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
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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 -
Roger Chartier (Collège de France / University of Pennsylvania), "Revolution and Erasure. France 1789"
April 27, 2026 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm
Past Events
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Teresa A. Goddu (Vanderbilt University): "Antislavery Media"
October 11, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Margaret M. Bruchac (Penn): "Reading the Material and Textual Histories in a Path Wampum Belt"
October 4, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Tina Lupton (University of Copenhagen): "Corona Time: Reading Fiction During the Covid-19 Pandemic"
September 27, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Ada Kuskowski (Penn): "Foundational Legal Documents in an Era of Customary Law: Thinking about the Middle Ages"
September 20, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Jack Lynch (Rutgers University-Newark): "Real Fakes and Fake Fakes: Materiality in Literary Forgery"
September 13, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Priya Joshi (Temple): " A Book History of the Novel"
December 7, 2020 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Thomas D. Conlan (Princeton): "The Transmission of Omission: Understanding Japan’s 14th-15th Centuries Through Altered Histories"
November 30, 2020 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Material Texts Roadshow, “Writing on Objects”: feat. Chris Faraone (Chicago), Shannon Mattern (The New School), Jennifer Park (UNC-Greensboro), and Suzanne Karr Schmidt (Newberry Library)
November 23, 2020 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Jesse R. Erickson (Delaware): "Cut, Paste, Curate: Print Culture and Bibliography for the Scrapbook"
November 16, 2020 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Simcha Gross (Penn): "“Whoever is hungry, come and eat”: On the Origins and Winding Reception of a Puzzling Passover Passage"
November 9, 2020 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm