20 October 2026

Reading Leaves Traces: Books and Readers in the Early Modern World

The act of reading often leaves no direct evidence, providing researchers only its traces, such as marginal annotations, underlining, excerpts, letters, catalogues, accounts, legal records, quotations, and other material signs of use. These fragments raise important questions regarding the reconstruction of how particural texts were read, as well as methods, locations and social contexts in which reading occurred. Moreover, the kind of evidence raises questions about what we can learn about readers who left no names or personal accounts. 

The conference invites contributions that examine book culture and reading practices in the early modern period. Reading practises may have been silent or vocal, individual or collective, continuous or fragmentary, educational, professional, religious, or recreational. We welcome research addressing not only the content of reading but also the conditions, shape, and effects on reading: how texts were accessed, interpreted, used, transmitted, and adapted across various contexts. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES 

• How did the content, form, and materiality of texts anticipate, instruct, or discipline their readers? 
• What textual, documentary, and material traces enable the reconstruction of reading practices, and whose experiences remain challenging to identify? 
• How did factors such as language, confession, gender, age, social position, profession, literacy levels, and reading the environments shape reading practices? 
• In what ways did texts and reading practices circulate among individuals, institutions, communities, languages, and territories? 
• How are digital methods transforming the scale, source base, and interpretative boundaries of research into the history of reading? 

The conference seeks to bring together scholars from different fields around shared questions concerning the histories of books and reading. Historians, book historians, art historians, literary scholars, linguists, librarians, archivists, conservators, and experts in material culture and cultural heritage are encouraged to participate, as well as researchers specializing in digital humanities, computer science, statistics, network analysis, computer vision, data visualization, and information systems. 

We particularly encourage co-authored papers that integrate multiple disciplines, diverse types of evidence, or valid research methods. 

Call for Papers 

The conference will take place in 2027, marking the 480th anniversary of the publication of Martynas Mažvydas’s Catechism (1547) in Königsberg, recognised as the first printed book in Lithuanian. Created within the multilingual print culture of the Reformation-era Baltic region, this volume combined a catechism, a reading primer, and texts for communal singing. It offers a revealing example of how early print sought not only to reach readers but also to shape their development. 

This anniversary and its historical setting provide the starting point for the conference, whose scope extends beyond the Baltic and East-Central European region. The multilingual and multiconfessional cultures of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Prussia, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth inspire broader questions about European book and reading history, inviting participants to reconsider established models across diverse geographical and cultural contexts. Contributions addressing other regions, as well as comparative studies crossing regional and European boundaries, are warmly encouraged. 

The conference invites participants to examine methods for reconstructing reading practices from dispersed traces and to evaluate what constitutes sufficient historical evidence of the act of reading. 

Researchers and professionals wishing to present their work at the conference may submit their proposals using the form below. 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 

• Abstracts must clearly describe the original research being presented (200–250 words). 
• Author name(s), affiliation(s), contact information, and a short bio (max. 150 words) should be included. 

Proposals from scholars at all career stages are welcome until 15 February 2027. 

More information

Date: 6–7 October 2027 
Venue: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania 
Location: Vilnius, Lithuania