Candidates: SHARP 2019 Elections

Standing for: Board of Directors

    • Lisa Gitelman
    • Name: Lisa Gitelman
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lisa Gitelman. Professor of English and Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. I first became associated with SHARP in 1996. I was invited to give one of the keynotes for our 2017 conference, and I have recently begun serving as one of the advisory editors of Book History. My field is broadly media history, and I have found SHARP to be both a welcoming and generative intellectual community. I applaud the organization’s commitment to inclusion on an international scale, and I hope I can be part of its ongoing commitment to exploring a “history of the book” that is broadly conceived.
    • Matthew Kirschenbaum
    • Name: Matthew Kirschenbaum
    • Candidate Statement:
      Matthew G. Kirschenbaum. Professor of English and Digital Studies at the University of Maryland, and Director of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies. Affiliated faculty member with the College of Information Studies at Maryland, and a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. Co-founder of BookLab at Maryland, a makerspace for the book arts. Book history is, as they say, having a moment, one which at its best is drawing together both early career and established scholars, academics as well as other academic professionals, adepts of technologies new and old (witness the current resurgence of interest in letterpress), and practitioners from a wide range of increasingly diverse (and globalized) fields. In my own scholarship I seek to practice a book history of the present, meaning that while my most recent research focuses on the logistics, infrastructure, and technological underpinnings of contemporary books and bookmaking, I do so with the historical and materialist sensibility that has been modelled by predecessors working in earlier time periods. I currently serve as an Advisory Editor of Book History, and I would look forward to the opportunity to play a role in stewarding the organization at such a lively time. As a member of SHARP’s Board of Directors, I would want to open channels with neighboring research communities, especially in media studies, digital humanities, and the rapidly emerging field of eco-humanities. I am also deeply committed to the public humanities, and believe SHARP is well-positioned as an organization to support scholars interested in public writing, podcasts, social media, and other forms of outreach.
    • Eva Mroczek
    • Name: Eva Mroczek
    • Candidate Statement:
      Eva Mroczek. Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of California, Davis. My introduction to the field came through the Book History and Print Culture Program at the University of Toronto, where I completed my PhD in the Study of Religion and Jewish Studies in 2012. My first article, “Thinking Digitally About the Dead Sea Scrolls: ‘Book History’ Before and Beyond the Book,” was in Book History in 2011. I showed that a comparative perspective on written material before and after the dominance of print can help destabilize the print-centered categories that distort our understanding of both manuscript and digital cultures. I have also reviewed manuscripts for Book History and have just begun a term on the editorial board. My first book, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford, 2016), brings the questions of Book History to bear on the manuscript and scroll-based culture of early Judaism, and was awarded SHARP’s De Long Prize in 2017. My next book, Out of the Cave: Manuscript Discovery and the Possibility of a New Biblical Past, discusses the phenomenon of manuscript discovery stories as a literary and religious genre, considering the legacy of colonialism and racism in modern access to ancient sources. Beyond my own research, I have worked to make connections between biblical studies (and antiquity more broadly), Jewish Studies, and Book History. In 2013, I founded the “Book History and Biblical Literatures” program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature, and I am glad to witness some of the early career scholars who have presented there becoming involved with SHARP, bringing ancient texts into conversation with the more established currents in Book History. I have just passed the baton to a new program unit chair, and I now hope to broaden my work of forging links between the study of ancient and modern textual cultures in the context of SHARP. My goals would include creating spaces within SHARP for scholars of antiquity, who can help rethink the longue durée history of the book in conversation with scholars of print and digital texts, and fostering more collaboration with scholars of the Jewish book.
    • Brigitte Ouvry-Vial
    • Name: Brigitte Ouvry-Vial
    • Candidate Statement:
      Brigitte Ouvry-Vial. University Professor, Le Mans Université, France and Institut Universitaire de France. 20th-C Literature, Media studies, Information & Documentation. Head of Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales and Deputy Director Maison des Sciences de L’Homme Ange-Guépin (Pays-de-la-Loire). SHARP member since 2000, frequent participant in annual conferences, Translation committee advisory member, Book History advisory editor (since 2018), I organized a SHARP Focused conference in Le Mans (Texts, Forms, Reading in Europe 18th-21st C, 2013), helped to set up SHARP joint participation to COST-E-READ conference in Vilnius (Books and Screens and the Reading Brain, 2017), participated in the scientific reviewing committee for SHARP Paris (2016), and enrolled several SHARP members as redactors for the 140 entries of the “Women in Book business” sector in Dictionnaire des Femmes créatrices de l’Antiquité à nos jours (Ed. des Femmes, Paris, 2013). As digital showcases and list-forum have been a major source of enlightenment and energy in my work, I would like to ‘’give back’’ to SHARP within the Board of Directors. I especially have in mind to find the ways and means to better share our Book history research data and make it more visible as well as reusable through an open source or common archive. In view of this I would like to foster cross exchanges with and between DH oriented Book History groups. This project could also benefit from the focused and rich expertise in Digital Humanities of the UOH (e.g. the Université Ouverte des Humanités, one of 5 collaborative Digital Thematic Universities in France) for which I am a Board member.
    • Aaron Pratt
    • Name: Aaron Pratt
    • Candidate Statement:
      Aaron T. Pratt. Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at The University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center. A special collections curator with an English department affiliation, I am active in both the library and traditional academic worlds. And, perhaps inevitably, my work in each world is informed by the other. My publications on early modern literature and the history of book collecting increasingly depend on insights I have gleaned from my experiences as curator—leading me to be a broad advocate for the expertise of library and museum professionals—and I also use my research to inform new acquisitions, exhibitions, cataloging policies, public outreach, and more. My hope is to use a position on SHARP’s Board of Directors to make the organization an even better place for substantive collaborations between different pillars of the book world, including the trade. As cofounder of the Yale Program in the History of the Book, a founding member of the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, and a generally active participant within the bibliography and book history communities at conferences and on social media, I would be able to draw upon a broad network to solicit such collaborations and, in particular, to champion early career voices. I am already slated to run a SHARP-sponsored seminar at this year's Shakespeare Association of America conference and can report, without hyperbole, that the SHARP listserv has served as a lifeline since I first dared(!) to post back in 2009, while an MA student.
    • Stijn van Rossem
    • Name: Stijn van Rossem
    • Candidate Statement:
      Stijn van Rossem. Curator of European books, John Carter Brown Library (Providence, USA). Dr van Rossem has a PhD in history with a prize-winning thesis on the Verdussen printing enterprise in Antwerp (1585–1685). He held several research positions at Antwerp University and the University of London, and worked at the Short Title Catalogue Flanders-project (www.stcv.be) among other positions. He has been a frequent participant to the SHARP conferences since 2004, organised several book historical conferences and brought the annual international SHARP conference to Antwerp in 2014. Between 2009 and 2018 he taught at Ghent School of Arts (Belgium) in the department of Graphic Design and at the Plantin Institute for Typography. He is a member of the editorial board of the book historical journal Quaerendo. In addition to being a dedicated and extremely talented scholar, a creative mind and an entertaining speaker and passionate teacher, Stijn has always been a promotor of book history in Belgium and abroad. During his presidency of Flanders Book Historical Society (2008–2014), he launched the international book historical lecture series The Miraeus Lectures, which has ever since hosted both newcomers to the field as well as established scholars, organised several conferences, and built a large national and international network of colleagues. Stijn could help SHARP in the organising of conferences, but he is also interested in finding ways to improve global accessibility and to attract young scholars to SHARP. He could also help in digital activities or in brainstorming about new projects.
    • Whitney Trettien
    • Name: Whitney Trettien
    • Candidate Statement:
      Whitney Trettien. Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania. SHARP has been a part of my professional identity since I started forming one. I joined the listserv as a second-year graduate student in 2011; one of my first conference papers was given at SHARP 2013 in Philadelphia. Now, as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, I teach courses on “Cultures of the Book” and “The Digital Lives of Books,” in which students investigate a wide array of text technologies, from palm leaf manuscripts and incunables to the TRS-80 microcomputer. In short, everything about my research and teaching touches on SHARP. As a member of the SHARP Board, I would look to diversify and expand the Society’s membership 1) through our affiliate panels, which could serve as better outreach mechanisms; 2) our bursaries, which are not, in my experience, well advertised among a broad audience of emerging scholars; 3) strengthening our connections with other societies in digital humanities and public humanities, like HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory); and 4) expanding the SHARP Diversity page. SHARP is a global network of scholars working on questions pointedly relevant today — namely, how humans record, share, and store knowledge with each other. I would welcome the opportunity to make the importance and pertinency of our work known more broadly.

Standing for: Director of Awards

    • Melanie Ramdarshan Bold
    • Name: Melanie Ramdarshan Bold
    • Candidate Statement:
      Melanie Ramdarshan Bold. Associate Professor, Publishing MA, Department of Information Studies, University College London. I was the Awards Officer for the Association of Publishing Educators (UK), which celebrates post- and undergraduate research, so I have previous experience of organising awards and expert judging panels. During this role, I arranged for the various awards to be presented at the London Book Fair as part of their Excellence Awards Ceremony, which celebrate national and international publishing and related activities. This is always a wonderful experience for the nominees and raised the visibility of their achievements, and of the Publishing MAs in the UK, outside of the academy. I hope to contribute to SHARP by running for the role of the Director of Awards. I believe one of the key strengths of SHARP is its international, diverse, and lively community. I believe that SHARP’s awards are an important way to celebrate our community from its early career researchers to distinguished collaborations. As SHARP moves forward, and becomes larger and increasingly international, who and what we celebrate will grow in parallel. Consequently, and in addition to continuing the portfolio of existing awards, one of my priorities would be to include an award for an international multilingual monograph. This would ensure that our awards are more representative of our community.

Standing for: Director of Conferences

    • Josée Vincent
    • Name: Josée Vincent
    • Candidate Statement:
      Josée Vincent. Professeure titulaire en Littérature, Département des lettres et communications, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada. I have been a member of SHARP since 2004 and since then I have attended seven conferences (Lyon, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin, Antwerp, Montréal, Victoria). I organized the SHARP conference in Montréal in 2015. I was appointed Director of Conferences in January 2017, then formally elected in June 2017. I was the Director of the Groupe de recherches et d’études sur le livre au Québec from 2006 to 2018. I am Co-Editor, with Marie-Pier Luneau, of the Dictionnaire des gens du livre au Québec (forthcoming in 2020), and with Marie-Pier Luneau and Anthony Glinoer, of the journal Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book culture. My research interests are Publishing, Book fairs, the Politics of the book and the Marketplace of the book. Conferences are one of the main activities of the Society. It is very important to offer members events that attain a high level of scholarship and give us an opportunity to meet each other, present our research, and develop new projects. In that sense, I believe that while SHARP conferences must reflect the state of Book History and its future, they should also reflect the diversity of the membership, which is part of its richness. As Director of Conferences, I will work with the other members of the Executive in order to plan Conferences and recruit members to organize them. My special focus will be on working with people from non-anglophone countries to help them organize a successful SHARP conference. I will support the Conference organizers through the entire process of organizing a conference and help them use the SHARP Conference Resource Suite that I will continue to adapt to the standards that the SHARP members are looking for.

Standing for: Director of Electronic Resources

    • Giles Bergel
    • Name: Giles Bergel
    • Candidate Statement:
      Giles Bergel. Digital Humanities Research Ambassador in the Visual Geometry Group in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford; Teaching Fellow in the Department of Information Studies at University College London. My work equally combines book history and digital humanities. I have contributed to the making of a number of large and small-scale digital resources for the study of the book; I help oversee the publishing activities of several learned societies; and I maintain several mailing-lists and Zotero libraries in book and print studies (see my website at www.printing-machine.org). My service work has included creating and implementing a new digital publication and archiving policy utilising version-control and DOIs for the Bibliographical Society; updating and moving the website for Print Networks; and acting as the digital humanities consultant for the Oxford Edition of Thomas Traherne. As a maker of digital resources, I am keenly interested in sustainability, accessibility, intellectual property issues and accreditation for professional development. As a maker and user of digital tools, I am interested in how digital methods can extract hidden value from documents and increase their availability. As a historian of the book, I advocate the critical study of its history alongside that of contemporary digital communications, in the belief that each can illuminate the other. The role of Director of Electronic Resources for SHARP is therefore one that, should I be asked to serve, I would relish.

Standing for: Director of Publications

    • Corinna Norrick-Rühl
    • Name: Corinna Norrick-Rühl
    • Candidate Statement:
      Corinna Norrick-Rühl, assistant professor of Book Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany; M.A. (2009) and PhD (2013) in Buchwissenschaft from JGU Mainz. My teaching and research pertain to book history and contemporary publishing with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century issues and Anglo and German contexts. Just now, my research particularly concerns book sales clubs and translations/cultural transfer through books. I am currently a member of the editorial boards of Publishing Research Quarterly (Springer) and Quaerendo (Brill) as well as deputy board member of Mainz University Press. I was SHARP’s regional liaison for Germany from 2012 to 2017 and have been Recording Secretary of SHARP since 2012. I hope to continue to contribute to SHARP in a new role as Director of Publications. I believe that SHARP’s publications are a stronghold of our society with the potential to broaden our understanding of the field. As SHARP moves forward, our publications will evolve. I consider it important to balance traditional structures with new impulses from changing academic publication environments, including Open Access initiatives. One of my top priorities in the new role would be to make SHARP News more visible and attractive to our membership as an online publication, but also as a forum for scholarly discussions.

Standing for: Director of Transnational Affairs

    • Simon Frost
    • Name: Simon Frost
    • Candidate Statement:
      Simon Frost. Principal Lecturer in English at Bournemouth University; Senior Editor for Oxford Reference Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press). The position’s requirement, and my strategy, is to continue developing SHARP’s ability to become a sustainable transnational organisation, an aim that we have been achieving in a step-by-step manner since my revamping of the Directorship back in 2012. As a voluntary organisation, and with members’ capacity limited by other working commitments, SHARP’s progress is achieved by creating opportunities to co-ordinate private ambitions with the life of the society: especially among ECRs, in initiatives such as the ECR Lightening Seed grants and the Transnational Affairs budget for regional SHARP activities (over 30 funded-events to date, in locations from Taipei/Taiwan to Buenos Aires, Vilnius to Singapore, Madrid to Mainz). SHARP progresses, too, by continuing to expand the regional liaisons’ roles and number (our first liaison to the Arctic was recently appointed); in further supporting other-than English scholarship and activities; in working to protect and develop transnational interests internally throughout the society; in supporting campaigning initiatives; and by adopting closer relationships to disenfranchised, under-resourced communities as a logical extension of scholarship. Overall, and within the scope of the position, these points of progression have and will continue to comprise my strategic approach to the Directorship.

Standing for: Member-At-Large

    • Sarah Werner
    • Name: Sarah Werner
    • Candidate Statement:
      Sarah Werner (independent book historian and digital strategist, Washington, DC). I entered the field of book history as a teacher, rather than a researcher. I spent nearly a decade at the Folger Shakespeare Library creating and leading a program for undergraduates studying early print materials. My new book, Studying Early Printed Books 1450–1800: A Practical Guide, approaches the question of how books were made from the point of view of a teacher: what are the key points, why are they important, and how can we demystify working in spaces with rare books? As the leading organization dedicated to studying book history, SHARP should also lead the way in teaching. In addition to gathering pedagogical resources for all aspects of our field, SHARP should encourage the creation of pedagogical tools. Workshops and discussions in dedicated online spaces could spur the development and publication of open-access teaching resources. SHARP could also work with librarian and archivist organizations to spur connections between our closely aligned fields; creating guidelines for successful collaborations might help teachers, librarians, and archivists overcome colleagues’ anxieties about such work. Surveying SHARP members would surely reveal other opportunities we have for improving our pedagogical portfolio.

Standing for: Membership Secretary

    • Lisa Maruca
    • Name: Lisa Maruca
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lisa Maruca. Associate Professor and Internship Coordinator, Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit. SHARP has played an integral role in developing of my intellectual and professional identity for over twenty years. For this reason, I'd like to think I could in a small way repay the organization with my time, ideas, and commitment. In the office of Membership Secretary, I would work with Johns Hopkins University Press and the affiliate organizations, and present an annual Membership Report to the board. I would continue with the personal touches that Eleanor Shevlin brought to the job--thank you notes for donors and sustaining members—as well as her promotional efforts with posters and bookmarks. I would also work together with others on the EC to use social media to greater advantage for the recruitment and retention of members, particularly Twitter (while of course, strategically avoiding the pitfalls of that forum) – by posting links to new research, relevant popular culture, conference opportunities, and our members’ endeavors. I see this Twitter strategy as part of what might be called "soft" recruiting or public relations, and a "value added" to existing members who would know we are happy to help circulate their work. Finally, as Membership Secretary, I would also want to find out which possible members are being overlooked, who feels marginalized, and how SHARP can be a better home for diverse researchers in all our relevant fields, especially the next generation of scholars.

Standing for: Nominating Committee

    • Martin Antonetti
    • Name: Martin Antonetti
    • Candidate Statement:
      Director of Distinctive Collections at Northwestern University Libraries. Immediate Past-President, Bibliographical Society of America. On the Faculty of Rare Book School, University of Virginia.
    • Abhijit Gupta
    • Name: Abhijit Gupta
    • Candidate Statement:
      Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Director of Jadavpur University Press. Co-editor of the Book History in India series.
    • Leslie Howsam
    • Name: Leslie Howsam
    • Candidate Statement:
      Distinguished University Professor Emerita (History) at University of Windsor & Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Digital Humanities at Ryerson University. Past-President of SHARP (2009-2013).

Standing for: President

    • Shef Rogers
    • Name: Shef Rogers
    • Candidate Statement:
      Shef Rogers. Associate Professor in English, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ. I first attended SHARP in 1994 and have attended increasingly frequently ever since. I joined the Board of Directors of SHARP in 2014 and was appointed Chair of the Board in 2016. I was elected Vice-President in 2017 and became President by appointment after last year’s conference. My research interests focus on eighteenth-century British book publishing and New Zealand book history. I edit Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and NZ and co-direct the University of Otago Centre for the Book with Dr. Donald Kerr. As President, I have overseen the recent revision of the Constitution. Over the next two years, I will work with the EC to refine governance policies further and to establish investment and endowment structures for the Society. I aim to continue the recent emphasis on internationalisation and to re-establish a newsletter to sustain SHARP’s proud tradition of collegiality and to encourage wider involvement in all aspects of the Society’s work.

Standing for: Recording Secretary

    • Vincent Trott
    • Name: Vincent Trott
    • Candidate Statement:
      Vincent Trott, Lecturer in History, The Open University (UK). I have worked for SHARP since October 2015, when I was employed as the organisation’s first Executive Assistant. Since then, I have performed a wide range of administrative tasks for the Executive Council, working with many of SHARP’s officers. Among others, my duties have included updating SHARP’s website, handling the administration of the DeLong prize, and helping to moderate SHARP-L. I have also worked closely with SHARP’s current Recording Secretary, Corinna Norrick-Rühl, by taking minutes at meetings in her absence and helping to compile the organisation’s policy manual. I hope to build on the excellent work that Corinna has done in this position, ensuring that SHARP’s activities continue to be documented and archived effectively. I also hope to work closely with the Director of Electronic Resources to ensure that SHARP’s website continues to provide an up-to-date and accurate record of the society’s history. As a researcher, much of my work to date has focused on the history of publishing, reading and print culture within the context of the First World War. My first monograph, Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory Since 1918, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

Standing for: Treasurer

    • Colin Ramsey
    • Name: Colin Ramsey
    • Candidate Statement:
      Dr. Colin T. Ramsey. Associate Professor of English, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. SHARP has been central to my intellectual development going back to a paper on Paul Revere I read at the SHARP annual meeting of 1999, held at University of Wisconsin at Madison. My research interests are focused on American book culture in the 18th century. I have served as Treasurer of the North Carolina State Conference of the American Association of University Professors and of the North Carolina AAUP Foundation. As SHARP treasurer, my first responsibility would be to continue our tradition of prudent financial management such that we can continue to robustly support the publications, conferences, prizes, scholarships, and other awards and activities that are the core work of the Society. Ultimately, I see the chief responsibilities of the treasurer as 4 fold: to protect SHARP’s existing assets and revenue streams; to deliver ready access to the Society’s funds in support of the organization’s work; to carefully maintain accessible financial records for the Society’s members and leadership, and, finally, if possible, to grow the Society’s assets and enhance its revenue streams so as to allow the organization to expand upon its already terrific work on behalf of international Book Historical scholarship. In addition, and in close collaboration with the SHARP Executive Committee, I would also explore opportunities for developing additional sources of revenue, potentially through new fundraising appeals to individuals and organizations with allied interests in the book, and perhaps through collaborative development of an investments policy for the Society. Such a policy would likely include the continuation of the Society’s use of some safe and accessible investment instruments for modest portions of its reserve funds, such as high-yielding certificates of deposit. Also, if new fundraising efforts proved to enhance the Society’s already strong financial position, I would work collaboratively with the rest of the SHARP leadership to find creative ways to use such funds to further advance the society’s interests and mission.

Standing for: Vice-President

    • Will Slauter
    • Name: Will Slauter
    • Candidate Statement:
      Will Slauter. Associate professor at Université Paris Diderot, and a junior fellow of the Institut universitaire de France. I received my PhD in history from Princeton University in 2007 and taught at Columbia University and Florida State University before relocating to France in 2010. My main research interests are the history of publishing (especially newspapers) and copyright law in Britain and the United States. My latest publication is Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford, 2019). Recently I have been collaborating with art historians and legal scholars to explore the development of artistic copyright and the circulation of images in the nineteenth century. I’ve always felt at home as a member of SHARP and it would be an honour and a pleasure to serve the society as vice president. SHARP conferences are justly celebrated as friendly and resolutely interdisciplinary events. Book History has been publishing cutting-edge research since its founding two decades ago and it actively promotes work by junior scholars. We have some work to make the society more diverse in terms of country of origin, socio-economic background, and disciplinary affiliation, but important progress has already been made in these areas. With the support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, we have enabled younger scholars and those from underrepresented countries to present their research at the annual conference. SHARP-focused conferences are a great way of promoting collaborations in various countries. The creation of Lingua Franca: The History of the Book in Translation at the initiative of Martin Lyons and Susan Pickford is another crucial step in becoming a more international organization. I think we need to continue to reach out to scholars in fields that are not as well-represented as they could be (for instance art history, visual culture, musicology, anthropology, philosophy, and law). The addition of “digital showcases” is a recognition of the importance of digital humanities, but we have to make sure that SHARP continues to promote fruitful dialogues in this area. I also think it’s crucial to strengthen existing links with librarians, archivists, museum curators, book dealers, collectors, printers, and other scholars who are not full-time academics. The richness of SHARP depends on this openness.