CfP: Small Forms in Circulation: Infrastructures, Practices, Publics

Humboldt University of Berlin, November 28-30, 2024.
Submission deadline: June 12, 2024. Acceptance letters in August

Small textual and material forms seem particularly adept at circulating within and between different publics. This conference investigates how the movement of brief, compressed, and otherwise small forms ranging from early modern pamphlets to Instagram stories shape the development of diverse publics, as well as the interplay between them. We propose to explore the relationship between small forms and publics through three related strands of inquiry: how infrastructures affect the circulation of small forms, how practices including remediation enable their circulation, and how the circulation of small forms shapes the formation, operation, and dissolution of public life.

Due to their compactness and tendency to circulate rapidly, small forms accelerate the movement of information in ways that (trans)form both historical and contemporary publics. The development of the bourgeois public sphere as a space of discourse and debate went hand in hand with the historical proliferation of small forms, such as essays and letters, in the early periodical press (Habermas 1962). Building on recent studies on the socio-political role of small forms in the public sphere (Liese & Mohagheghi 2024), we assume a plurality of publics. This allows us to investigate how small forms such as pamphlets, counterculture magazines or hashtags constitute and mediate between different publics. While applying a transhistorical perspective, we are most interested in the 16th-21st centuries, with a focus on how print and media cultures mediate publics from the largest of scales to the small and subcultural.

The conference will take place from November 28-30, 2024 in Berlin. The language of discussion is English. The deadline for submissions is June 12, 2024.

To apply, please submit two Word or PDF documents containing: a preliminary title and an abstract of your contribution (250 words) and 1-2 categories to which your work relates the most: Infrastructures, Practices or Publics. In a separate file, your name and a short bio, stating your affiliation, current research interests and email.


Organised by DFG-funded research group “Literary and epistemic history of small forms”, Humboldt University of Berlin (www.kleine-formen.de)
  • Gesche Mirjam Beyer
  • Claas Oberstadt
  • Marvin Renfordt
  • Morten Schneider
  • Anya Shchetvina