Department of English
Material Texts
The Material Texts Workshop is an affiliated working group. Affiliated working groups are coordinated and funded outside of the Department of English.
For a schedule of current events and a searchable archive of past presentations, please visit the website for the Workshop in the History of Material Texts.
The Workshop in the History of Material Texts has been meeting weekly since its founding in 1993. Participants (including faculty, librarians, graduate and undergraduate students, booksellers and anyone else interested) come from a wide range of disciplines.
All are welcome to attend; ongoing attendance is not required, and many people come only to the occasional meeting. Meetings are held on Mondays at 5:15 in the Class of 1978 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.
If you would like to receive announcements about upcoming meetings, please sign up for our listserv using this link. More information can be found on the website.
Upcoming Events
-
[WINNER OF THE STALLYBRASS PRIZE] Rita de Cássia do Monte Lima (University of Pennsylvania), "The Natural and the Strange: Seeing and Making Plants in the Schoenberg Herbal (LJS 419)"
October 19, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
[BENJAMIN FRANKLIN DISTINGUISHED LECTURE]: Dr. Andrew Shankman (Rutgers University–Camden)
October 26, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Hester Blum (Washington University in St. Louis), "Polar Erratics, Arctic Ephemera"
November 2, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Julia Alekseyeva (University of Pennsylvania), "Les Lettres françaises and the Legacy of Communist Film Criticism"
November 9, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Zoë Cary-Beckett (University of Washington), "Paper Muscles vs. Black Power: Superhero Fantasies Confront the Aesthetics of Black Liberation in the 1970s"
November 16, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Jessica Peterson, Erica Honson, Kathryn Reuter (University of Pennsylvania), "Remaking the Dunlap Broadside at the Semiquincentennial: A community-based exploration of Revolutionary-era document production"
November 23, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Linda Chance (University of Pennsylvania), "Poem Cards: The Triumph of the Material in Japanese Literature"
November 30, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm
Past Events
-
David McKnight (University of Pennsylvania), "Not Guilty: Frances Steloff vs. the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice"
October 12, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Tom Mullaney (Stanford University), "There’s No Such Thing as 'Continuity': On Studying Information in a Universe that Falls Apart"
October 7, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Rhae Lynn Barnes (Princeton University), "A Dark Cast: Disability, Blackface, and the Print Culture of Roosevelt's WPA"
October 5, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Eva Del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania), "Who Poisoned Jesus Christ? A Seventeenth-Century Franciscan and Conspiracy Philology"
September 28, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Nicole Rousmaniere (MOA Museum of Art), "From Page to Exhibition: Creating Art of Manga"
September 21, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Julie Nelson Davis (University of Pennsylvania), "Invention and Authenticity: Reproduction, Fabrication, and the Modern Market for Ukiyo-e Prints"
September 14, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Roger Chartier (Collège de France / University of Pennsylvania), "Revolution and Erasure. France 1789"
April 27, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Michael C. Gamer (University of Pennsylvania) and Deven Parker (University of Glasgow), "Slow History on Stage (and Page): The Other Burney Collection"
April 20, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
James Brophy (University of Delaware): “Printing Political Dissent: German Publishers in the Age of Revolutions.”
April 13, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Ivan Drpic (University of Pennsylvania), "Painters at Play: The Excessive Epigraphy of a Late Byzantine Church"
April 6, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm