SHARP 2025
"Communities and Values of the Book"
Rochester, New York (University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology)
July 7 - 11, 2025
Registration is now closed.
Find information about the conference program here. Download a PDF of the program here.
Join us on Discord! Learn more here.
If you would like to attend the Annual General Meeting via Zoom, register here: https:/zoom.us/meeting/register/qopwTeWuTbambSljXHoZcA
SHARP Executive Council Statement on SHARP 2025 and recent events
Dear Colleagues,
Congratulations to SHARPists who have had their proposals accepted for the annual conference in Rochester, NY, 7-11 July 2025.
We’re writing to you today as an Executive Council because we know that the current political situation in the United States of America has raised some concerns among colleagues about travelling to the USA and spending time there. We understand these worries and while we want to welcome as many of you to Rochester as possible, we know that our assurances and support cannot predict what might happen, politically, over the next several months.
As members of SHARP we are a diverse group of people, and as an EC we recognize that some members of SHARP belong to marginalized communities that are subject to discrimination. As an international organization SHARP is committed to inclusion and to enabling access to participation within safe spaces. What we can say about Rochester, NY, is that New York Equal Rights Amendment explicitly protects against
discrimination based on “race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” The Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index 2024 gave Rochester a perfect score based on factors such as non-discrimination laws, city employment, city services, and leadership on LGBTQ+ Equality. The conference organizing team has also been very intentional about making this conference inclusive, including ASL interpreters and a childcare resources list, and are working with a wide range of local community members.
We recognize too that applying for a travel visa may not be a smooth process: applications may be delayed or refused. The Rochester team intentionally had an early submission date and acceptance emails to allow attendees the maximum time to get travel visas, and we hope that you are able to take advantage of that schedule.
The SHARP conference in Rochester will remain, as planned, an in-person conference, with keynotes and the AGM streamed online. It’s not feasible for the team to pivot to a hybrid conference, and the consistent feedback we’ve received is that hybrid conferences rarely succeed. However, for those who want to participate but are unable to get visas in this environment, or those unable to travel to the United States for other reasons, the Rochester team is developing options that will include the papers of those who are unable to attend in person. While these are still in development, they might include an option to present by proxy (in which a volunteer reads a paper) or recording, as well as a SHARP 2025 Discord channel for further engagement and discussion. Please note that a registration fee will still be required for participating in the conference, whether in person, by proxy, or via recording, and all presenters will need to join SHARP; the costs of providing the infrastructure for conference
presentations, in any format, remains largely the same and so cannot easily be waived. The SHARP 2025 organizing committee is exploring reduced fees for those who will be unable to attend in person.
We hope that this message provides some reassurance about the SHARP 2025 conference. We recognize that some colleagues will, nevertheless, experience the current political situation in the United States as one that mitigates against their safe participation in an in-person conference. If that’s the case, please let the conference organizers know that you will not be presenting, and we hope we will see you in a future conference.
Thank you to everyone who has shared their views, concerns, ideas, and recommendations. This dialogue is vital to shaping a conference that responds to the needs of our presenters, our members, and our SHARP
community.
Danielle Fuller, President for SHARP’s Executive Council
SHARP 2025 Theme
The theme of SHARP 2025 is "Communities and Values of the Book." We invite participants to explore the ideas of communities and values separately or together, and to interrogate the idea of value and its intersection with the idea of communities within book culture and bibliographic history.
The city of Rochester and the regions of Western and Central New York have a rich history of book culture, including the vibrant written culture associated with the Burned Over District and the spiritualism, abolition, and suffrage movements, independent presses such as BOA and Open Letter Press, historic presses and printing and reproduction companies -- including Roycroft-Hubbard, Leo Hart, Xerox, and Eastman Kodak -- and major institutional collections and programs, such as the Visual Studies Workshop and the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Rochester area's history is also one of dispossession and disenfranchisement. Marginalized and non-mainstream communities in the area have their own rich and vibrant book cultures, including textual, oral, and performative texts, such as those of the Haudenosaunee people, or those of the Deaf community. Who is included when we think expansively about values, communities, and the definitions of texts and objects?
