Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
The origin of this book lies in pre-Covid times, in 2019, when graduate students in the Centre for Comparative Literature organized a conference called Timepieces. The idea was to investigate how humans are defined in and by time, both abstractly, as mortal creatures with internal clocks, and materially, through the pieces that we have used throughout history to mark time. The students asked me to offer the keynote lecture, and I presented on “Modern Times.” The conference was a thrilling intellectual experience, featuring speakers from across North America and Europe.
The conference’s energy seemed too vital for us to let it go up in smoke, so the two of the main organizers, Teresa Valentini and Angela Weiser, approached me about producing a volume together. They brought endless vitality to the project, and I contributed my experience with publishing. At this point in my career, it felt meaningful to share not only intellectual insights but also practical ones: How do you publish a book, from beginning to end?
We approached Len Husband, an acquisitions editor at the University of Toronto Press, who expressed interest. Then we began the long process of selecting the best papers from the conference, approaching the authors, soliciting contributions, and editing these. Teresa and Angela did almost all the work here, with tremendous elan. Despite all the Covid logjams, they remained persistent and managed to assemble one of the best collections of essays I have seen in a while.
In addition, they co-wrote the volume’s introduction, which sets the stage for the book’s main argument: Yes, we are defined by time, but we can find creative ways to resist our fate and shake time’s shackles. We can manipulate temporality through storytelling (“once upon a time”), so that it serves our purposes instead of the other way around. We can shape time into an emancipatory, revolutionary force, as Teresa and Angela describe so well in their introduction – and as the individual contributors do throughout.
As a whole, the volume provides a fascinating meditation on temporality, narration, and the force of freedom.
Check it out here: https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487551919 !
Photos from launch: https://x.com/uoftcomplit/status/1882824758926139863 ;
https://www.facebook.com/utpress/photos/join-authors-teresa-valentini-angela-weiser-and-john-zilcosky-for-the-book-launc/1149959433803701/.
