Call for Individual Presentations Submissions

CBAA National Conference, June 10–12, 2027
Baylor University
Waco, Texas
BOOK AS CATALYST: From Object to Impact

An artist’s book is more than its pages and binding. It can start a conversation, provoke a question, or set events in motion. CBAA’s 2027 conference theme, Book as Catalyst: From Object to Impact, explores how book art reaches beyond the page; moving into dialogue, community, research, and exchange among different people and different ways of knowing.

We invite presenters to think beyond what a book is and consider what a book does. Books can open new exchanges, activate spaces, fuel collaboration and dialogue, expose and expand ideas, or offer a call to action.

We welcome proposals for papers, discussions, pre-formed panels, roundtables, facilitated conversations, and demonstrations that explore how book art functions as a catalyst. We are interested in what your work activates, who it brings into conversation, and how its materials, structure, process, or circulation create impact beyond the object itself.

In addition, the conference will include a juried CBAA members exhibition, members showcase, and vendor fair.

Possible topics include:

Community Engagement and Collective Making: Book projects that gather people, encourage participation, share authorship, respond to community needs, or build relationships that extend beyond a single event.
Research as Material Practice: Making as a method of inquiry, including what structure, material choice, touch, time, repetition, or the experience of viewers and makers can reveal that text or analysis alone may not.
Learning in Many Forms: Book arts as a tool for teaching, mentorship, discovery, access, and knowledge-sharing in classrooms, studios, libraries, museums, community spaces, and beyond.
Activating Archives, Collections, and Memory: Creative engagement with archives, collections, histories, institutional memory, gaps, silences, and questions surrounding whose knowledge is preserved, interpreted, or made accessible.
Expanded Forms, Collaboration, and Impact: Book art in conversation with performance, installation, sound, film, technology, public space, interdisciplinary collaboration, and social, cultural, political, or environmental work.
We welcome teachers, students, artists, librarians, conservators, art historians, writers, studio managers, and anyone interested in the field to offer unique perspectives and pose additional questions and approaches related to the conference theme.
Shop/Lab Talks: Best practices for lab and studio management for both traditional and digital equipment

Individual Presentation Proposals:

Please include a proposal title at the top of the page. Proposals should take the form of a 200–250 word abstract for a 10-minute talk or artist presentation. Accepted proposals will be grouped into panels of talks with compatible themes or approaches.

Submission Platform:

Submittable Link HERE.

Submission Notes:

Membership is not required to submit a proposal. If accepted, all presenters must become current CBAA members by February 1, 2027, the deadline to confirm participation. To become a new member, or to renew your membership, please visit https://www.collegebookart.org/page-363225
In an effort to promote original scholarship in the field of academic book art, abstracts submitted to CBAA should not be concurrently submitted for consideration to another conference.
Please limit abstracts to no more than 250 words; longer abstracts will not be considered.
Bios, synopses and abstracts must be submitted as Word docs.
This is a blind jurying process; please do not include your name or the names of any other potential participants on any of the uploaded files. Use the title of your talk as your file name. You should enter a short bio in the biography section of the submission form.
A CBAA member may make more than one submission but only one submission will be accepted per member.

Submission Requirements:

You will be asked to submit the following information when prompted by the online submission manager for each entry separately:

Member’s address
Member’s phone number
Job title, institution, city and state of institution
50-word bio (this can include the member’s name and will be included in the printed program if accepted)
Title of proposal
50-word synopsis (to be printed in the conference program if accepted)
250-word abstract (no names)

Submission Deadlines

Abstracts MUST be received no later than November 30, 2026. Submissions received after this date will not be considered for acceptance.

November 30, 2026:Deadline for submission of proposals

January 15, 2027: Notification of acceptance or rejection of proposals

February 1, 2027: Deadline for confirmation of acceptance by presenters

Contact:

For questions about the submission process in any category please email:

Erin McAdams
CBAA Vice President for Programming
emcadams@collegebookart.org