Organised by Caroline Kögler, Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies".

During this 2-day symposium, we will explore 'prizeworthiness' in relation to communities and concomitant kinship practices across a range of forums, contexts, and borders. While the phenomenon of 'literary prizes' ranges among the most frequently discussed in contemporary scholarship on books and book culture, in this forum, we are interested in notions of 'valorisable' and 'prizable' literature that may or may not coalesce in literary prizes and yet are highly influential in the writing, curating, marketing, selling, and reading of literature. We will explore these relationships across four international expert panels, using the following headings as focal points:

(1) Prizeworthiness and Kinship Beyond Literary Nationalism:
Notions of prizeworthiness and the prizing of literature often are aligned with specific ideas of the nation, thereby tying in with diverse forms of literary nationalism. In this panel, we consider contexts in which prizeworthiness also bolsters heterodox forms of kinship and community practices, reaching beyond or even challenging the nation as a relevant framework for valuation.

(2) Prizeworthiness and Cultures of Recommendation:
We seek to explore connections between notions of prizeworthiness, literary practice, cultures of recommendation, and community imaginaries across a range of contexts and involving a range of readers, from expert to non-expert to celebrity readers; with 'readers' understood widely, potentially including professional readers such as agents or editors.

(3) Prizeworthiness and Forums of Cohesion/Divergence:
Our goal is to trace prizeworthiness as a rationale for literary practices across different forums, from face-to-face to online realms (literary festivals, book fairs, self-publishing forums or online reading communities such as Goodreads).

(4) Prizeworthiness and Dis/Affection:
Here, we focus on the affective dynamics that undergird prizeworthiness, from different forms of affective investment to disaffection; whether in relation to readers, writers, judges or institutions involved in the processes of prizing literature.

Programme

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

EXC 2020 "Temporal Communities" (Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15, 14195 Berlin; Room 00.05)

09:45 | Reception (Coffee)

10:00 | Caroline Kögler (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020): Introduction

PANEL ONE: Prizeworthiness and Kinship Beyond Literary Nationalism

10:15 I Alexandra Dane (University of Melbourne): 'Fluctuating Prestige' and the Temporality of Circulation

11:00 I Julie Rak (University of Alberta): Heavy Industry: Kate Beaton's Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands—Class Politics and Awards Culture

11:45 I Victoria Wirtz (Freie Universität Berlin): Literary Prizes and Queer Working-Class Kinship

12:45–14:00 I Lunch Break

PANEL TWO: Prizeworthiness and Cultures of Recommendation

14:00 I Corinna Norrick-Rühl (University of Münster): Building Reading Communities, Shaping Genres? The Goodreads Choice Awards

14:45 I Danielle Fuller (University of Alberta): Practices of Value/Valued Practices: Readers and Recommendation Cultures

15:30 I Chiara Bullen (University of Stirling): Pre-Publication Literary Award Culture, Corporate Social Responsibility and Cultural Production

16:15 I Coffee Break

16:30–c. 17:00 I Take-aways from Panels One & Two

Wednesday, 27 November 2024
EXC 2020 "Temporal Communities" (Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15, 14195 Berlin; Room 00.05) 

9:00 I Reception (Coffee)

9:15 I Keynote Lecture [digital] 

Sandra Phillips (University of Melbourne): Pre-publication Indigenous literary prizes in Australia tell a story about what the publishing industry doesn't know, post-publication prizes confirm what it needs

10:15 | Coffee Break 

PANEL THREE: Prizeworthiness and Forums of Cohesion/Diversion

10:30 I Christine Emmett (University of Warwick): 'Political authors', the Nobel, and the Vicissitudes of Prizeworthiness: Nadine Gordimer and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

11:15 I Stevie Marsden (Edinburgh Napier University): Levelling Up: Class[ifying] Prizeworthiness

12:00 | Alexander Starre (Freie Universität Berlin): Paradoxes of Prestige: Debunking and Endorsing the Literary Prize Economy in US Book Club Fiction

12:45–13:30 | Lunch Break

PANEL FOUR: Prizeworthiness and Dis/Affection

13:30 | Elisa Haf (Freie Universität Berlin): "Come and Get Me": Prizeworthiness as Affective Investment in the Novels of Sally Rooney

14:15 | Beth Driscoll (University of Melbourne): What Readers Do: Aesthetic and Moral Practices of a Post-Digital Age

15:15–c. 16:00 I Coffee & Closing Plenary Discussion