Haptic Histories: The Politics of Paper & Its Industrial Entanglements

Artists, designers, and manufacturers have long paid sustained attention to the materiality of the printed objects they produce—but how are these decisions experienced by consumers? This session examines how haptic engagements with print ephemera have shaped everyday life within and between cultures from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Expanding on foundational theories, such as Marshall McLuhan’s “medium is the message,” this session explores how tactile experiences of print media inform our habits and transform our perceptions, bridging the intersection of materiality and consumption. Recent work, including Jennifer Roberts’s synthesis of printmaking processes, Christina Michelon’s analysis of Victorian valentines and the subjectivity of touch, and Ulrich Lehmann’s discussion of wallpaper’s revolutionary politics, helps us reconceptualize the ways in which political meaning is embedded into our physical relationship with print media. In particular, this panel seeks to uncover how material supports produce outlets for structural and institutional power to flow and take hold. Panelists may consider a wide range of ephemera, such as handbills, chapbooks, maps, trade cards, broadsheets, periodicals, photographs, postcards, posters, and zines. This session seeks papers that, for example: theorize how materiality shapes social and political histories, highlight overlooked narratives generated through hands-on encounters, and/or study the social significance of characteristics such as weight, surface, and quantity. Papers that illuminate new readings of print ephemera when reconsidered through the lens of the object’s concrete materiality (whether individual or serial) are encouraged, especially as they pertain to marginalized makers and mediums underrepresented in existing scholarship.