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 Winship (University of Texas at Austin), “‘The Need of a Bibliography’: Early Attempts at a Comprehensive List of American Books”
November 11, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Simon Martin (Penn Museum), “Getting Stones to Speak: The Decipherment of Maya Script and What It Has to Tell Us”
November 18, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Thomas Rainer (University of Zurich), “Polished Nails and Polished Parchment: Nægel-seax, Scraping Knives, and the Perfection of Writing in Insular and Carolingian Manuscripts”
November 25, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Tim Hogue (University of Pennsylvania), “What Were the Ten Commandments Really Written On? A Catalogue of Ancient Levantine Material Texts”
December 2, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm
Past Events
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Georgianna Ziegler (Folger), "Greatness in Small Things: the Miniature Books of Esther Inglis"
February 27, 2017 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Rita Copeland, "An Emotional Anthology of Style: Glasgow Hunterian MS V.8.14."
February 20, 2017 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Michael Witmore (Folger)
Departmental Lecture SeriesFebruary 13, 2017 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm -
Hannah Marcus (Harvard): “Censoring Medicine: Processes of Expurgation, Forgetting, and Remembering in Early Modern Italy”
February 6, 2017 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Workshop in the History of Material Texts: “The Needham Calculator”
January 30, 2017 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Mara Mills (NYU): “Words Per Minute: How Blind Readers Sped Up Broadcasting”
January 23, 2017 - 5:15pm to 6:45pm -
Ralph Rosen (Classics, Penn): “Books and Textual Practice in Galen’s Newly Recovered Treatise, On Avoiding Distress”
December 12, 2016 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Julie Nelson Davis (History of Art, Penn) and Alessandro Bianchi (Smithsonian Institute): “Presenting the Pulverer Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books in the Digital Era"
December 5, 2016 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Brigitte M. Bedos-Rezak (History, NYU): “Printed Matter in the Pre-Modern West (7th-13th century)”
November 28, 2016 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Glenda Goodman (Music, Penn): “Copying Music: The Politics of Amateur Music-Making in 18th-Century America”
November 21, 2016 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm