We are pleased to announce two one-day interdisciplinary conferences on literary tattoos.

The first one will take place in Paris, at the Musée d’art et d’histoire de la ville de Saint-Denis, on June 13, 2019. The second one is scheduled for 15 November 2019 at the Université Polytechnique Hauts de France, Valenciennes.

We intend to address social practices, cultural norms as well as aesthetic issues related to literary tattoos – be it prose, poetry, songs, drama. The objective is to gain a better understanding of the dynamics that underpin the presence of such tattoos and the way literature is transformed, cited and made portable on bodies via the skin, in a more or less conspicuous fashion. We particularly welcome contributions that explore citations, illustrations, portraits of authors and characters, reproduction of pages and book covers, QR codes, autographs, literary logotypes and acronyms.

Themes for consideration might include but are not limited to:
- Tattoos in literature (with no restriction of period nor genres)
- Tattooed literature and fan fictions or fandoms
- Tattoos as literary motifs
- Literary tattoos as fragments (memory, archives)
- Tattoos as narratives of the self (rewriting, adaptations, autobiography)
- Literary tattoos, authorship and ownership
- Skin and screen
- Tattoos, space and place (intimacy, public/private space, position on the body)
- Ways of reading literary tattoos (deciphering quotations, haptic experience of reading)
- The definition of the literary canon (which texts? which authors?)
- Tattoos and the law (copyright, intellectual property, case law)

Please send a 250-word abstract either in French or in English and a brief biographical note to both Anne Chassagnol anne.chassagnol@univ-paris8.fr and Brigitte Friant-Kessler bfriantk@uphf.fr by 15 February 2019.

Deadline for abstracts: February 15, 2019.
Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2019.
A selection of papers will be published in 2020-21.