The European Society for Textual Scholarship provides an international and interdisciplinary forum for the theory and practice of textual scholarship in Europe. It has been established in close collaboration with the Society for Textual Scholarship (North America).
The bylaws were approved by the membership on December 2005 and updated in March 2012. A new board has been elected and had its first meeting in 2006.
The president of the society is Dirk Van Hulle, University of Antwerp; the secretary is Caroline Mace, University of Leuven and the membership secretary is Herman Brinkman, Huygens Instituut.
The Society's postal address is:
Centre for Manuscript Genetics
c/o Dirk Van Hulle
University of Antwerp, L&W, D.137
Prinsstraat 13
2000 Antwerp, Belgium
For membership enquiries contact Herman Brinkman by e-mail, phone (+31-70-3315812) or post:
Join/Renew your membership now for 2012. Membership fee is €50 for EU/€55 for non-EU. A list of current members is available on this site.
We're pleased to announce that Dr Alexandre Fachard (University of Lausanne) has been appointed as Associate Editor of Variants.
The organizing committee has announced the keynote speakers for the 9th annual conference in Amsterdam, 22-24 November 2012. They are Manfred Thaller (University of Cologne), Godfried Croenen (University of Liverpool) and Andrew Jewell (University of Nebraska-Lincoln). The deadline for proposals has been extended to 1 June. The complete call for papers can be found in the conference section.
Variants 9 is published. This volume, edited by Wout Dillen, Caroline Macé and Dirk Van Hulle, contains a selection from the papers presented at the 2009 conference in Brussels on "Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship".
Variants 10 will not be a themed issue. Contributions on any aspect of textual scholarship, scholarly editing and cognate fields will be considered.
Call for Papers: Writers and their Libraries: An International Conference will be held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London on 1-2 February 2013. Deadline for proposals is 15 July 2012.
Please contact the webmaster, if you want us to include your news and announcements here. An events calendar listing forthcoming conferences, colloquia, seminars and call for papers is also available.
The Society holds a conference each year. The first of these was held in Alicante, Spain, on the theme 'Editing Texts in Multiple Versions' on 25-27 November 2004, and was preceded by three colloquia. The second, on the theme 'Histories of Editions,' was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on 16th and 17th December 2005. Our third conference, on the theme 'Textual Scholarship and the Material Book,' was held in London, in November 2006. The fourth ESTS conference was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 22-24 November 2007. The subject of the conference was Textual Scholarship and the Canon. The fifth conference was held at the University of Lisbon from November 20 to 22, 2008, on the subject "Private: Do (not) enter: Personal Writings and Textual Scholarship". On 19-21 November 2009 the Academy for Science and the Arts (KVAB) hosted the sixth conference in Brussels, Belgium on the topic "Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship".
ESTS has also held a number of smaller colloquia. The first one of these was was held in Leicester on November 22-23, 2001. The second colloquium was held in Antwerp in December 6-7, 2002. The third colloquium was held in Copenhagen on November 21-23, 2003.
The Society publishes a refereed journal, Variants, of articles and reviews with a focus on European textual scholarship. The first number was published in 2002 by Brepols. From the second volume onwards, a double issue (2/3) on Reading Notes, the journal was published in association with Rodopi. The most recent volume is Variants 7 (2008) on Textual Scholarship and the Canon, edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Peter Robinson and Paulus Subačius, will be available in November 2010.
With STS, we maintain a discussion group about textual scholarship. The list is open to anyone (you do not have to be a member of either society to join) and we welcome anyone who is interested in textual criticism, scholarly editing and related topics. Join at Textual Scholarship.