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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Craig Robertson (Northeastern University), “Storage: How Paper Does the Work of Paperwork”
October 7, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Lucie Doležalová, Jakub Kozák, Karel Pacovský, Ondřej Fúsik, Martin Roček (Charles University, Prague), “The End of Medieval Scribes”
October 14, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Dorothy Berry (National Museum of African American History and Culture), “Reading a Digital Collection: The Johnson Publishing Company Archive in Process”
October 21, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Alan Farmer (Ohio State University), “Lost Literature in the Early Modern English Book Trade, 1557–1640: Poetry, Plays, and Prose Fiction”
October 28, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
Lisa Gitelman (New York University), “Typographical Hallucinations”
November 4, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm -
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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Carlos Spoerhase (Bielefeld): "Failed Formats: Goethe’s Literary Anthology for the German People"
January 31, 2022 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Pamela H. Smith (Columbia): "Making and Knowing in Early Modern How-To Texts"
January 24, 2022 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Ellen Gruber Garvey (New Jersey City University): "Unstable Access to the Print Record: The Case of Back Number Budd and Nineteenth-Century Newspapers"
December 6, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) & Arthur der Weduwen (University of St Andrews): "Materializing the Immaterial: Recovering the Lost Books of Early Modern Europe"
November 29, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Material Texts Roadshow (Virtual event): Brian Cassidy (Type Punch Matrix), Michelle Warren (Dartmouth College), Jessica Linker (Northeastern University): "Copy Technologies"
November 22, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Sarah Wasserman (University of Delaware): "Pop-up Buildings and Postage Stamps: Ephemera and the American Novel"
November 15, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Asheesh Kapur Siddique (UMass Amherst): "Documenting the Body of State: Paper and the Matter of the US Constitution"
November 8, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Elizabeth McHenry (NYU): "'Utterly Worthless'?: Race Publishing, Subscription Books and Black Communities"
November 1, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Michael Suarez (Rare Book School and University of Virginia): Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography, "Printing Abolition: How the Fight to Ban the British Slave Trade Was Won, 1783–1807"
October 25, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm, October 26, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm, October 28, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm -
Michael Suarez (Rare Book School and University of Virginia): Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography, "Printing Abolition: How the Fight to Ban the British Slave Trade Was Won, 1783–1807"
October 25, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm, October 26, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm, October 28, 2021 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm