May 20-22 2025

SoFCB Annual Meeting

You have arrived at the website for the annual meeting of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB), hosted on campus at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. This year’s meeting will occur from May 20-22, 2025.

Beyond Boundaries

Scholars of material texts use conceptual categories – genre, canon, religion, culture, format, academic discipline – to be legible to our target audiences. Part of our job is to create boundaries around our subjects of study in order to make them understandable, and engage in a scholarly or public conversation based on some level of shared understanding. But in our research we may encounter primary sources that cross genres, use unusual formatting, or require drawing from methods in multiple academic disciplines in order to understand what is happening in the text in front of us. We invite submissions that reflect on these moments in your research, where conceptual categories may stop helping and begin hindering our understanding; we hope your submissions will also propose new categories that would be more useful in conceptualizing the study of material texts.

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Jinah Kim

Jinah Kim is the George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art in the Department of History of Art & Architecture. She teaches courses on the art and architecture of South and Southeast Asia. She received her B.A. in Archaeology and Art History from Seoul National University (1998), and her M.A. (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) in History of Art from University of California, Berkeley. She is a recipient of a few prestigious fellowships and grants, such as an NEH-Digital Advancement Grant (2020-2021), a Getty-NEH post-doctoral fellowship (2012-2013), a Mellon Fellowship for Assistant Professors at the Institute of Advanced Study (Member in the School of Historical Studies, 2009-2010), a research grant from Asian Cultural Council (Ford Foundation Fellow, 2005), and a Junior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (2003-2004).

2025 SoFCB Annual Meeting

Register Now

Your membership in the Society of Fellows entitles you to free attendance at our annual gathering of leading critical bibliography scholars. Come join us for lively conversations about the history of the book, followed by great meals and evenings of convivial fun. Many fabulous academic collaborations have been forged within the four walls of our annual meeting – join us!

Membership Directory

Experience the benefits of community and enhance your professional growth with our membership directory.

This year’s meeting is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and has benefited from the support of several other organizations and departments. We are profoundly grateful for the support of Penn’s South Asia Center, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Department of South Asia Studies, Department of Music, and University of California Los Angeles Libraries, without whom this year’s conference would not be possible.