We’re on Twitter @MaterialTextUTU and on Bluesky @materialtextutu.bsky.social. You can email us at mtrf(at)utu.fi.
The Material Text Research Forum (MTRF) is a new initiative focusing on bringing together researchers from different backgrounds to explore ‘material text’ in live and online meetings. We hope that the seminars and lectures organised by this Forum will provide new angles for all participants’ research. The following describes our initial ideas for approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective.
What is material text?
We want to take as broad a stance as possible, and we invite speakers to bring in their own perspectives. What is material, what is text? We seek to deepen these concepts in our own work, while also opening doors for new applications and definitions. We are especially interested in how material and text can be combined rather than pursuing the concepts on their own: material text is more than the sum of its parts.
We invite all participants to engage with the materiality of text in their presentations. Our focus on materiality aims to draw attention to all the possibilities and challenges, technological constraints and innovations which are present whenever a text is delivered in a tangible or consumable form. This form can be anything which makes a text accessible to an audience (no matter how limited the audience), including digital formats.
The material which a text is written or inscribed on affects the verbal/linguistic form of the text itself: for instance, abbreviations may be used more often at the ends of lines or pages in early books. Sometimes the text and its purpose are tied to the existence of the material object it is on – for instance, in the case of archaeological findings containing text, such as drinking vessels and jewellery, whose primary purpose is to be used and worn. Our focus is thus at least partially on the different technologies of text production and dissemination.
We invite participants to reflect on how the concept of ‘text’, or their expectations about texts, are relevant to their research. Broadly speaking, verbal/linguistic texts may be viewed as productions with or without artistic intentions – a poet’s sonnet versus a shopping list, for instance. They can be of any length, ranging from said shopping list to a 500-page novel and beyond. We are open to the possibility that any instances of verbal communication, even messages/utterances of only a single word in length, may fall under the scope of material texts as soon as they are transmitted via something material and not only orally at a specific moment. The exploration of material text can also extend beyond words, into the interaction between text and image and other aspects involving multimodality.
The aim of our research forum is to provide a platform for discussing the study of texts. In our view, interdisciplinary angles and a wide historical lens may lead to new discoveries. While our own background is in historical linguistics and philology, we are also interested in contributions broadening the definitions of material text beyond the traditionally philological focus on parchment and paper, pen and ink.
We invite contributions from anyone interested in the materiality of texts: including, but not limited to, linguists and philologists; historians or folklorists working with primary textual material, analysing it through their lens; scholars exploring texts within the frameworks of media studies, translation studies or literary studies; those interested in the “archaeology of the book”, e.g. codicologists, palaeographers, book historians; and archaeologists studying texts contained in artefacts and buildings.
The organisers of the research forum are all from the University of Turku, and hail from the strong tradition of material textual studies at the Department of English – particularly the legacy of the Pragmatics on the Page approach and related research projects.
Organisers: Dr Aino Liira, Dr Susanna Mäkinen, Dr Sara Norja, Professor Matti Peikola, Johanna Rastas, Dr Sirkku Ruokkeinen, Dr Mari-Liisa Varila
Research at the Department of English: https://www.utu.fi/en/university/faculty-of-humanities/english/research