The Society for Textual Scholarship is an international organization of scholars working in textual studies, editing and editorial theory, electronic textualities, and issues of textual culture within and across a wide range of disciplines. The Society welcomes all those whose work explores the ideological structures and material processes that shape the creation, transmission, reception, production, and interpretation of texts, broadly conceived.

Our annual conference and biannual journal, Textual Cultures, bring together scholars from disciplines such as literature (in all languages), history, musicology, classical and biblical studies, ethnic studies, women’s/gender/LGBTQ+ studies, philosophy, art history, legal history, history of science and technology, computer science, book history, bibliography, media studies, library science, lexicography, epigraphy, paleography, codicology, cinema studies, theater, linguistics, and textual and literary theory.

2024 CONFERENCE: TEXT UNDER PRESSURE

Our 2024 conference will be hosted by the University of Tulsa, June 6 – 8. Our CALL FOR PROPOSALS is open now! Deadline: February 16, 2024.

TEXTUAL CULTURES 16.1

The current issue of Textual Cultures (16.1) features exciting new work in bibliography, book history, and editorial theory across a range of fields and historical periods.

  • A cluster of four essays on early modern printing — Mark Bland’s “Revision in Astrophel and Stella: Some Aspects of the Problem” and “The First Publication of Astrophel and Stella: Thomas Newman and the Stationers”; John Pitcher’s “Daniel, Florio, and the Stationers: The Publication of Astrophel and Stella and An Apologie for Poetrie”; and Tara L. Lyons’s “The Bodleian Daybook, 1613–1620: Library Records and the Stationers of London.”
  • Two essays on the construction of groundbreaking editions — Rolena Adorno’s “The Making of Lord John Carteret’s Landmark Edition of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (London, 1738)” and Jacopo Parodi’s “Il Teatro del Rimorso: Intorno a una lettera di Gadda a Bollati sull’etica ‘tragica’ di Alessandro Manzoni.”
  • Two essays re-framing theoretical and methodological issues in bibliography: Travis DeCook’s “D. F. McKenzie’s ‘Providential Version’ and the Biblical Paradigm” and Whitney Trettien’s “Substrate, Platform, Interface, Format.”
  • Seven reviews of books covering a range of topics e.g., the Bible historiale and the Medieval lay reader, textual mobility in early modern Europe, women in printing, and born-digital materials.

Published twice a year, Textual Cultures invites essays from scholars around the world in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. All articles will appear also with abstracts in English. For instructions regarding submissions, please see the journal’s information page.

Our randomized header images show details from the following sources:
Placidus Caloiro et Oliva, manuscript portolan atlas of the Mediterranean Sea, ca. 1641. VAULT folio Ayer MS map 34, Newberry Library.
Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (galley proof), 1901. Fine Arts and Special Collections Department, Cleveland Public Library. Via The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive.
Leo Tolstoy, drawing and manuscript page from the first version of War and Peace, ca. 1860. Ink and pencil on paper. The L. Tolstoy Museum. Via Russian Culture.
Unidentified artist, portrait of Phillis Wheatley. Pendleton Lithography Company, c. 1834. From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Donald Fenn.
Canon table, 17th-century manuscript with selections from the Ethiopic Bible, probably commissioned by Emperor Iyasu. British Library Or. 481.
Pixelated scan of Frances Burney, Evelina, or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, volume II, London 1779. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Scanned pages of Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, January 1855. Via Google Books.
Portrait of Ionuses Bassa, an official in Sultan Suleiman Chan’s army, and his wife, from Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from The first beginning of that Nation to the rising of the Ottoman Familie. London: Adam Islip, 1603. Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.
Austrian music manuscript Lewis T673, ca. 1300. Free Library of Philadelphia.
Unidentified artist, plate showing enslaved workers manufacturing indigo. From Pierre Pomet, Histoire generale des drogues, traitant des plantes, des animaux, et des mineraux… Paris: J.-B. Loyson & A. Pillon, E. Ducastin, 1694. Via Wellcome Collection.
Unidentified artist, photograph showing the construction of the National Library of Brazil, ca. 1909. Via Atlas Obscura.
A document signed by Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, marquise de Montespan (1641–1707). Convent of St. Joseph, Paris, 9 February 1689. Morgan Library & Museum.
Manuscript illumination of troubadours by an anonymous German artist, 14th century. Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Emily Dickinson, [All men for honor hardest work], Amherst Manuscript # 128/Franklin # 1205/Johnson Poems # 1193. Amherst College Digital Collections.
Printed sutra scroll from the Hyakumantō Darani (百万塔陀羅尼), One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers, 756 CE. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Comparative versions of “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” by Jorge Luis Borges, originally written in 1941 and 1944, as transcribed and digitized by Ricardo Vázquez and Christopher D. Warnes. Borges Center, University of Pittsburgh.
Gustave Doré, illustration for Dante’s Inferno, plate VI, for the beginning of Canto II: “Day was departing.” This copy from the 1867 translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Cover of Zitkála-šá, American Indian Stories, Hayworth Publishing, 1921. From the Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University. Via Scribbling Women student blog post by Anna Leoncio.

4 thoughts on “”

  1. Dear Friends and Members of the Society,

    It is with overwhelming sadness that I announce the passing of David C. Greetham on March 24, 2020. Each and every one of us will remember David for any number of moments shared with him, from our meetings in the early days of the Society for Textual Scholarship, in classrooms at NYU, at dinners in Mexican restaurants and at the famous post-conference parties he threw when we were all much younger. On behalf of the Society and all its members past and present, I offer our most sincere condolences to his son Alex and his family here and abroad.

    David’s profound impact on the field of textual scholarship will be secondary to many of our memories of his extraordinary energy, generosity and championing of younger scholars and ideas that weren’t his own. So many of us were so lucky to have been his friend and to have warmed ourselves in the wonderful light of his gracious devotion to his friends.

    In the days and weeks to come the Society will be discussing ways to honor David’s contributions and memory. No matter how great the honor is that we will pay to him, the personal memories that each of us will recall and share will in many ways be the highest tribute we can offer to our friend David. No words adequately convey how much we will miss him.

    Wayne Storey
    President, Society for Textual Scholarship

  2. Hello! I write to ask if STS posts announcements and/or calls from adjacent professional organizations, and if so, how. The journal Reception (of the Reception Study Society) is beginning a search for a new editor, and we were hoping to reach out to textual scholarship-oriented folks. Thank you.

  3. Dear Yung-Hsing Wu, my apologies for this delayed response! We do not have a regular bulletin, but I’d be happy to send out an announcement regarding your search for an editor of Reception in our “occasional” emails to membership. If you could write up a paragraph or two, and direct me to a website? Thanks, Gabrielle

  4. Hi Gabrielle:

    Thanks for writing back! The website address is : receptionstudy.org. The call is below.

    Reception: Texts. Readers, Audiences, History, the peer-reviewed journal of the Reception Study Society, is inviting applications for one of its two general editor positions. Published annually by Penn State University Press, Reception presents a forum for scholarly and critical research-based articles in audience and reception studies in literary criticism, cultural and media studies, and the history of reading and book history. Our new editor will be expected to work with the journal’s continuing co-editor and its book-review editor to continue to develop Reception’s role as a leader in presenting new research in the various fields of audience study. Editorial responsibilities will include
    1. handling submitted articles and arranging for external peer reviews;
    2. working with authors to address any revisions recommended or required in the review process;
    3. becoming proficient in using the Editorial Manager platform, provided by Penn State Univ,
    Press, for processing submitted articles and communicating with authors;
    4. soliciting promising research through networking at professional conferences and elsewhere;
    5. serving as an ex officio member of the Executive Committee of the Reception Study Society.
    While no previous experience in journal editing is required, such work would be welcomed.
    Interested individuals should send a brief letter describing their personal scholarly trajectory and editorial goals, as well as a brief vita (no more than 4 pages) by February 15, 2023, to the President of the Reception Study Society, Dr. Kelsey Squire, Associate Professor of English at Ohio Dominican University, via email: squirek@ohiodominican.edu.

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