In collaboration with journal Feminist Modernist Studies (FMS), we invite proposals for a special cluster of essays focusing on archival materials made available in MAPP. These will form part of a curated series of ‘Out of the Archives’ in FMS (editor Urmila Seshagiri), ranging across 3 issues to be published in 2026.
MAPP currently makes available over 4500+ items of publishing correspondence and 500+ ‘related materials’ (including order books, dust jacket mock-ups, publishers’ catalogues) connected with the work of 1000+ people (writers, artists, translators, press workers) and 500+ titles from the modernist period. This includes material relating to the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press, the Knopf publishing house, the William and Jenny Bradley literary agency, Harcourt, Brace and Company, plus many other businesses and cultural institutions, brought together from several international library partners and archives. We are seeking essays (of varying length) that spotlight particular items and that might address themes of modernist cultural history, authorship and the creative industries, global sensibilities, and feminist modernist studies. We encourage contributions that think about how digital initiatives can generate new, archivally informed scholarship and offer new pathways through the data.
Essays should range between 2500-6250 words in length. Abstracts of up to 500 words outlining your ideas, approach, and which materials you’d focus on should be sent to the MAPP team by November 29, 2024. Decisions will be made and communicated by December 18, 2024. Final submissions are due to MAPP by June 30, 2025. All submissions will then go through the FMS peer-review process.
Please send proposals and questions to: Professor Helen Southworth (helen@uoregon.edu)
MAPP Co-Directors: Claire Battershill (University of Toronto), Matthew Hannah (Purdue University), Helen Southworth (University of Oregon), Alice Staveley (Stanford University), Elizabeth Willson Gordon (The King’s University), Nicola Wilson (University of Reading).
For see the full list of archival materials newly digitised and made available in MAPP:
Archival Folder | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
Specific examples of the kind of archival materials in MAPP include:
Order books:
MS 2750/A/27_Order book: Novels Sackville-West & Woolf | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
Production folders:
MS 2750/2_Twilight in Delhi | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
Woolf’s bound books: Virginia Woolf's bookbinding (from WSU Pullman) | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
Vanessa Bell artwork and dustjacket design: Vanessa Bell | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
Publishers catalogues: MS 5799_Publishers Catalogues and Book Trade Publications_ Jonathan Cape [sample collection] | Modernist Archives Publishing Project
