their production (paper supply, carving, binding, design, illustration, etc.), circulation, collecting, commercialization, transcription, personalization, de- and re-construction, honoring and discrediting, vernacularization, translation, annotation (glossing, marginalia, commentary, illumination, etc.), documentation, note-taking, anthologizing, republication, reprinting, and digitization? What books were involved in the defining events that shaped the materiality of books and changed practices of reading? We accept paper proposals that will venture into terra incognita as well as proposals that aim to rechart well-trodden territory.
The conference will take place on December 8, 2022 at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The one-day conference will have three components: a workshop to discuss each paper hands-on examination of select materials held by the Harvard-Yenching Library, and a roundtable discussion. We envision a publication of papers in a journal special issue after the conference.
As we get closer to the conference date, we will coordinate presentation modes with all accepted participants, depending on the Covid-19 pandemic situation.
If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send a paper proposal (250–300 words) accompanied by a CV to Si Nae Park (sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu) and Suyoung Son (ss994@cornell.edu) by March 1, 2022. Selected participants are expected to send in a paper draft by the end of August 2022.
Timeline:
Paper proposals (250–300 words) due on March 1, 2022
Completion of draft papers (6,000–8,000 words) due on August 31, 2022
Conference: December 8, 2022
Thank you very much.
Conveners/Contact:
Si Nae Park, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu)
Suyoung Son, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, Cornell University (ss994@cornell.edu)
Contact Info:
Contact Email:
sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu
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