Imagen: Olinda – 1800 – Portuguese Army Library, Portugal – Public Domain.

Book Geographies in the Early Modern Age

5th International Conference Circulation of Written Heritage

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil)
3-4 December 2026

Books, now as in the past, allow us to travel with our imagination, but to do that they need first to be created and read in a very real setting. As such, space must be considered a key factor of analysis in the history of the book, even if researchers have not always considered it. The 5th International Conference Circulation of Written Heritage: Book Geographies in the Early Modern Age invites scholars to discuss about the relationship between written heritage and space (real or imagined) in the change-full period spanning the 15th and 18th centuries.

Geography was to take particular prominence from the 15th century onwards, when multiple expeditions began to redefine the global frontiers and plunge the world in a constant dynamic of change and expansion. Written heritage did not stay aloof of this phenomenon, and for much of the Early Modern Age the geographies of the book evolved both physically and metaphorically. From a physical perspective, we find printing presses and readers in new places, which, in turn, fed stories and descriptions that could be presented to the world’s readership thanks to the ever-wider dissemination of the written word (printed books, manuscripts, maps).

Furthermore, the growing production of books and other written materials and their circulation through different and faraway geographies (adapting to them or otherwise), required instruments that, like a good map, helped to organise them in space. Inventories, catalogues, indices, and librarianship treatises were the tools used to navigate an ever more complex world. In parallel, the inside of books also undergoes deep and far-reaching transformations, for instance with the arrangement of text and pages, which was in constant evolution in this period.

Based on these notions, we call for proposals that address the geographies of the book within one of the following sub-topics:

1. The geography of book production and markets: traditionally, book production in the Early Modern Age has been presented as a centre vs. periphery affair, in which production was concentrated in a few cities or regions. Books then circulated to their final markets through complex networks of agents and fairs. However, this model neglects the importance of minor runs for the economics of printing, redistribution centres, and other circulation avenues that not only respond to a market logic. Taking this into account, we aim to analyse the geographical dimension of the circulation of knowledge and ideas.
2. Written heritage and geographical knowledge: books and other printed materials – maps, travel journals and similar documents – were key tools to explore, define, and understand the world. The need to link geographical knowledge and the written word became particularly acute in the Early Modern Age, when physical space was constantly changing. From this perspective, the study of documents written to serve geography becomes an essential piece in book history.
3. Travelling with books: another factor that links space and the written word is the existence of printed books and manuscripts about travel and exploration. From travel journals to pilgrim guides and geographical descriptions, the depiction of often exotic places became a key instrument to explain the mobility of people between the 15th and 18th centuries, while feeding the collective imagination, with genres that mixed description and mythology, and which are a window into the transference of cultural and material references during this period.
4. Maps of knowledge: this comprises both the internal arrangement of pages – position of the text, margins, paratext, and typography – and the techniques used to identify, organise, and locate contents and spatial references in books and libraries. Also, ways to find knowledge and space within the page, and the way they redefined the relationship between reader, book, and space.
5. Reading spaces and practices: beyond their material expression, books were essential vehicles for the circulation of ideas during the Early Modern Age. Intellectual proposals were assimilated by readers spread across wide geographical contexts, and these filtered both the interpretation of texts and the assimilation of concepts. As such, we need to understand how the geographical context shaped reading practices, determining the way readers took in, interpreted, and adapted the books’ contents.

Deadline for proposals: May 31, 2026
Languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English

Scientific Committee:
Airton Ribeiro – Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
Natalia Maillard Álvarez – Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla
Montserrat Cachero Vinuesa – Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla
Alberto J. Campillo Pardo – University of Oslo

Technical Secretariat:
Rocío Molina Flores – Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla