Convenors:
Dean W. Bond (University of Toronto) – dean.bond@utoronto.ca
Innes M. Keighren (Royal Holloway, University of London) – innes.keighren@rhul.ac.uk

Authorship, authority, and truth have become important concerns for book historians and historians of science in recent years. Historical geographers, too, have begun to pay greater attention to the linked questions of authorship and authority, as evidenced particularly in the growing body of scholarship on ‘geographies of the book’. Yet, despite geographers’ recent attention to authorship and authority, many questions remain concerning the ways authors, editors, reading publics, publishers, and pirates shaped geographical credibility and truth in different places and historical eras. As such, this session seeks to broaden—both geographically and temporally—conversations on authorship, authority, and their relation to the production, circulation, and legitimation of geographical knowledge.

We invite papers that address questions of authorship and authority in printed geographical works (broadly conceived) from the early modern period to the long nineteenth century. Given the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of such scholarship—and the fact that questions of authorial status, truth, and piracy cut across all three fields—we encourage submissions from book historians and historians of science as well as geographers. We are interested in papers that address questions such as:

- How did authors, editors, publishers, and reading publics collectively fashion authoritative geographical accounts?
- How did authors and publishers of geographical works deal with issues of plagiarism and illegally printed works?
- How did changing understandings of scientific decorum and objectivity influence how scholars composed geographical works in different places and historical periods?
- What characteristics have made geographical texts ‘authoritative’ in a given place and time?
- In what ways did reading publics and critics render geographical works credible (or undermine their credibility)?
- In which contexts have geographical authors reflected on notions of authorship and credibility, and to what end?
- What does it mean to think geographically about authorship, authority, and truth?
- What might be the future directions for geographical scholarship on piracy and plagiarism?

Please send abstracts of 200 words or less to both convenors by Friday, 17 October.

For further information about the conference, including details of registration, see http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting