Call for Submissions
Phyllis Johnson, editor or the 1960s New York magazine-in-a-box Aspen, used the term magazine to hark back to the original meaning of the word as “a storehouse, a cache, a ship laden with stores”‘ from the Arabic makzin, makzan, ‘storehouse’. But what are the implications of framing the book as a container or vessel?
How does this way of thinking manifest itself in the history and theory of the book: how has it been explored in literature, or in the formal experimentation or the artist’s book?
And what of the material affordances of the container: what forms of narrative are permitted by the book-in-a-box, for instance-like B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates (1969), Anne Carson’s Nox (2010), or Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012)?
How have receptacles of various kinds shaped modes of reading, working to contain or disperse, reveal or conceal, and what if (as with the sealed envelope, or the locked chest) the contents are inaccessible and unreadable!
We invite contributions that consider containers in relation to material texts from any angle and from any period or place. Topics might include (but are not limited to):
The histories, variations and meanings of textual containers: filing cabinets; medieval book-boxes; briefcases; fortune cookies; envelopes; the cylindrical capsa used for storing scrolls in ancient Rome
Containers and alternative formats of the book (eg., the arrangement or loose-leaf pages or objects In boxes, as distinct from the bound book)
The history of the box or chest as book storage space – in the house, in libraries, in churches
The codex as a kind of container or carrier of text; the relation between its insides and outsides, its binding or jacket and its contents
Containers themselves as material texts or conveyors of meaning
The container as boundary or prohibition as a space or privacy and secrecy
The experience of reading as a process or opening and closing, of being immersed’ or lost’ inside a text
The archive, Iibrary or institution as container.
We are particularly interested in scholarly articles, but we also welcome creative-critical pieces or more unorthodox works
The submission process has two stages:
Potential authors should submit a 400-word proposal, with a brief CV, by 15 February 2024.
The editors will respond.
Completed articles, if requested, of 5-8,000 words should be submitted by 31 August 2024, for publication in spring 2025.
Authors are encouraged to include images with their text but images selected must be high resolution (.jpg or .tiff) and copyright permissions must be obtained by the author prior to the submission deadline. All contributions will be double blind peer reviewed, and material will be available for Green Open Access in addition to printed form
Contributions or expressions of interest should be emailed to the editors at:
inscriptionthejournal@gmail.com.
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To find out more, and to purchase a copy of current editions, please visit https://inscriptionjournal.com/how-to-buy
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– Times Literary Supplement
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– Dennis Duncan /UCL. and author of Index: a History of (2021)’
