The workshops on the History of Material Texts are now in their tenth year. Participants (including faculty, librarians, graduates, booksellers and anyone else interested) come from a very wide range of disciplines and all are welcome to attend. The usual format of the seminar is a presentation of approximately thirty minutes, followed by discussion, based if possible on handouts or other visual materials. For more information, or to be added to the listserv, please contact williame@sas.upenn.edu.

September 13
Rebecca Bushnell
Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
"The Materiality of the Digital Text"
Relevant web materials: The English Renaissance in Context, an electronic guide to Shakespearean scripts from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Includes tutorials on individual plays and high-quality facsimiles.

September 20
Rita Barnard
Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
"Oprah's Paton, or South Africa and the Globalization of Suffering"
Relevant web materials: Oprah's Book Club, which recruits individuals like Dr. Barnard to help guide readers through the classics of Western Literature.

September 27
Stephen Tinney
Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"On the manuscript context of Gilgamesh in the first and second millennia BCE"
Relevant web materials: The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project, an online lexicon which also includes tools for working with the language and its surviving texts.

October 4
Sara S. Poor
Department of German, Princeton University
"Mothers and Daughters, Fathers and Sons: Patterns of Book Exchange in a Fifteenth-Century German Family"
Relevant web materials: Mauscripta Mediaevalia, an online archive of German manuscripts and manuscript catalogues.

October 11
Holly Pittman
Department of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
"Image and Sign in Early Mesopotamia: the role of images and the origins of writing in Mesopotamia"

October 18
Bethany Wiggin
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania
"Talander's Other Pseudonyms: Authorial Discourse in German Novels at 1700"
* We will meet in the Lea Library on the 6th floor of Van Pelt for this session

November 1
Kathy Peiss
Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
"The Microfilm Men Go to War"

November 8
Susan Einbinder
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
The Hebrew troubadour haGorni and his fifteenth-century (astronomical) manuscript context


November 15
Tom Burman
Department of History, University of Tennessee
"Qur'an Manuscripts and Qur'an Readers in Western Europe, 1140-1560"

November 22
Stefano Cracolici
Department of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania
"The wicked fortune of Leon Battista Alberti's Deifira"

November 29
Karen Nipps
Houghton Library, Harvard University
"Paper Trails of the 19th-Century: Lydia Bailey, Philadelphia Printer, 1808-1861"

December 6
Emma Dillon
Music Department, University of Pennsylvania
"Wretched Leaves at the Free Library: The Case of the Lewis Text Leaves"
Related web materials: View thumnails of The Lewis Text Leaves Courtesy of the Fisher Fine Arts Library

January 24
Roger Chartier
Directeur d'Etudes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes and Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Immaterial Text: Lost Cardenio"

January 31
Jeffrey Allred
Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
"'The World's Picture Show': Henry Luce and the Origins of LIFE"

February 7
John Dixon Hunt
School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
"Texts materialized in a garden: the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay"

February 14
Nicholas Watson
Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University
"Ecce Sompniator! John of Morigny, Devotional Magic, and the Marvelous Moving Statue"

February 21
Patricia Parker
Department of English, Stanford University
"Eunuchs (and Editors) of All Kinds: Textual Surprises in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night"

February 28
Jean-Michel Rabate
Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
"Joyce in Progress"

March 14
Eleanor Shevlin
Department of English, West Chester University
"Harrison and Co. and its Networks: A Revisionary Account of a Late 18th-Century Paternoster Numbers Firm"

March 21
Meredith McGill
Department of Literatures in English, Rutgers University
"Common Places: Poetry and Travel Writing in the Antebellum U.S."

March 28
James Simpson
Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University
"Error and Terror: English Bibles and Biblical Reading 1525-1539"

April 4
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Department of English, University of Maryland
"Every Contact Leaves a Trace: Computer Forensics and Electronic Textuality"

April 11
Katherine Zieman
Department of English, Wesleyan University
"Gender in Performance of Liturgy and Prayer: What Can Manuscripts Tell Us?"

April 18
Linda Chance
East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department, University of Pennsylvania
"Genji Guides: Using the Tale to Make Better Men and Women in Japan"