OSL Research Day 2019: Keynote Lecture by David Alworth
Groningen | 11 October 2019
Thanks again to everyone who attended this year’s Research Day! It was indeed a memorable event, packed with thought-provoking presentations, lively debates, and ideas for future collaboration.
We are particularly grateful to our keynote speaker David Alworth for his inspiring lecture on Paratextual Art (chaired by Marguérite Corporaal). For those who couldn’t make it, you can now watch our keynote lecture here.
David Alworth is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, where he teaches in the Department of English and in the Program of History & Literature. His book Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form (Princeton University Press, 2015) received the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction from the Media Ecology Association. Together with designer Peter Mendelsund, he has just completed The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature (Ten Speed Press/Crown Press/Penguin Random House, 2020). A collaborative project that synthesizes literary analysis and design, The Look of the Book draws on in-depth interviews, archival research, and recent scholarship in media studies to provide a comprehensive exploration of the meaning, history, value, mechanics, and future of the book cover.
NB: The presentation on research funding by Geert Jan Arends is now also available here