Working with letters

In collaboration with Cerl Manuscripts Librarians Working Group: https://www.cerl.org/collaboration/manuscriptexperts/main

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 wish 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. 

See preliminary program with abstracts for more information. 

The conference is free of charge but all participants attending in Oslo must register in advance by the following link: 

https://response.questback.com/nasjonalbiblioteket/xyw2fktgkj  

within Friday, May 20th. 

It will also be possible to attend the conference online.

 

Program:
Thursday, June 2^nd

9:15-9:30 Welcome and introduction by The National Library of Norway and CERL

9:30-9:50 Mette Witting, Marius Wulfsberg: How to make Camilla Collett’s letters readable today. Some reflections on the institutional work with letters

9:50-10:10 Janet Garton: A life in letters: Amalie Skram and her circle

10:10-10:30 Merete Morken Andersen, Lukas Lehner: Small data, big picture. Working with letters in a digital timeline 

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11:00-11:20 Francis Neary and Sally Stafford: Opening up Darwin’s letters: using technology to reach wider audiences  (Appears on Zoom)

11:20-11:40 Elizabeth Smith: Epsilon: developing a space for nineteenth-century science letters  (Appears on Zoom)

11:40-12:00 Øivind Larsen, Randi Sørsdal: Letters to a mother – some methodological challenges  

12:00-12:20 Jorunn Hareide: The creation of an author. Hanna Butenschøn’s strategies and networks as revealed in her correspondence

12:20-13:20 Lunch

13:20-13:40 An Smets: From Franciscus Cranevelt to Georges Lemaitre and back: the collection of letters and autographs from KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections

13:40-14:00 Zsuzsanna Bakonyi: 16^th Century Hungarian Letters from Nagyszombat (Trnava)

14:00-14:20 Patryk Sapala: Undique conquirere: Stanisław Górski’s archive of letters and other political materials from the reign of Sigismund I Jagiellon 

14:20-14:40: Lik Hang Tsui: The Many Lives of Epistolary Manuscripts in Imperial China  (Appears on Zoom)

14:40-15:10 Coffee break

15:10-15:30 Caroline Szylowicz: The correspondence of Marcel Proust: an open-ended play in three acts and a hundred years 

15:30-15:50 Siv Frøydis Berg: The truth is in the copying. A heavenly chain letter

15:50-16:10 Lucrezia Signorello: The literary academy of Arcadia and Queen Christina (Appears on Zoom)

16:10-16:30 Karen Arup Seip: Working with Voices of the Past 

16:30 Closure 

17:00-19:00 Reception

 

Friday, June 3^rd

9:30-9:50 Paola Baseotto: The Political Function of the Correspondence between Queen Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland (Appears on Zoom)

9:50-10:10 Martin Klöker: Reconstructing the story of a forbidden love. Possibilities and limits of working with 17^th century letters (Appears on Zoom)

10:10-10:30 Ane Ohrvik: Mapping a Cultural Network: Exploring the letter collection of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885)

10:30-10:50 Michelle Tisdel: Entangled Histories, National Libraries & Contact Zones: Unpacking the Letters of George Padmore, Dorothy Pizer & Ivar Holm

10:50-11:30 Lunch

11:30-11:50 Thomas Stern: The Dresden collection of archives and letters 

11:50-12:10 Jouni Ahmajärvi: Letters in the National Library of Finland

12:10-12:30 Veronika Girininkaitè: Working with letters in Vilnius university library

12:30-12:50 Viktorija Vaitkeviciute: Letter Collection and Their Research in the National Library of Lithuania

12:50 Closure and safe journey!

 

View everyone’s abstracts here!