IRNPPC Events
SEMINAR
We are delighted to announce the upcoming book launch of African Literature in Transition: Print Cultures and African Literature, 1860-1960, edited by Karin Barber and Stephanie Newell at our International Research Network on Postcolonial Print Cultures (IRNPPC) seminar, hosted by Neelam Srivastava (Newcastle University) and Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS-UChicago).
Please save the date for the virtual book-launch that will take place on Friday, 13th March 2026 at 9AM Central Time | 10AM Eastern Time. We will send further details including the zoom link nearer to the launch.
CONFERENCE
The next IRNPPC conference will take place at the University of Chicago on November 5th and 6th, 2026. This conference will be a follow-up to our workshop in Paris this September 2025, and focus on textual/visual interaction in postcolonial print, and mixed media.
Events of IRNPPC Members
SEMINAR
EUME BERLINER SEMINAR
Alignment, Justification, Margin, Error: Typography and the Cold War
Wednesday 14 January 2026 | 17:00–18:30
Elizabeth M. Holt (Bard College / EUME Fellow 2015/16) in conversation with the art collective Fehras Publishing Practices Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin
CONFERENCE & PANELS
The American Comparative Literature Association’s (ACLA) Annual Meeting
Dates: Feb 26 – March 1, 2026
Several members of the IRNPPC network are hosting or participating in panels related to print culture, the global south, postcolonial literature, and more at this year’s ACLA meeting:
1. The World in South Asian Literatures, organised by Zain Mian
2. Archiving Socialisms: Material and Intellectual Legacies, organised by María Isabel Alfonso
3. Theorizing Translation in the Global South: Networks and Sites of World Literary Formations, organised by Razieh Araghi
For information on other exciting panels please go here.
Call for Applications
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History
Faculty of English Language and Literature, Jesus College, University of Oxford
The Faculty of English and Jesus College intend to appoint to the Professorship of Bibliography and Modern Book History with effect from 1 September 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. The closing date for applications is 12:00 noon UK time on Monday 12 January 2026. Interviews are expected to be held in March 2026.Informal enquiries are welcome and may be made in strict confidence to:
Professor Simon Horobin, Chair of the English Faculty Board (chair@ell.ox.ac.uk), or
Dr Alexandra Lumbers, Academic Director at Jesus College (alexandra.lumbers@jesus.ox.ac.uk).Find more details here.
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
A London Rare Books Summer School course on “Visualising Likeness and Difference: Genus, Gender and Race in London Collections and Archives.”
Dates: 22-26 June, 2026
Find more details here.
There are a number of bursaries available this year. Anyone who is interested in taking the course or applying for a bursary is welcome to contact Pragya Dhital at pragya.dhital@sas.ac.uk
Conference: Periodicals and the WorldAbstract Deadline: 7 January 2026
Venue: Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), Brussels
The 14th Annual ESPRit conference will explore questions prompted by the concept of ‘world’. Periodicals occupy a place in the world and construct their own specific world views. Across history, they have played a significant role in shaping and framing, as well as challenging and questioning, various conceptions of the world. Magazines and newspapers have always also been worlds unto themselves, governed by specific laws, traditions and visions. These internal dynamics evolved over time, influenced by forces both local and global. And while we group periodicals together—by topic, place or politics, among others—each publication’s internal world is also quite unique.
We invite researchers to reflect on the place of periodicals in the world and on the ‘world’ of periodicals. Proposals are invited from researchers at all stages in their careers. Proposals of up to 300 words for individual 20-minute papers and a short biographical note should be sent to esprit2026@vub.be. We also welcome proposals for joint panels of three (20 min) or four (15 min) papers. Please include a brief rationale for the panel along with an abstract and short biographical note for each presenter. Presentations should preferably be given in English but may be accompanied by slides with quotes in other languages.
Find the concept note here.
Recent Publications
African Literature in Transition: Print Cultures and African Literature, 1860–1960. Edited by Karin Barber and Stephanie Newell. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
This book offers a compelling vision of the dynamism of local printing presses across colonial Africa and the new textual forms they generated. It invites a reconceptualisation of African literature as a field by revealing the profusion of local, innovative textual production that surrounded and preceded canonical European-language literary traditions. Bringing together examples of print production in African, Europea and Arabic languages, it explores their interactions as well as their divergent audiences. It is grounded in the material world of local presses, printers, publishers, writers and readers, but also traces wider networks of exchange as some texts travelled to distant places.
Dhital, Pragya. 2025. “An Untidy Tapestry of Texts: Secret Diaries of Special Operations in Occupied Burma and the British Official History of World War II.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 36 (3): 607–22.
Iqbal, Asif. “The Language Movement in East Pakistan and the Bengali Ekushey Fiction as Postcolonial Resistance.” South Asian Review, vol. 46, issue 4, 2025, pp. 425–438.
News
Global Histories of MENA in the 20th Century: A Primary Source Collection
A new archive has gone live on the Exeter Digital Archive of the Middle East site, and it includes the text of the 1968 version of Ghassan Kanafani’s “Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine” from the pages of Afro-Asian Writings.
IRNPPC website : You can consult our digitized archives here. This is a work in progress, and we welcome suggestions you may have for us to include in this section.
Gentle reminder: Please send all IRNPPC news that you would like to promote (concerning publications, jobs, conferences, archives, etc) to Shrutakirti Dutta at shrudutta@gmail.com and Laetitia Zecchini at laetitia.zecchini@cnrs.fr.