2024 Landmarks

March 3, 2025 in 2024 Grant, Anniversary, Events, Manuscript Studies, RGME Recollections, RGME Symposia, Student Friends of Princeton University Library, Visits to Collections, Workshops on "The Evidence of Manuscripts"

Landmarks

Achievements for the RGME Anniversary Year

Reflections on the Year’s RGME Visits
(In Person, Virtual, and Hybrid)
to Special Collections

2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College
2024 Autumn Symposium “At The Helm”
RGME Visit to the Collection of Steven M. Lomazow: Report

[Posted on 2 March 2025]

Private Collection, Photograph of Bridges in Paris, 1850s (enhanced). Image courtesy of David W. Sorenson.

Reflecting upon the many achievements of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence in its 2024 Anniversary Year, we celebrate the Landmarks in the journey, as well as the individual and collective steps of its full course.

For the Anniversary Year, our Theme was “Bridges”. Our funded Project for a major part of its accomplishments was “Between Past and Future”. See:

2024 Grant for “Between Past and Future” Project from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Libraries Program

With the completion of the year’s work for 2024, we observe that it brought many developments for the RGME, as we responded to the momentum of the events as they unfolded. Learning from them and gathering their momentum with follow-up events, we discovered that it was possible to create fresh approaches, returning participation, and new collaborations.

Let us focus on one of those sets of landmarks, to show how both the planned activities and their unexpected expansions could produce a remarkable series of visits to Special Collections of various kinds, whether in person, online, or both in hybrid format.

RGME Visits to Special Collections in 2024

The story unfolded in a series of steps, leading to specific events.

Spring and Autumn Symposium as a Pair,
with Follow-Up

Poster 2: Program for 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar.

They centered upon the pair of 2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia, designed for the Project as an invited, hybrid, 3-day event in the Spring at Vassar College, and an online 1-day event in the Autumn as its follow-up.

The Spring Symposium took place as planned, while a few updates in the program adapted to circumstances, such as when a few speakers as short notice had to change travel plans and present in online format rather than in person. Our dedication to a hybrid format for the event maintained our commitment to our wider audience from the need to create online events in recent years, while we waited for the return of in-person events.

Spring Symposium “Between Past and Future”
April (hybrid)

That opportunity came in 2024, with the invitation to hold our Spring Symposium at Vassar College in April. The focus of the Symposium is manifested in its title,

“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges between Special Collections
and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”.

Speakers from Vassar and other centers in the United States and the United Kingdom reported projects and initiatives for Special Collections dedicated to teaching with original sources in manuscript and other forms.

Our subjects were primarily medieval and early modern, in keeping with the new catalogue of such materials and the special exhibition on “Books of the Middle Ages & Renaissance” at the college. Thus collectively, with the Spring Symposium, were celebrated the acquisition of the Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

Autumn Symposium “At The Helm”
October (online)

Enthusiasm for the Spring Symposium led, by participants’ requests, to extend the Autumn Symposium to 2 days instead. This symposium featured a set of curated virtual visits to Special Collections, both private and public.

Poster 2 for RGME 2024 Autumn Symposium. Set in RGME Bembino. Image: Coventry Patmore, Amelia: An iIyll (1878), title page, illuminated by Bertha Patmore. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Musuems and Press.

Expanding the time-frame of the Spring Symposium, the Autumn Symposium considered materials from antiquity to the present day, medieval and early modern still included. The materials under consideration included manuscripts, printed books, and coins.

The virtual visits examined highlights of collections at Vassar College (both Special Collections and the Art Center) and the Universities of Delaware, Missouri, Rochester, and Waterloo, as well as private collections. Manuscripts showcased in the presentations included examples not only from them, but also, for example, from the Biblioteca Capitolare in Vercelli, Princeton University, and the RGME’s own Library & Archives.

Collectors speaking about their collections and the inspiration for them included our RGME Associates, Mark Samuels Lasner, Beppy Owen, and Reid Byers, who previewed his exhibition on “Imaginary Books” about to open at The Grolier Club. Its catalogue, we note with delight, is set in our own RGME Bembino (like our website), Reid’s choice for its font.

The enthusiasm for that event was remarkable. It had vivid presentations and discussions about them by curators, teachers, students (undergraduate and graduate), independent scholars, and others. We can sum up the atmosphere with the words of one presider, Librarian at the University of Missouri, that the Symposium celebrated, and brought home and alive, “the joy of education”.

This momentum called for its own follow-up. Accordingly, we turned to an invitation (since January) to visit a private collection. The nature of our year’s Project encouraged us to prepare the visit, if possible, before the end of our Anniversary Year.

In-Person/Online Visit
November (hybrid)

In November, the RGME visited the Collection of Dr. Steven M. Lomazow both in person and online. The scope of the collection and our visit to it, with thanks to the generosity of Dr. Lomazow and his wife Suze Bienaimee, are described in our announcement and report:

This visit in hybrid format represents a significant landmark for the RGME. With it, we return to our tradition of In-Person Visits to collections, such as Firestone Library and the Princeton University Art Museum for our 2019 Spring Symposium “The Roads Taken”.

Poster 1 2024 Autumn Symposium

With the invited 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College, we have returned to In-Person Events, after having developed our multiple forms of Online Events in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic beginning in 2020.

The online 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm” followed up the wonderfully successful Spring Symposium and carried forward its momentum by a set of curated virtual visits to Special Collections of various kinds, extending its range and covering many periods.

With the invited Visit to the Lomazow Collection, as a further follow-up for the curated visits of the 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm”, we bring to the table the tradition of our online commitment to our wider audience.

Also, with this event came a new collaboration with the Student Friends of the Princeton University Library (SFPUL). We hope that it may continue into the future.

Culmination and Achievements

In certain ways, this hybrid visit in November represents a culmination for our 2024 Year of visits and virtual visits to see original materials attesting to the transmission of the written word across time and place. The inspiration and accomplishment of these goals formed the centerpiece for our 2024 Project “Between Past and Future”, designed to focus upon the strengths of Special Collections of many kinds for teaching and research in the Liberal Arts and other realms.

We give thanks to all our hosts, sponsors, contributors, participants, and audience for such instructive, illuminating, and enjoyable experiences.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, as seen from Battery East. Photograph © Frank Schulenburg / CC BY-SA 4.0 via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Golden_Gate_Bridge_as_seen_from_Battery_East.jpg

Tags: 2024 Anniversary Year, 2024 Autumn Symposium, 2024 Project "Between Past and Future", 2024 Spring Symposium, Collection of Steven M. Lomazow, Vassar College, Visits to Special Collections
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2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo

January 5, 2025 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Event Registration, Events, Manuscript Studies, RGME Colloquia, University of Waterloo

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium
at the University of Waterloo

“Break-Up Books
and Make-Up Books:
Encountering and Reconstructing
the Legacy of Otto F. Ege
and Other Biblioclasts“

Friday to Sunday 21–23 November 2025
in Hybrid Format (pending funding)
or Online by Zoom

Colloquium ‘Home Page’
for information and updates

[Posted on 5 January 2025, with updates]

“Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries”
— Ezekiel 6:8

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto.

By request, in collaboration with the University of Waterloo, the RGME prepares a special 2025 Autumn Colloquium on the phenomena of widely dispersed remnants of dismembered manuscripts and other written materials scattered at the hands of biblioclasts such as Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), for a variety of purposes more and less laudable. We will showcase work being done in various centers and by many individuals on these materials, as part of long-term, laborious, significant, and sometimes dispersed research to identify, reclaim, and, insofar as possible, virtually reconstruct the originals and place them in context.

We seek to gather perspectives on the challenges and opportunities presented by the dispersed manuscript or other materials which survive, albeit disordered or reordered, after passing through the hands of collectors-turned-biblioclasts, for whatever reasons.

A main focus, given the number and variety of projects dedicated to them, will be the manuscripts and other materials dispersed by Otto F. Ege and his collaborators, notably his wife/widow Louise and the New York book-dealer and book-breaker Philip C. Duschnes (1897–1970). Yet, not least because many of their remnants have joined or become intermixed with fragments dispersed by others and through diverse processes in varied collections, it is worthwhile to consider that complex factor for their effective study as well.

We seek to showcase the work of these projects, compare notes about issues and methods of research, and set the legacy of those biblioclasts in the context of others working as predecessors, contemporaries, or followers, as they also redirected the course of manuscript and related studies by disrupting and dislocating its evidence.

The ‘delivery methods’ of dispersal range from assemblages of sets of fragments as specimens in Portfolios, Leaf-Books, Albums, Scrapbooks, or Loose Leaves which might circulate in mats with or without labels, on their own, or in groups sans identifying information. In effect, many of these remnants were cast out on their own as no-name ‘orphans’ whom expertise, serendipity, and circumstance might recognize as ‘foundlings’ or find forever homes, whether virtual or actual. (See The “Foundling Hospital” for Manuscript Fragments.)

Our Colloquium highlights the processes of recovery by multiple, interlinked, and interlocking means, as we gather representatives from the fields of manuscript studies and fragmentology to share their stories, processes, progress, and accomplishments.

New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Otto F. Ege Collection, Leaf in Ege’s Mat from ‘Ege MS 14’. Opening page of the Apocalypse / Revelations in a large-format Lectern Bible in the Latin Vulgate Version. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Scope

The University of Waterloo and the RGME propose to co-host an international Colloquium with hybrid functionality, for access by a wide audience with interests in multiple subjects. Our two educational organizations in Canada and the United States respectively combine experience and skills to produce a scholarly event with companion publications pre- and post-event, to promote and disseminate research work and discoveries in multiple, interrelated fields of study.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf with music and notation for liturgical chants: Recto.

Our plan takes its starting point from the wish to gather expertise and perspectives from a different collections of manuscript materials — such as at the Medieval DRAGEN Lab (Digital Research Arts for Graphical & Environmental Networks — and the rich variety of new and long-term projects (both institutional and individual) dedicated to research on the medieval Western manuscripts despoiled and dispersed by Otto F. Ege and his collaborators.

These initiatives include the new project by the Cantus database (Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant – Inventories of Chant Sources) to produce a database of the musical manuscript fragments in Ege’s Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Western Manuscripts (FOL). This notorious Portfolio was issued in multiple sets now widely dispersed in public or private collections through North America and beyond. Like others of Ege’s Portfolios, some sets are lost, or lost track of; some have themselves become fragmented, as parts have been removed, as specific manuscript specimens were further disjointed from their relatives, original or newer companions in the biblioclasts’ assemblages. Some of these ‘orphans’ or cast-offs have lost their identifying Ege mats or labels, further to complicate the issues of identification, recognition, and retrieval.

The RGME’s long-term project of research in these fields focuses on the variety of Ege’s Portfolios overall. Dedicated to specific genres of books, such as Famous Books or Famous Bibles, they include not only manuscript fragments but also a multitude of printed materials ranging from incunabula (up to the year 1500) to the twentieth century; all were selected and arranged by Ege and his circle as specimens of the graphic arts and book arts for instruction and display. (For examples, see our blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List for Ege materials.)

Private Collection, Leaf from ‘Ege MS 14’. Part of the Book of Jeremiah, Recto, Detail. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Research on the surviving evidence on many fronts and in multiple centers can bring expertise to bear upon specific genres (such as manuscripts containing music). So, too, it reveals the processes of workshop practices over decades in the destruction, re-constitution, and further distribution of the original books. For example, such elements have bearing upon the provenance of individual fragments and potential impact upon that of other fragments whose provenance might not otherwise be known.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from Otto Ege MS 14, recto. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Given the progress of these and other projects in various centers concerned with Ege’s legacy, the time is right to bring their representatives (established scholars, curators, collectors, and others, as well as younger scholars) together to compare notes, showcase their work, and strengthen contacts between individuals and centers across borders.

By examining the book-breaking practices overall by “Ege & Co.” in the wider context of biblioclasts over time, including many of Ege’s contemporaries, predecessors, and followers, we might gain fuller knowledge of the individually as well as collectively destructive habits and their legacy. Likewise by comparing notes, surveying the results so far of different projects, and, it might be, identifying more of the seemingly lost fragments in unknown or unexpected places, our Colloquium could cross thresholds and open more gateways to wider knowledge.

Such larger contexts provide wider horizons and more comprehensive awareness of the destructive tendencies towards books in given times and places. They can demonstrate, by examination and comparison, the particular characteristics or ‘style’ of the collector, book-breaker, book-seller, and the resulting forms as altered pieces or bodies of evidence for the lost and damaged originals. Among notable predecessors for the genre can be counted the albums of “visually appealing” manuscript fragments created by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) or the cuttings prepared by John Ruskin (1819-1900) and others.

Examining the complex legacy of these various re-creators of medieval manuscripts and other written materials and the range of projects dedicated to them from perspectives and fields of many kinds, sometimes integrated across a broad spectrum encompassing expertise in the arts and sciences, can advance knowledge in individual projects as well as in wider discourse relating to the transmission of written evidence from generation to generation and century to century, with losses, discoveries, and reconstitutions along the way.

Our focus for the co-sponsored Autumn Colloquium is the legacy of book-breakers, book-destroyers, and book-recreators active in multiple centers in Europe, the British Isles, and North America (at least), with the fragments produced by their activities and transmitted to diverse locations worldwide, often without appropriate identifying information. Our task, as receivers of the evidence from such disruptions, is to make sense of the evidence, identify it appropriately, recognize its characteristics as bodies of witnesses with a complex history, compare information about diverse projects (in many centers) relating to these materials, gather feedback, and disseminate the results to a wide audience.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, detail.

Purpose

This 2025 Colloquium stands within the long tradition of symposia, colloquia, workshops, and other scholarly events of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, now entering its second quarter-of-a-century as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey. The RGME is dedicated to the study of manuscripts and other written records across the centuries. This year our theme is “Thresholds and Communities”.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf with music and notation for liturgical chants: Verso.

For the 2025 Autumn Colloquium on 21–23 November, the RGME collaborates with the University of Waterloo and its range of programs and projects, including the Cantus Database and the DRAGEN Lab.

The Advisory Committee for the Colloquium comprises:

Mildred Budny, Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Debra Lacoste, Cantus Database, University of Waterloo; The Institute of Mediaeval Music; Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission, Dalhousie University
David Porreca, Associate Professor; President, Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo; Co-Director, Medieval Studies Undergraduate Program; Department of Classical Studies and Department of History, University of Waterloo

Spanning three days with half-days on Friday and Sunday, the Colloquium will include a series of sessions with presentations and Q&A, roundtable discussions/panels, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions of several kinds.

To augment the scholarly sessions of presentations and discussions, we plan for displays of original materials in manuscript or other forms and demonstrations of the sounds of music represented in medieval manuscript fragments. Among them is a SoundWalk which allows passersby to access audio recordings of specific musical passages preserved on medieval leaves in collections including the DRAGEN Lab and the Cantus Database.

A Reception ending each day’s sessions will lead from the scholarly program to further conversations.

Participants

Participants represent a wide range of interests, approaches, subjects, centers, and materials.

Speakers, Respondents, Panelists, Hosts, and Presiders

Rejoined Pieces of a Leaf from a Book of Hours. Private Collection, reproduced by permission.

Rejoined Pieces of a Leaf from a Book of Hours. Private Collection. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Participants include (in alphabetical order):

Alison Altstatt (University of Northern Iowa)
Steven Bednarski (DRAGEN Lab, University of Waterloo)
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
John P. Chalmers (Retired)
Katharine C. Chandler (University of Arkansas)
Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America)
Juilee Decker (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Augustine Dickinson (University of Hamburg)
Scott Ellwood (Grolier Club Library)
Steven Galbraith (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Hannah Goeselt (Massachusetts Historical Library)
Scott Gwara (University of South Carolina and King Alfred’s Notebook LLC)
Elizabeth Hebbard (Indiana University Bloomington and Peripheral Manuscripts Project)
Josephine Koster (Winthrop University)
Debra Lacoste (University of Waterloo, Cantus Database, and Dalhousie University)
David Porreca (University of Waterloo)
Eleanor Price (University of Rochester)
Agnieszka Rec (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)
Irina Savinetskaya (Syracuse University)
Kate Steiner (Conrad Grebel University College and University of Waterloo)
Anna Siebach–Larsen (University of Rochester)
Richard Weber (Independent Scholar)
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz (University of Leeds)

And others . . .

Some Results

RGME tradition produces illustrated Program Booklets for major events such as this Colloquium, with participants’ abstracts and selected accompanying illustrations, to grant insider glimpses for our audience (at the event and after) not necessarily familiar with the wide range of subjects and materials under discussion.

A recent example from our 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm” can be downloaded from the RGME website:

2024 Autumn Symposium Booklet

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, with the Opening of the Liturgical Kalendar for the Month of February.

We explore sources of funding and sponsorship for the event as a whole. Information about the results would emerge as these explorations advance. Our aim is to have an in-person event with online access (for speakers and audience) for a fully hybrid colloquium; the online functionality would occur by Zoom Meetings (rather than Webinars with closed access). If funding proves elusive for the in-person facets as well, the event will take place online by Zoom.

We hope to welcome you to the Colloquium.

*****

Note: For information about the RGME Autumn Colloquium as it develops, please continue to visit this ‘Home Page’.

For related RGME events, please see, for example:

2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia

Registration

To register for RGME events, please visit:

RGME Eventbrite Collections

To register for the Autumn Colloquium, we offer portals to attend online or in person respectively.

1) Register for ONLINE Attendance

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium: Tickets for ONLINE Attendance

2) Register for IN PERSON Attendance

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium: Tickets for IN PERSON Attendance

Registration Fees

Circumstances lead us to charge a modest registration fee to attend this 3-day event. The extra costs for preparations in several formats and from different locations require a registration fee to help to offset them.

When you register, we ask you please to add the Eventbrite handling fee for the transaction, as a contribution to the RGME’s costs for this event.

1) General Attendance: $60 US per person

2) Student Discount for Official Students: $35 US per person. When registering for the discount, please let us know your registered affiliation as a student.

The registration fee is waived only for Speakers and Presiders, for whose contributions we give thanks.

We also encourage you to consider adding a Voluntary Donation in support of the RGME, a Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization principally powered by volunteers. See:

We thank you for your support and your interest in the Colloquium.

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, with the Liturgical Kalendar for the Month of February: Top.

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Among them are the

2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia (online or hybrid)
Episodes of “The Research Group Speaks” (online)
RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.” (online, in person, or hybrid)
Meetings of the Friends of the RGME (online)

Please consider making a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

We thank the hosts, co-organizers, advisers, and participants for generously contributing to this Colloquium.

*****

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Verso.

Tags: Albums of Manuscript Fragments, Biblioclasts, Broken Books, CANTUS Database, Dispersed Manuscripts, DRAGEN Lab, Early modern printing, Fragmentology, Leaf-Books, manuscript fragments, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Otto Ege Portfolios, Otto F. Ege, Philip C. Duschnes, RGME Colloquia, University of Waterloo
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2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: RGME Program

December 9, 2024 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, ICMS, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Manuscript Studies

2025 International Medieval Congress
at Leeds:
RGME Program

32nd Annual IMC
Monday to Thursday 07–10 July 2025
(with In-Person and Virtual Components)

“Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”
(3 Sessions + Roundtable)

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”
(1 Session)

Congress Theme: “Worlds of Learning”

Private Collection. Stereoscopic Photograph of Bridges of Paris, circa 1850s.

[Posted on 8 December 2024]

Building upon the successful completion of our RGME Inaugural Session at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at the University of Leeds in July 2024, and responding to the strength and numbers of proposals for our Call for Papers for the IMC in 2025, we announce the Program for our sponsored activities at next year’s Congress.

For information about the Congress, see

its official website and
the Padlet Page showing the range of organised sessions advertising for papers (as part of the Call for Papers, now completed).

“Worlds of Learning” at Leeds in 2025

The Thematic Focus for the IMC in 2025 is “Worlds of Learning”. The broad scope is described in the general Call for Papers: IMC 2025 – ‘Worlds of Learning’.

The worlds to explore in and for learning are wide. We look to manuscripts as carriers, portals, and thresholds, in keeping with our chosen theme for 2025 RGME activities, “Thresholds and Communities”.

Our Aims

Our set of interlinked events planned for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) focuses on the power and potential of manuscripts to contain, convey, and embody worlds of learning within their span. In effect, given their structure and contents, as we approach them as beholder, user, reader, student, teacher, or admirer, they may carry worlds in our hands.

How might medieval manuscripts do so, variously for their medieval audience, later intermediaries, and our own times? How might and do they function as “Worlds of Learning” in their own right/write? We explore.

As interest has grown, the two sessions (plus roundtable) which we planned for “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning” grew into three (plus roundtable), amounting to four events. See:

Call for Papers for “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”

We also present a Session with Papers devoted to “Game Knowledge and Knowledge of Games”, which follows up a strand in our RGME Inaugural Session this year.

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”: An RGME Session for IMC 2025

Following in succession the close of the Call for Papers, our choices for the programs for the sessions and roundtable, and the acceptance of all these sessions plus roundtable by the IMC, we present

a suite of events containing three Sessions with Papers accompanied by a Round Table with Discussion, all dedicated to “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”
(Monday 7 July 2025)
a Session with Papers dedicated to “Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge: A Global Perspective on How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit Ludic Knowledge”
(Tuesday 8 July 2025)
Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Games of Knowledges, International Medieval Congress, Knowledge Games, Manuscript studies, Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning, University of Leeds, Worlds of Learning
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Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge: An RGME Session for IMC 2025

August 13, 2024 in Announcements, Call for Papers, Conference, Events, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Manuscript Studies

Call for Papers
“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit Ludic Knowledge”

Session
Sponsored by the RGME
IMC Leeds 2025

Organised by Michael A. Conrad
(University of Sankt-Gallen)

[Posted on 13 August 2024]

Following the success of our Inaugural Session at the International Medieval Congress this year, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence announces its proposed Sessions for the International Medieval Congress to be held at the University of Leeds from 1–10 July 2025.

Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Projet pour le Pont Neuf, circa 1577. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

Background: 2024

Our 2024 Inaugural Session, co-organised by our Associates Ann Pascoe-van Zyl and Michael Allman Conrad, focused on “Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters'”:

2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: 2024

Foreground: 2025

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 E 25, p. 73, top. Image via https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Dublin,_Royal_Irish_Academy,_MS_23_E_25 via Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

For 2025,with the IMC’s Thematic focus of “Worlds of Learning”, the RGME proposes an integrated suite of events comprising a pair of Sessions of papers plus a Roundtable discussion on “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”.

2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Call for Papers (Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning)

In addition, following up on a strand in our 2024 Inaugural Session, the RGME also proposes a sponsored session organised by that session’s co-organizer and presenter, Michael Allman Conrad.

The Plan for the Session

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit
Ludic Knowledge”

Recent scholarship has pointed out time and again how much in the Middle Ages games and other joyful pastimes were not only cherished and accepted as an essential part of everyday life, but also well appreciated as educational tools for making difficult lessons more palatable for students.

Some of these educational games have a long tradition, such as rithmomachia, which was used in schools for instruction in the quadrivial arts and still known by scholars of the 17th century. Some disciplines, such as astronomy, even had their own games — in this case, for example, the ludus astrologicus. The knowledge of such elaborate games was transmitted through manuscripts, often as part of miscellanies. Besides, there is no lack of writings dedicated to more profane games either. In fact, there are collections of board games (and other pastimes), with some of these manuscripts showing very rich and ornate embellishments and game diagrams, along with vivid miniatures depicting players in action.

Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, MS T-I-6, folio 27 verso. Image in the Public Domain, Via Wikipedia Commons.

Examples of such works include

the Book of Games (Libro de acedrez dados e tablas c. 1284) by Alfonso X of Castile, in the Bonus Socius group (13th century?),
the Paris manuscript of Le jeu de echecs by Nicola de S. Nicholai (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), MS fr. 1173, 14th century),
as well as lesser-known manuscripts, such as Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O 2.45 (after 1248 AD).

The book medium, however, poses serious challenges to scribes concerned with conserving and conveying knowledge related to games and other pastimes, as their existence is ephemeral and their experience difficult to verbalize — which is a reason why in the (Arabic and European) tradition medieval books on games usually came with said pictures and diagrams, with the intent to compensate for what cannot be easily expressed through words alone. What is more, in medieval writings on games their epistemological status often remains ambivalent and uncertain, as they were often touted as morally ambiguous and did not fit existing knowledge systems. That said, there nonetheless were some scholars that tried to fit ludic knowledge into prevalent eschatological framework of knowledge, such as Hugh of Saint-Victor, with some of them basing their (re-)assessments of the morality and epistemic status of games and other forms of entertainment on Arabic and Greek influences. As reaffirmed by Hugh and in the work of Thomas Aquinas, the Latin concept of ludus could not only serve as an umbrella term for various kinds of games, but all forms of entertainment.

While the focus of the proposed Session is games, the evocation of ludic knowledge is intended as an invitation to different kinds of pastimes in order jointly to examine how medieval scholars dealt with game-related forms of knowledge, from material objects to their metaphysical and anthropological relevance. Especially the latter implies and extends the perspective towards practices employing games and other pastimes methodologically for educational purposes. Consequently, the geographical scope is not restricted to the European sphere. On the contrary, since there is strong evidence that European game manuscripts drew much from Arabic and other non-Latin traditions, contributors focusing on the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, India, or other cultural world regions are very much welcome and encouraged to partake.

Some possible questions could be (but are not limited to):

What do we know about the authorship of game manuscripts?
Are the works written by single individuals or collectives?
In what types of miscellanies do writings on games and game manuals appear and why?
How do manuscripts/authors deal with ephemeral aspects of games and other pastimes that are difficult to be expressed linguistically?
How can we reconstruct the concrete educational practices wherein games and other pastimes were used?
What hints thereof can we find in the material evidence of manuscripts?
How do authors try to systematize ludic knowledge and where do they position it within given epistemic frameworks?
What can we say about the relationship between game diagrams and diagrammatic representations in scientific disciplines in terms of a shared visual vocabulary?

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.45, fols 2v-3r. Image copyright the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, via CC-NY 4.0.

Note on the Image

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O 2.45 (after 1248 AD), folios 2v and 3r. Accompanying the text, diagrams and illustrations depict two chess boards, an alquerque, a nine-mens-morris and a daldøsa game board. The first moves of the game are already played.

Image © the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, via License CC BY-NC 4.0 via Trinity College Cambridge.

Proposals

For information about submitting your proposals for our Sessions, please see the CFP for our companion suite for IMC 2025:

2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Call for Papers (Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning)

Deadlines for Proposals

5 September 2024 for your individual paper proposals for our RGME Sessions and Round-table Discussion
30 September 2024 for the RGME to complete and submit its programmes.

To prepare your proposals, see the IMC instructions

How to Submit a Proposal

Send your proposals for our Session to us at

[email protected] by 5 September 2024

When your proposals are accepted, we will direct you to submit them through the

IMC-Leeds Confex Submission Portal

Spread the Word

Look for our RGME CFPs on the IMC 2025 website:

IMC 2025 Padlet Page

Questions and Suggestions?

If you wish, please:

add your Comments here,
send us a message (Contact Us),
visit our Facebook Page and Facebook Group,
join the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (there is no charge), and
register for our events on our RGME Eventbrite Portal:
RGME Eventbrite Collection

*****

Tags: Alfonso X of Castile, Board Games, Book of Games, Chess, Games in the Middle Ages, History of Board Games, Jeu des echecs, Le jeu de echecs, Ludus astrologicus, Manuscript studies, Quadrivia, Rhythmomachy
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Medieval Women’s Networks

August 4, 2024 in Announcements, Event Registration, Events, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Women's Networks

“Medieval Women’s Networks:
Exploring Tools and Techniques
for Digital Analysis”

A Pair of Interactive Public Workshops

co-organized by
Kathy Krause and Laura Morreale
and co-sponsored by the RGME

Thursday and Friday 17–18 October 2024 (Online)
12:30–14:30 pm EDT (GMT-4)

[Posted on 5 August 2024, with updates]

We gladly announce another event for our 2024 Anniversary Year.

The RGME has been invited to co-sponsor the free 2-day online event to explore and advance the swiftly developing world of work on Medieval Women’s Networks.

Co-Organizers

The event is conceived and co-organized by experts

Kathy Krause (University of Missouri, Kansas City, Emerita)
Laura Morreale (Independent Scholar and Middle Ages for Educators)

Laura, our RGME Associate, gave a presentation for our 2024 Anniversary Symposium “Manuscript Heart” in February. This coming event joins a series of collaborative events and projects which she helps to organize, accomplish, and publish.

We are glad to join forces with Kathy and her and all the co-sponsors for Medieval Womens’ Networks.

Co-Sponsors

To be held online, the event is co-sponsored by

Center for Digital and Public Humanities, the University of Missouri Kansas City
Digital Medievalist
the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and a generous Anonymous Benefactor.

UMKC Center for Digital and Public Humanities Logo

RGME Logo

Digital Medievalist Logo

Dates

The Interactive Public Workshop will take place over two days, in sessions devoted respectively to

1) Projects. Thursday 17 October 2024
2) Data. Friday 18 October 2024

Each session is scheduled for 12:30–2:30 pm EDT (GMT-4) online.

For information see the flyer, shown here, and links below.

“Medieval Women’s Networks” Flyer.

Participants

Speakers and Digital Humanities Experts come from an international variety of centers and perspectives.

Speakers for Workshop 1: Projects

Adrienne Williams Boyarin (University of Victoria)
Elena Brizio (Georgetown University)
Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Sweet Briar College)
S.C. Kaplan (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Samantha Katz–Seal (University of New Hampshire)
Mariah Proctor–Tiffany (University of California, Long Beach)
Yvonne Seale (State University of New York, College at Geneseo)

Digital Humanities Experts for Workshop 2: Data

Kalani Craig (Indiana University)
Erin McCarthy (Saint Lawrence University)
Jeffrey Rudberg–Cox (University of Missouri, Kansas City)
Sébastien de Valeriola (Université libre de Bruxelles)

Information and Registration

To register please visit the Event registration form via Google Docs, where can also be found online information.

1. Event registration

2. An online information sheet

If Google Workspace is not accessible to you, please contact us. (See below.)

The Event flyer is available for download on the RGME website in two formats:

London, British Museum, Additional MS 10292, fol. 149r. Prose Lancelot-Grail. Saint Omer or Tournai, 1316. Image © The British Library.

We thank the co-organizers and co-sponsors of Medieval Women’s Networks for the opportunity to join the carefully-prepared program for this outstanding event. We look forward eagerly to it. We invite you to join it!

*****

Other RGME-sponsored Events
for our 2024 Anniversary Year

2023 and 2024 Events
Episode 17. “RGME Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections (Saturday 21 September, online)
2024 Autumn Symposium “At The Helm” (Friday and Saturday 25-26 October 2024, online)
Episode 18. “Women as Makers of Books” (Saturday 14 December 2024, online)

To register for these sponsored events, please visit the RGME Eventbrite Collection:

RGME Eventbrite Registration Portal

An RGME Bulletin Board

Ronda, Galicia, Spain, Puente Nuevo Bridge. Photograph 14 August 2007 by Mark Gilbert. Image: Judas6000 at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Punte_Nuevo_Bridge,_Ronda_-_Spain.jpg.

The co-sponsorship for Medieval Women’s Networks leads the RGME to open a new page on our website for news about activities, projects, conference papers, publications, and initiatives by people of the RGME. Functioning as a form of bulletin board with announcements, it appears here:

Around and About with the RGME

First up, with an announcement by Laura Morreale, is the Sweet 16 Competition launched by the Princeton-based Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE). The due date for proposals is 1 October 2024.

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

Visit our Social Media:

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group

Join the Friends of the RGME.

Consider making a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

Remember to register for “Medieval Women’s Networks” for 17–18 October 2024 (see above). See you there!

*****

Tags: Center for Digital and Public Humanities, Digital Medievalist, Interactive Public Workshop, Medieval Women's Networks, RGME Anniversary, RGME Anniversary Year, University of Missouri Kansas City
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

May 15, 2024 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Anniversary, Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, ICMS, Illustrated Handlist, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell:
Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants,
Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

[Posted on 14 May 2024]

Western Michigan University, Valley III from the side. Photograph: David W. Sorenson.

