The project’s opening workshop will be held at The University of Reading on June 7th and 8th, 2012.
Literary archives are diasporic: authors migrate, papers become dispersed among collectors, families, publishing businesses, and archives in different countries. This raises important questions about the politics of location, access and ownership, barely interrogated in an international context. The network aims to promote international collaboration in the preservation of and access to literary archives, by bringing together a group of established scholars and experts from a variety of institutional backgrounds, and across different disciplines and regions.
The University of Reading, a centre of excellence in book history and literary research, is leading the network, which includes partners from around the world. The Centro Manoscritti in Italy is a research centre with a strong tradition in textual studies and the largest national collection of twentieth-century manuscripts. The IMEC in France is a unique partnership between the state and publishing companies pioneering the centralisation of archives to promote international scholarly access. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in the USA is a large, world-leading centre for the collection of literary manuscripts. The University of Trinidad and Tobago, representing four Trinidadian Institutions, has collectively had striking success in building collections of West Indiana. The National Library and Archive of Namibia is an emergent institution with an ambitious vision to construct a literary heritage. With funding provided by the Leverhulme Trust, over the course of the three year project five internationally held workshops will enable an intercontinental exchange of expertise, and initiate a context in which to practice and scrutinise methodological and conceptual frameworks.