Candidates: SHARP 2021 Elections

Standing for: BOARD (vote for only three nominees)

    • Greg Barnhisel
    • Name: Greg Barnhisel
    • Candidate Statement:
      Greg Barnhisel, Professor of English, Duquesne University, USA. I first encountered SHARP when I was writing my dissertation on the publishing history of modernist literature, in 1996, when I attended the Society’s fourth annual conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. My research was and remains on the intersection of 20th century literature and culture with the institutions that give them life: publishers, governments, journalism, NGOs, universities, foundations, and businesses. My career, however, took me down a different road—rhetoric and composition—for fifteen years, until I became SHARP’s MLA liaison in 2011. In 2015, I was appointed as one of the editors of Book History, and I continue to serve in that role. (If elected, I would recuse myself from any votes related to the journal.) I am also an editor of the U. of Massachusetts Press series Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book. As a SHARP board member, I would strive to promote publishing studies, contemporary book history, global book history outside the US and Western Europe, and diversity (ethnic, gender, geographical, linguistic, and economic) within our field. But I would also use my position to help SHARP recognize and support members who are caught up in the larger transformations higher education is experiencing in our age of neoliberalism and austerity: professional precarity, changes in and threats to traditional scholarly publishing models, “alt-ac” jobs, and academic positions that do not provide support for professional development such as research and travel.
    • Daniel Bellingradt
    • Name: Daniel Bellingradt
    • Candidate Statement:
      Daniel Bellingradt received his PhD in 2010 (Free University of Berlin) and is Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Book at Erlangen-Nuremberg University, Germany. He is trained as a historian and communication scholar and is co-editor of the Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte (yearbook for communication history). Daniel has published three monographs and more than 25 articles in German and English on the intersections of early modern book history, media history, and paper history. His interests are centered on the materiality, sociality and spatiality of communication flows, and this focus is reflected in his recent edited volumes: Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. Beyond Production, Circulation and Consumption (2017, eds. with Jeroen Salman and Paul Nelles), A History of Early Modern Communication. German and Italian Historiographical Perspectives (ed. with Massimo Rospocher, 2019), and The Paper Trade in Early Modern Europe. Practices, Materials, Networks (ed. with Anna Reynolds). Recently, Daniel has started writing a book on media echoes, and is preparing his thoughts on what a global book history might look like. https://buchwissenschaft.phil.fau.de/institut/teammitglieder/daniel-bellingradt/. He joined SHARP in 2019 and was an invited member of the Scientific Committee of SHARP 2020/2022 in Amsterdam. As a Board member he will try to help early career scholars to develop, publish and promote their work on all kinds of book history. He believes that only visible scholars of this interdisciplinary field will have a chance to get permanent positions at university levels after the PhD.
    • Archie L. Dick
    • Name: Archie L. Dick
    • Candidate Statement:
      Archie L Dick, Professor, University of Pretoria. After completing a PhD in library and information science in 1991, I explored the discipline’s connections with the history of book culture. My early research revealed ways in which non-elite or common readers used libraries and voluntary associations for cultural and political purposes. Adding the activities and records of other memory institutions, I continue to explore and explain aspects of South Africa’s intellectual history. Appointments to the editorial advisory boards of Palgrave Macmillan’s series New Directions in Book History, and SHARP’s journal Book History are examples of recognition. Cambridge University Press published my most recent work in their Elements Series. I read papers at SHARP Lyon (2004), Cape Town (2007), Helsinki (2010), Dublin (2012), and Münster (2021) and served as a judge on the DeLong Prize Committee. I was an organising committee member for the 2007 SHARP Regional Conference in Cape Town and SHARP Regional Liaison Officer for Southern Africa until 2018. I was a SHARP Ambassador in 2004. As a co-applicant for Print, Publishing and Cultural Production in South Africa, 1948-2012 http://www.printculturesouthafrica.org/, I hope to help nurture a new generation of scholars in Southern Africa. A fuller biography and a list of more than 120 works can be found at: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7243-3137. As a member of the Board of Directors I shall bring awareness of the challenges, and strategic advice for growing SHARP’s presence in this region.
    • Beth Driscoll
    • Name: Beth Driscoll
    • Candidate Statement:
      Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, University of Melbourne. My research interests include middlebrow book culture (The New Literary Middlebrow, Palgrave Macmillan 2014); contemporary reading practices, especially online; and the contemporary publishing industry (including The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business, co-authored with Claire Squires, Cambridge University Press 2020). I am interested in arts-informed, creative methods for book history research, and with Claire Squires have developed a new methodology for playful, engaged research called Ullapoolism. I first joined SHARP-L as a PhD student in 2006, attended my first conference at Antwerp in 2014, and have attended four others since then in addition to local SHARP-affiliated events. I envision contributing to the Board’s role advising SHARP on key principles and values, and especially working towards equity, inclusion and fairness. I have observed this work by the Board, especially during and immediately after the SHARP Sydney conference, and see it as crucial to the health of the organisation and the field. Doing such work, I believe, requires paying close attention to the different forums through which SHARP members express concerns, from Twitter to SHARP-L to conferences. Moreover, from my base in the Asia-Pacific region, I will work to support SHARP’s aspiration to be a global network. The active inclusion and valuing of regions beyond the UK, Europe and US is part of the decolonizing work that SHARP, like many organisations, must continue to engage in.
    • Elizabeth McHenry
    • Name: Elizabeth McHenry
    • Candidate Statement:
      Elizabeth McHenry, Professor, Department of English, New York University. My research focuses on African American literature and Black print culture. I am especially interested in mining the archives of black print to uncover lost, forgotten, or overlooked traces of African American literary history and using these to piece together the contexts in which literary texts were produced, distributed, and read. My first book, Forgotten Readers (SHARP Book History Prize winner 2003), examines the history of Black readers in the context of their organized literary practices. Writing that book left me out of synch with most literary scholars. Finding SHARP as a young researcher led me into a community that fully understood and appreciated my work. Early support from the generous and engaged audiences at SHARP’s intimate conferences enriched my work and shaped my identity as a book historian. The organization sustained me, long before the history of authorship, publishing and reading felt like appropriate interests for a young Black scholar of African American literature. My next book is forthcoming, making this a good time for me to take on a leadership role as a member of SHARP’s Board. I will work to ensure that SHARP is a professional organization that is not only open to diversity, but one that actively seeks to diversify its ranks. SHARP aims to be a global society; but one example of where it needs to cultivate greater representation is among scholars whose research illuminates the histories of authorship, readers and publications across the Black diaspora.
    • Aaron T. Pratt
    • Name: Aaron T. Pratt
    • Candidate Statement:
      Aaron T. Pratt, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts, Harry Ransom Center, and Lecturer, Department of English, The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Pratt’s research focuses on bibliography, the history of the book, and the literature and culture of early modern England. He has published on early English print, particularly playbooks and Bibles, and he is currently completing a monograph, English Playbooks Revisited. Among other things, he is responsible for the care and interpretation of cuneiform tablets, papyrus fragments, and Ethiopian and Islamic manuscripts, and he has been a leading proponent of studying VHS cassettes and their packaging as important cultural—yes, textual—artifacts. In addition to having served in full-time library and faculty positions, Pratt for a time ran a business selling antiquarian books to research institutions, and he has at various points been an active collector of early books, VHS tapes, and punk zines. You can find more on Twitter (@aarontpratt) and his personal website (http://aarontpratt.com). To SHARP’s Board of Directors, he would bring a perspective informed by his experience wearing all of these hats and a resulting commitment to advocating for and connecting different bookish communities within the organization. His responsibilities at the Ransom Center often prioritize communicating online and to mixed—often public—audiences, and he would like to help SHARP reach outward more, too, with programming and other initiatives designed to connect the exciting research of its membership with broader communities.
    • Katherine M. Ruffin
    • Name: Katherine M. Ruffin
    • Candidate Statement:
      Katherine M. Ruffin, Director of the Book Studies Program and Lecturer in Art, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA. At Wellesley College, I work with colleagues from various departments to integrate the study of the art and history of the book into the liberal arts curriculum. I teach the history of 19th and 20th century typography and printing at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and the history of the book at Simmons University (where I earned a PhD in Library and Information Science in 2015). I earned an MFA in the Book Arts from the University of Alabama in 1996. I was a Vice President of the American Printing History Association (2016-2020) and currently serve on advisory boards for the Bookbinding Program at the North Bennet St. School and the Program in the History of the Book at the American Antiquarian Society. My research interests include the history of printing, bibliography, and libraries. At the 2019 SHARP conference at Amherst, I presented a paper about Hannah French, founder of the Book Arts Lab at Wellesley College, as part of a panel about women in book history. I will be sharing a project about 20th century printing history with the SHARP community as part of a Research Lab at the 2021 conference hosted by the University of Münster. As a member of the Board of Directors, I would contribute to efforts to build community and to bring people from various backgrounds and disciplines together to advance the mission of SHARP.
    • Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
    • Name: Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
    • Candidate Statement:
      Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, Senior University Lecturer in Folklore Studies, Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki. My long-term scholarly interests have focused on vernacular literacy, the interaction of orality and literacy, especially in the context of working-class and immigrant cultures. My recent publications in this field include Oral Tradition and Book Culture, co-edited with Pertti Anttonen and Cecilia af Forselles (Studia Fennica Folkloristica 24, Finnish Literature Society 2018) and Handwritten Newspapers. An Alternative Medium during the Early Modern and Modern Periods, co-edited with Heiko Droste (Studia Fennica Historica 26, Finnish Literature Society 2019. Research portal: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/kirsti-salmi-niklander. I have been a member of SHARP since 2000 and have attended more than ten annual conferences. I was one of the main organizers and chaired the program committee for the SHARP conference “Book Culture from Below” in Helsinki 2010. I have served as Regional Liaison for Finland since 2012, and in the jury of De Long Book Prize 2013-2016. In 2013, I participated in the SHARP Futures meeting, and was invited as SHARP Ambassador (2000) in 2017. As a member of the Board of Directors I would work for the fields of research which have been in the main focus of my research: working-class and immigrant book culture, the intersection of orality and literacy, and modern scribal culture. I would also encourage the SHARP involvement in Finland and other Nordic countries.
    • Jonathan Senchyn
    • Name: Jonathan Senchyn
    • Candidate Statement:
      Jonathan Senchyn, Associate Professor of book history and print culture and Director of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My book, The Intimacy of Paper was published by UMass Press and I co-edited a volume of essays on African American print culture: Against a Sharp White Background (Wisconsin). My formal participation in SHARP includes publishing in Book History and taking part in SHARP-sponsored panels at affiliate conferences like MLA and AHA. As a scholar who is institutionally located at the intersections of literature, history, African American studies, and library science, I am interested in organizational work that builds broad communities with diverse scholarly and professional interests, and in working to continue to bring more librarians, archivists, curators, and collectors into the organization through conversations about the relevance of book and print scholarship and programming in those fields. I am also keen to have discussions about how book historical methods are developed and used by scholars, in fields like African American studies, who do not identify themselves with our field and organization, perhaps for historically exclusionary reasons, and how SHARP can become stronger through inclusion and diversity in the future. My organizational work in these areas has been as Director of UW-Madison’s Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, on the MLA organizations committee for print culture and bibliography, and as editorial board member of the Library History Roundtable’s journal and the journal of the American Print History Association.
    • Dr. Shafquat Towheed
    • Name: Dr. Shafquat Towheed
    • Candidate Statement:
      Dr Shafquat Towheed, Senior Lecturer in English, The Open University. (web profile, http://www.open.ac.uk/people/sst46. My expertise is primarily in the history of reading, where projects include the UK Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945, the Reading Communities public engagement project and currently, the UK part of the ‘Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool’ (READ-IT, 2018-2021) project. I am the author, editor or co-editor of nine books; I was lead co-editor of the world’s first reader in the history of reading. As co-editor of Palgrave’s New Directions in Book History series (2014-) I have been closely involved in the publication of 34 new titles with cumulative sales (print and download) of over 60,000 copies. I have been a member of SHARP since 2003 and have participated in 16 of the last 18 annual conferences. I was a member (2007-2009) and Chair (2008-9) of the SHARP DeLong Book Prize committee. More recently, I co-organised an international conference, ‘Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 pandemic’ (2020) which was supported by SHARP and attracted over 230 registrations from more than 30 countries. I also served on the judging panel for SHARP’s inaugural Research Development Grants for BIPOC Scholars (2020). If elected, I would bring considerable project management, team leading, peer review, conference organisation and public engagement expertise to the Board of Directors, which I see as providing both oversight (quality assurance) and encouragement (future strategy) to SHARP. I would bring a particular interest in promoting public engagement for impact in research in Book History.
    • Dr. Nicola Wilson
    • Name: Dr. Nicola Wilson
    • Candidate Statement:
      Dr Nicola Wilson, Associate Professor, Book and Publishing Studies, University of Reading. My research focusses on literature in the modern period. I have broad interests in literary history, publishing, and print culture and my work is underscored by engagement with feminism and class. I am currently writing about The Book Society (the first book-of-the-month club in Britain); co-I of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project – a multi-partner, feminist Digital Humanities project focussed on publishers’ archives; and lead co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing, 1900-2000 (forthcoming). I’m also passionate about recovering working-class writing and am editor of the Ethel Carnie Holdsworth series. I’ve been an enthusiastic member of SHARP since Postdoc days and have loved attending conferences when I could. I’m part of a working group hoping to bring the conference to the UK in the next few years, and an active contributor to SHARP-L: something I really value as an accessible and democratic resource. I co-founded the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading to bring an interdisciplinary focus to our work on book cultures (between English, Typography/Graphic Design, Modern Languages, Henley Business School). I’d plan to keep this interdisciplinary mix at the forefront of SHARP. I’m also passionate about working with libraries, special collections, publishers, and arts organisations and have led collaborative funding bids on this front. I value collaborations, diverse/inclusive research, and have experience of working across different sectors and with non-HEI partners: these would be my priorities for SHARP.

Standing for: Executive Committee/CONFERENCES – one nominee is elected by acclamation

    • Alison Newman
    • Name: Alison Newman
    • Candidate Statement:
      Alison Newman, special-collections librarian and archivist, based in Milwaukee (currently unaffiliated). My scholarly interest is the business and art of books during the hand-press period. Professionally, SHARP is a wonderful place for me to listen to and learn from scholars, to improve my knowledge of curating collections and providing researchers access to primary source materials. I joined SHARP in 2017, went to my first conference in 2019, and felt immediately welcomed by the SHARP community. With colleagues in Milwaukee I proposed our city for SHARP 2021 and worked with Josée Vincent, the previous Director of Conferences. However, shortly after our final proposal was submitted, the pandemic struck, and the host institution did not renew my work contract. I joined the SHARP21 Muenster Team as a member of the programming committee. As Director of Conferences, I see great potential in using the experiences of remote meetings and virtual conferences to incorporate aspects of asynchronous, live virtual, and physical attendance to make annual and focused conferences more engaging and accessible. I’m hopeful that we will be able to experience the abundant global textual histories more easily through hybrid conferences. I want to encourage the use of inclusive technologies and environments as well as continue to implement ecologically responsible conferencing. As the materials in the Conference Resources get updated, I look forward to hearing from and working with the community to reflect the current and future state of SHARP conferences.

Standing for: Executive Committee/ELECTRONIC RESOURCES – vote for one nominee

    • Lise Jaillant
    • Name: Lise Jaillant
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lise Jaillant, Associate professor at Loughborough University, UK. After studying in Paris and London, I received my PhD in English and Book History from the University of British Columbia in 2013. My latest monograph is Cheap Modernism: Expanding Markets, Publishers’ Series and the Avant-Garde (Edinburgh UP, 2017) and I also edited the collection Publishing Modernist Fiction and Poetry (Edinburgh UP, 2019). My main research interests are the history of publishing (especially book publishers) and Digital Humanities focusing particularly on digital archives. Recently, I have been collaborating with professionals in Libraries, Archives and Museums to make digital archives more accessible. For more information, see www.lisejaillant.com. I first joined SHARP in 2010 when I was still a PhD student, and since 2014, I have been the SHARP Liaison Officer at the Modern Language Association (in charge of organising our guaranteed session at the annual MLA convention and joint sessions with other scholarly organisations). It would be an honour and a pleasure to serve SHARP as Director of Electronic Resources. This role requires fairly high technical skills, and my work in Digital Humanities will be useful to enhance SHARP’s digital resources. I would be happy to take charge of website updates and social media. I think it is crucial to strengthen our links with non-academics (including book publishers and dealers, librarians, archivists, and museum professionals) as well as independent scholars, and our communication channels can be used to foster this welcoming environment for anyone interested in the history of authorship, reading and publishing.
    • Sarah Werner
    • Name: Sarah Werner
    • Candidate Statement:
      Sarah Werner, Independent scholar, Washington, DC. My work focuses on the western hand-press period and on the ways in which digital tools present and shape the transmission and study of those texts today; my current research is on feminist bibliography and how feminist theory can help us reframe what bibliography entails (more details are at sarahwerner.net). I have been a member of SHARP since 2006 and have attended the conferences in Washington, Philadelphia, Victoria, and Amherst. For the last two years I have served on the Executive Committee as the Member-at-Large; in that role I created SHARP in the Classroom, the pedagogy section of SHARP News. As a member of the EC, I have been part of conversations about the Society’s need not only for a robust set of electronic resources but also for a communications strategy that effectively conveys who we are and what we offer as a scholarly organization and as a discipline. I have successfully run community blogs, I led the redevelopment of the Folger’s website when I worked there, and I manage my own digital resources, including EarlyPrintedBooks.com. I know how to evaluate and use digital platforms so that they run efficiently and, most importantly, I know how to help organizations craft their own informed and accessible voice so that current and potential members are welcomed in and supported in their work. I look forward to helping SHARP build an up-to-date and robust digital presence if elected to this role.

Standing for: Nominating Committee: two nominees are elected by acclamation

    • A. E. B. (Anne) Coldiron
    • Name: A. E. B. (Anne) Coldiron
    • Candidate Statement:
      A. E. B. (Anne) Coldiron, Krafft University Professor, Florida State University; Honorary Professor, University of St Andrews (Scotland). Book History (early print/late manuscript cultures); Translation Studies; early modern literature; late-medieval literature; women and literature; French-English literary relations over the longue durée; multilingualism; poetry and poetics. My work focuses on textual alterities and on the effects of technological transformations of media, particularly across literary cultures. Author of (e.g.) Printers without Borders: Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance (Cambridge UP, 2015); articles forthcoming: “Transnational Lyric”; “Adventures in Multilingualism: The ‘English Exception’?”; “Translingual and Multilingual Printing.” Coordinator, Special Topic on Translation, PMLA; accepting essays until 30 June 2021. https://english.fsu.edu/faculty/anne-coldiron. My previous involvement in SHARP has been as member and attendee since 2008, as a Keynote Speaker (“Languages of the Book,” SHARP 2016, Paris), and as Board Member (2013-2021). I’ve loved watching and participating in SHARP’s growth. I would aim to continue the high standards of quality, equity, and diversity that Leslie Howsam and the current Nominating Committee have demonstrated. I, too, want all parts of this wonderfully diverse field to be represented. Our future success continues to mean balancing nominations of junior, mid-career, senior, precarious, independent, and emeritus scholars; ensuring nomination slates are as inclusive as possible in every sense of that word (e.g. racial, ethnic, gender-identity, age, ability, religious, linguistic backgrounds); and attending to regional-national-international diversity, varied university types, intellectual methods, and sub-fields. I’ll be approachable and responsive to the members, actively inviting nominations to represent our varied perspectives.
    • Dr Sydney J Shep
    • Name: Dr Sydney J Shep
    • Candidate Statement:
      Dr. Sydney J Shep, Reader in Book History & The Printer Wai-te-ata Press : : Te Whare Tā O Wai-te-ata Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Sydney focuses on the interdisciplinary study of transnational and cross-cultural book history and print culture in the contexts of the history of empire, history of technology, and the history of reading. Technological convergence is an additional platform with her experience as a letterpress printer, exhibiting book artist, and designer bookbinder offering unique insights into physical and digital materialities. Her current research focuses on big cultural data and collaborative kaupapa Māori approaches and is grounded in the theories, methods, and practices of digital humanities, spatial history, and cultural informatics. In 2014, she was awarded a Marsden Fund grant (her third) to study the personal geographies and global networks of William Colenso and the Victorian Republic of Letters, followed by a British Academy Visiting Fellowship to the University of Southampton in 2018-19, investigating the town’s nineteenth-century book trade and experimenting with forms of digital storytelling. As a long-time SHARP member, Sydney has variously edited SHARP News, was on the Advisory Board of Book History, and held the executive positions of Vice-President and President as well as being a Member of the SHARP Board. In putting herself forward for the Nominating Committee, she builds upon her well-established networks and acknowledges a key strategic role of the NC that can help shape the organisation as it responds dynamically to contemporary challenges and future aspirations.