Eighth Conference – Working with letters
Organized by: National Library of Norway and CERL Manuscripts Working Group
Speaker(s): An Smets,Ane Ohrvik,Caroline Szylowicz,Elizabeth Smith,Francis Neary,Janet Garton,Jorunn Hareide,Jouni Ahmajärvi,Karen Arup Seip,Lik Hang Tsui,Lucrezia Signorello,Lukas Lehner,Marius Wulfsberg,Martin Klöker,Merete Morken Andersen,Mette Witting,Michelle Tisdel,Øivind Larsen,Paola Baseotto,Patryk Sapala,Randi Sørsdal,Sally Stafford,Siv Frøydis Berg,Thomas Stern,Veronika Girininkaitė,Viktorija Vaitkevičiūtė,Zsuzsanna Bakonyi
The eight conference was planned to take place in Oslo on 27th October 2020, at the National Library of Norway. The response to the call for papers was great. However, it was not be possible to have the event in 2020/2021, and the organisors have decided to postpone the conference til the autumn of 2022. They will consult with those who have proposed a paper, to determine if a new call for papers is needed.
Letters are important for a broad disciplinary field of researchers, and includes issues of communication technology, literature, history and everyday social life. During these days in Oslo we wished to explore a two-fold approach to letters: Cultural Heritage institutions and their collections of letters; and the cultural history of letters.
The institutional perspective seeks to focus on processes and practices that make letters available for researchers and the public. This includes a wide range of issues, from collecting and organizing to dissemination, and often combines working with both the physical letter and the digitized facsimile. The cultural perspective seeks to explore letters as actors within different, but concrete cultural, historical and political contexts.
It was also possible to attend the conference online.