From June 16 to 18, 2016, the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) will hold its annual conference at the University of Amsterdam. Several members and fellows of the Popular Seriality Research Unit will be presenting at the conference.

Daniel Stein and Jason Mittell are both featured speakers on Contemporary Narrative Theory.

Robyn Warhol, Sean O’Sullivan, and Maria Sulimma will be presenting in a joint panel on “Synchronic Reading.”

From their panel description:

 “This panel addresses the question: what are the narrative implications of reading or following several texts at the same time? Drawing on examples from two single years in the 19th century and two in the 21st, the panel examines the phenomenon of “synchronic reading” as it might have occurred for texts’ original audiences, holding the parts of one narrative in their minds while taking in the next installments of others, or reading a new text in the context of others that appeared in the same year.

The term “synchronic reading” signals two relations narratives have to time and to history. History is often conceived as having two axes, the diachronic and the synchronic. The diachronic axis is often associated with narrative, with progress or movement forward, and with cause and effect. When we read a novel from cover to cover, we are reading it diachronically. The synchronic axis, by contrast, allows us to think about events that happened (or happen) at the same time. This panel will address the kinds of reading that happen on the synchronic axis.”

The panel includes the following papers:

Robyn Warhol (The Ohio State University) :“1847: Reading Dickens and Thackeray Like a Victorian.”

Lindsey N. Chappell (Rice University):“1860: Victorian Periodicals and the Domestication of Italy.

Sean O’Sullivan (The Ohio State University):“2004: HBO's Annus Mirabilis."

Maria Sulimma (Free University of Berlin):“2015: Simultaneous Seriality and The Walking Dead.”

For more information of the conference, consult its website: https://narrative2016.com/