Fwd: CFP: Traditions of East Asian Typography Conference
Yuting Dong
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2025 9:36:06 AM
To: Yuting Dong <dongy...@gmail.com>
Subject: CFP: Traditions of East Asian Typography Conference
Would it be possible to circulate the following call for papers?
The Conference on Traditions of East Asian Typography seeks to investigate the autochthonous traditions of movable type in East Asia before the arrival of Western letterpress and lithography in the late nineteenth century. Woodblock was the dominant and preferred method of printing in East Asia up until the nineteenth century. By contrast, East Asia’s home-grown typographic traditions often seem like an afterthought, an eccentricity, or an abandoned experiment that failed to match the Gutenberg revolution. Yet, typography was never entirely discontinued, and diverse actors utilized movable type at particular times, in specific places, or for certain objectives, often in direct competition with xylography. The aim of this conference is to interrogate these traditions as distinct technological systems, explore their possible mutual interactions, and to push the English language scholarship on East Asian typography, and East Asian book history more broadly, in new directions. We welcome proposals from scholars of any academic rank or geographical location. All proposals must engage substantially with East Asian contexts and typography prior to the twentieth century, although comparative chronological or geographic investigations are welcome.
Deadline for submissions is November 15, 2025. The conference will be held March 6, 2026, at the University of Southern California.
Please see the CFP on H-Net: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20126472/traditions-east-asian-typography or the conference website: https://dornsife.usc.edu/east-asian-typography/ for further information.
Best,
Graeme R. Reynolds
Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Taper Hall of Humanities
3501 Trousdale Parkway
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0357