After the successful completion of all our activities at the 59th Annual 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we report our accomplishments and give updates about changes to the Program which we announced (with updates as appropriate) for its items. See the full ICMS Program issued by its organizing Committee:

2024 Congress Program, with Corrigenda.

The Journey

Already from our first preparations toward the 2024 Congress,

starting with the 2023 Congress and our Open Business Meeting there to invite proposals,
moving on to our proposals for Sessions for 2024 submitted to the Congress Committee by 1 June 2023,
progressing with the approved Call for Papers for the 2024 ICMS,
reaching the firm conclusion of that Call on 15 September 2024, and
selecting the Program for our Sessions according to responses to that Call and related developments,

we have made revisions and provided updates for our plan.

They gave rise to our announcement for our own (and co-sponsored) Program (including the details of Sessions, their speakers, titles of papers, order of presentation, and so on; as well as ancillary events such as the Anniversary Reception), its updates throughout the months from October to May and the start of the Congress. Now we follow up with the Report.

The proposals received not only yielded Programs for which the order of Papers and the follow-up invitation to Presiders and Panelists, but also encouraged us to combine resources within the Research Group, with our frequent co-sponsor, the Societas Magica, and with others. Thus we collaboratively created a strong program of activities for the 2024 Congress.

Along the way, between

the submission of our selected Program to the Congress Committee by 15 October 2023,
its acceptance,
the assignment of dates, times, and venues for the individual activities for the 2024 Congress Program as officially published (with a series of Corrigenda, not affecting us, as the date of the Congress approached), and
the start of the Congress itself on Thursday 9 May 2024, with events variously in online and/or in-person formats,

our own 2024 Congress Program has had a few minor revisions, as people and technological arrangements permitted.

These changes did not interfere with the overall success of our activities. Our 2024 Congress Program reported various changes up to the Congress; this Report describes those effected at or around the Congress.

Access Included

As in 2023, the RGME responded to the partly ‘hybrid’ conditions of the Congress by providing its Zoom Meetings for two scheduled solely ‘In Person’ Sessions, as well as for our In-Person catered lunchtime Open Business Meeting, and by reserving an onsite Remote Participation Room on campus for those participants for a scheduled ‘Virtual’ Session who were present at the Congress to be able to gather to sign on to the online Session hosted by the Congress Confex Portal. The RGME managed all these extra Zoom provisions and reservations, as part of its contribution to sponsoring or co-sponsoring Sessions at the ICMS over the years.

It can be worth noting that those donations — at the cost of the RGME, are made possible by donations to enable its Zoom Subscription, by our own provisions for technical backup, and principally by the many pro-bono donations by its Director as overall organizer and co-ordinator of the RGME activities at the Congress and elsewhere — are not covered within the costs to produce the Congress, which registration fees by attendees online and in-person work to subsidize. The extra efforts by the RGME to provide features or facilities for the contributors, participants, and attendees of its activities at the Congress, whether online or onsite, correspond with our approach to our activities of many kinds.

In this spirit, the RGME has consistently stepped up to the plate in response to changes in the facilities for the ICMS before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the Congress was successively

1) cancelled outright (2020),
2) rescheduled in online format only (2021), and
3) re-introduced in a partly in-person, partly virtual, ‘hybrid’ format (2022, 2o23, 2024, and more).

Throughout these developments, responding to their changing requirements, the RGME has continued to seek, insofar as possible with our own limited resources, to provide access to our sponsored and co-sponsored Congress activities to as wide an audience as possible, including those with disablilities, health issues, and difficulties in finding resources to travel and cover expenses to attend the Congress in person.

These ‘extras’ which we provide stand alongside the RGME tradition for many years of promoting our authors and the contributions of their work to our Congress Programs (see our Congress Activities) by the series of RGME promotional notices for the year’s Congress (with updates):

on our official Website (You are Here),
on our Social Media (listed Below),
in the Posters for each of our Congress activities, and
in the Congress Abstracts which we publish for the Authors’ presentations.

The Posters normally are displayed in printed form at the Congress — where permitted, such as on cork boards in the different buildings and in the rooms where our events take place — and on the RGME website, with printed copies also sent to presenters as souvenirs to display in their offices or studies and to give to their mothers. For example for the 2015 Congress:

Derek Shank stands beside the RGME Poster Display for the 2025 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The Abstracts appear in their own individual webpages — which can 1) extend for a longer span than the assigned limit (100 words) for the submission of a proposal for a Congress Paper; 2) add notes, links, and bibliography; and 3) include images — as publications in their own right.

Moreover, we take care to index all the Authors’ Abstracts for a given Congress to grant wider access both:

Alphabetically by Author’s Surname and
Chronologically by Year of Author’s Presentation.

The Arrival

After the Journey to arrive, there remained some bumps in the road at the destination. The RGME Director was unable to travel for health reasons, and so had to attend online.

Program

One person on the Program for one Session decided not to attend. Technical issues with one Speaker’s PowerPoint Presentation and its Zoom projection interrupted a short span of the flow of slides in an expertly crafted presentation in another Session, but this interruption could smoothly be kept to a brief minimum through co-ordination prepared ahead of time between the Speaker and the RGME Zoom Host, together with the Session Organizer. The prepared co-ordination ahead of time for hybrid access dropped the ball between one scheduled in-person Session and the RGME-hosted Zoom online facility, required, it turned out, not as an extra, but as an essential, so as to enable the Presider and two of the Speakers unable to travel to the Congress to participate in the Session.

Audience Participation

At the last minute, an audience member generously offered to lend his computer so that the Organizer / Second Speaker could connect the Zoom Meeting for the Session and the In-Person Room. We give thanks to collegiality and generous resourcefulness.

Posters

Another surprise came for the RGME Posters for our Congress Activities when the eve of the Congress arrived and participants came on site. We suddenly discovered that the 2024 Congress prohibited the display of posters anywhere in a printed form, apart from selected tables requiring horizontal piles, rather than enabling vertical display for which our Posters are designed.

This change meant that the extra efforts by our Trustee and Co-Organizer David Porreca in the days before the Congress to produced printed Posters for display and distribution there — while our Director could not travel to the Congress to bring them as usual — were thwarted. Henceforth, we will plan accordingly and distribute our Posters outside the Congress walls, both in digital and printed formats.

By fortunate choice, without knowing about the Congress’s redirections, the Director had posted the newly-designed Posters in a Web Gallery of their own on our website just a couple of days before the Congress, in a new departure for our tradition of sponsorship and co-sponsorship. Customarily, she would post them in the RGME webpost for the year’s Congress shortly after it had been accomplished, as part of its Report. (See 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report.)

Now, see the special Pop-Up Exhibition!

RGME Pop-Up Poster Exhibition for the 2024 ICMS

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 2

The Program as Accomplished

Our Program comprised:

three Co-sponsored Sessions
our Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Anniversary Reception.

In stages, first (in November 2023) we announced the Sessions, and reported the sequence of papers for them. Next (January 2024), with information from the ICMS, we could report their assigned times, days, and locations on campus in cases of the in-person events, along with our other activities at the Congress. Then we began to publish the abstracts for them; that process is now completed. Soon we will complete the Indexes for them.

For the In-Person Sessions and the Open Business Meeting, the RGME provided an online option for Congress Registrants through our Zoom Subscription and our Eventbrite Registration Portal:

Eventbrite: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

Like last year (see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), the RGME offered Registration (without charge) for Online access through our Zoom Subscription to some of our In-Person events this year. Likewise we offered registration for our two In-Person events to help us to learn how many to expect to attend for our planning and the catering for our Open Business Meeting and Co-Sponsored Reception.

For one Online Session, a remote-participation conference room was reserved so that participants and attendees on campus for the Congress might gather to join the online format while in company.

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

In 2024, the RGME celebrates its Anniversary Year to mark 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey, and 25 years as an international scholarly society founded out of a major research project at Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge.

For our Anniversary Year, the theme is “Bridges”.

“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Ada Bridge pylon, Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph Petar Milošević (1 August 2021). Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Abstracts of Congress Papers, Bridges, Early Printed Books, History of Alchemy, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Manuscript studies, P.-O.M.o.N.A., Postal History at Kalamazoo, RGME Anniversary, RGME Anniversary Reception, RGME Business Meeting, RGME Posters, Societas Magica
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RGME Pop-UP Poster Exhibition for the 2024 ICMS

May 4, 2024 in Bembino, Business Meeting, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, Exhibition, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Reception

RGME Posters on Display
for the
2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)

9–11 May in hybrid format

[Posted on 3 May 2024]

Our Pop-Up Poster Display for the 2024 ICMS

As the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies approaches (9–11 May in partly hybrid format), we unveil our Posters for all our events at this Congress. Our Congress activities form part of our Anniversary Year, celebrating 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation and 35 years as an international scholarly society. For this year, our Theme is Bridges. Besides considering the nature of bridges, both natural and man-made, and exploring their challenges and opportunities, we take the liberty of creating some new ones — as with this Pop-Up Poster Session or Exhibition for the 2024 Congress.

Natural Owachomo Bridge, Natural Bridges Natural Monument, San Juan County, Utah. Image via Laban712 on en, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This Virtual Exhibition marks a new development for our evolving tradition of Posters for our different Events, comprising Conference Sessions, Symposia, Colloquia, Seminars, Workshops, Receptions, and more. Here, by bringing the set of Posters into an exhibition of their own, we offer a bridge between our webpost for the Congress; our printed Posters for the in-person event and for souvenirs afterward; and for download in digital form from our website.

Our website Home Page for our 2024 ICMS Activities describes each of these events in turn, with descriptions about their scope and aims, instructions for directions to them, and information about the programs of the individual sessions, also with the speakers’ abstracts for their presentations.

The directions include options to register for online access to scheduled in-person events — some Sessions and our Open Business Meeting — through our RGME Eventbrite Collection (at no charge), so as to provide a fully hybrid approach to the Congress. Similarly, for a scheduled online Session, we have arranged for an in-person approach by reserving a room on campus for in-person attendees of the Congress.

See:

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

In a Nutshell

Now, the Posters present, in a nutshell, information about each session of papers or meeting, including updated details which did not emerge in time for the published Congress Program, but which our 2024 RGME @ ICMS HomePage has been able to report through revisions as the news reached us.

The RGME tradition for its sessions and other events at the ICMS has been to prepare Posters announcing, promoting, and celebrating the people participating in creating them; providing evocative illustrations encapsulating or, as it were, commenting upon them; and given concise information about the event and its logistics of time, place, and modes of arrival.

Over the years, the RGME Director, Mildred Budny (also Editor-in-Chief of Publications), has prepared the Posters for our ICMS activities (as for other Events), with the inspiration of images generously provided by our Associates and others, notably including David W. Sorenson, and with the help of the RGME Font and Layout Designer, using the RGME copyright digital font Bembino and RGME principles for our Publications, set out according to our Style Manifesto and our specifications for Designing Academic Posters.

Usually, the Director would bring the Posters to the ICMS for unveiling at the Congress, in printed copies displayed in various places (as a group upon general poster boards or individually at the door or on the wall of the session or meeting itself.

2014 ICMS

Adelaide Bennett stands beside the RGME Posters on display for the 2014 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

2015 ICMS

Derek Shank stands beside the RGME Poster Display for the 2025 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Fit to Print, Free to Keep

Each year, we bring printed copies to display on walls, doors, and boards, where permitted, and also to give to speakers, contributors, and others wishing souvenirs. We offer them also in digital form, to be downloaded free of charge on our website. The links for these downloads are indicated in the HomePage for the event (or in other locations on our website).

Online Exhibition

Until now, our habit has been to place the Posters, once they are ready, within the HomePage for the event. Thus usually occurs at a late stage in the preparations for the year’s Congress, once the final details have settled into place and most of our other tasks of preparation have taken precedence.

This year, in order to allow the Posters to stand alongside each other to tell their stories in unison, we present a curated Gallery or Pop-Up Poster Exhibition for your enjoyment.

The Posters tell in a nutshell the information you might need and wish to know about the event itself, how and where to find it, who is featured in its presentation, and what feature image or images might evoke its essence.

The information includes updated information which the Congress Program does not have, as some logistics evolved after the publication of the Congress Program, and as some details do not have a place in its structure.

Two-By-Two as Pairs or Diptychs

Paris, Louvre Museum, Ivory consular diptych of Areobindus, Byzantium, 506 AD. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.s

Note that, in recent years, we design the posters for individual Sessions as Pairs, to be viewed as Diptychs, in matching sets similar to the facing pages of an opened book.

In a given Pair, one Poster displays the names of the people responsible for the Session or Roundtable. The other exhibits a feature image or two.

While they share identifying elements, each poster in the pair reports information unique to it, so that the two posters provide more information than can one alone. Together they report a concise comprehensive indication of the ensemble which the event represents, encompassing people, a place, a time, and a focus for consideration.

Meetings

Anniversary Reception

2024 Anniversary Reception at the ICMS: Poster.

Open Business Meeting

2024 RGME Business Meeting Poster

Sessions and a Roundtable

“Alchemical Manuscripts, Printed Books, and Materials”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 2

2. “Retrospect and Prospect”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS “Retrospect and Prospects” Session: Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS “Retrospect and Prospects” Session: Poster 2

3. “Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices:
Mail in the Medieval World”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS Postal Session: Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS Postal Session: Poster 2

*****

Suggestion Box

Do you like this Pop-Up Exhibition? Would you like to see more of them?

Please Contact Us or visit

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give. Given our low overheads, your donations have direct impact on our work and the furtherance of our mission. For our Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, your donations may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law. Thank you for your support!

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: 2024 ICMS, 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Anniversary Reception, Bembino, Bembino Digital Font, Business Meeting, Designing Academic Posters, POMONA, Pop-Up Exhibition, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Poster Exhibition, RGME Posters, RGME Publications, Societas Magica, Style Manifesto
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2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

October 23, 2023 in Events, ICMS, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, POMONA, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception

[Posted on 22 October 2023]

After the successful completion of our activities at the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we offer a Report about them. For their programs and the abstracts of their presentations, see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program.

Note that Abstracts for Papers published on our website appear in the Indexes of the Abstracts for Papers, listed both by Alphabetical order of Author’s Surname and by Year.

Logistics

2023 ICMS: Pedagogy II viewed online. Michael Allman presents. Photography by Mildred Budny.

This year’s Congress presented more logistical challenges than ever before, in our experience of attending the annual ICMS. They were due to the complex and incompletely or perplexingly described conditions for holding the Congress in a nominal ‘hybrid’ format, with few fully hybrid events and the necessity for organizers mostly to choose either in-person or online formats — or to provide the alternative through their own resources.

In that way, for example, once the rules were clarified (within only a fortnight of the Congress), the RGME was able resourcefully to provide (through its own Zoom subscription) for online access to events assigned as in-person and to arrange (sometimes with payment) for a room to be made available for registrants on site at the Congress to gather for participating in sessions assigned as online. We thank the Congress staff for enabling those arrangements once we learned that they might be permitted.

Our activities comprised five co-sponsored scholarly Sessions, our annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress, and a co-sponsored Reception.

The extra arrangements for in-person facilities for the online sessions and online access for in-person sessions were designed also for the convenience of participants for our events on the first day of the Congress, which had a consecutive series of Morning Session / Lunchtime Business Meeting / two Afternoon Sessions / Reception. With the Morning Session in a nearby building, the other events that day, by design, took place on one building.

Co-Sponsorship

Societas Magica: 2 Sessions and the Reception
Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS): 2 Sessions
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.): 1 Session
Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University: Reception

This year marked Year 19 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica; the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with POMONA, the third of co-sponsorship with the Index of Medieval Art, and the first year of co-sponsorship with SIMS.

As always, we thank the host, organizers, co-sponsors, presiders, speakers, respondents, advisers, and participants for our activities at the Congress, along with the Congress staff and support staff.

The Sequence of Events

Day 1 of the Congress (Thursday 11 May) had a full set of events. They opened with the Morning Session, led to the RGME Open Business Meeting (with lunch provided), followed with a pair of Afternoon Sessions, and rounded out with the co-hosted Reception.

Day 3 (Saturday 13 May) had a pair of Afternoon Sessions.

The shortness of the notice and the complexity of the RGME’s extra preparations for an ad-hoc fully hybrid format imposed further problems in communicating updated information which, in the rush of last-minute preparations and conflicting information, meant that not all participants received the relevant information in time. Notably this affected the extra online arrangements for the in-person sessions on Saturday afternoon, so that the first one did not have an on-site log-in for the online component.

Informal “Evening Sessions”. Outside the Program, a set of traditional informal gatherings offered the occasion to revive the in-person tradition of meetings in an ad-hoc ‘Board Room’ where board games, brought to the table for the occasion, formed a focus of activity and conversation. As usual, they included some elements of RGME planning. This year, they included an ad-hoc hybrid component for participation at a distance as well.

Our Report of all our activities at the 2023 Congress relates their accomplishment, celebrates the presentations, praises the work of organization, notes a few changes in the program and accessibility for the sessions, displays the full set of posters for our events, and illustrates some memorable moments.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Albert the Great, Binding Archaeology, Binding Spines and Fastenings, Board Games, Board Room, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 286, Datini Collection, Ephesia Grammata, Gospels of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Gutenberg Biblt, History of Bindings, History of Pedagogy, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studiesieval Studies, Islamic Bookbindings, Manuscript studies, Open Business Meeting, Otto Ege Fragments, Reception, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Societas Magica, William Fulke, Words as Agents
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2021 Congress Program Announced

December 16, 2020 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Announcements, Business Meeting, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

Activities of the
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
At the
56th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(10–15 May 2021)

Following the Call for Papers
(due by 15 September 2020)
and the Selection of Papers (due by 1 October 2020)
We announce the Program for our Sessions

#kzoo2021 / #kazoo2021

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Dutch Book of Hours made for a female patron in the mid 15th century. Opening page of the Hours of the Virgin: "Here du salste opdoen mine lippen". Image via Creative Commons. At the bottom of the bordered page, an elegantly dressed woman sits before a shiny bowl- or mirror-like object, in order, perhaps, to perform skrying or to lure a unicorn.

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Dutch Book of Hours. Image via Creative Commons.

Following the 2021 Congress Call for Papers, the Selection of proposed Papers, and the submission of the Programs for our Sessions to the Congress Committee (see our 2021 Congress Planning), we announce the Program for our Sessions and our other Activities for the 2021 ICMS Congress.

All activities at the Congress are scheduled to take place only “virtually”. For such virtual plans, see the Congress page of the Medieval Institute.

Watch this space. We await instructions from the Congress Committee regarding the revised approach to Sessions.

Note that, once the Committee announced that the Congress would have to go ‘virtual’, all 3 co-sponsors for our planned Reception agreed that it would make sense to wait for such an event until some suitable occasion in person. However, we continue to plan for all 5 Sessions and our Open Business Meeting.

Update on 26 March 2021:
The Program of the Congress is now available. For information about the Congress, see its website.

*****

In a Nutshell

Open Business Meeting: All are Welcome

Thursday, 13 May at 12:00 pm EDT.

2021 Congress Program, page 99.

Sessions

Seal the Real, I–II

Congress Sessions 259 and 279, Virtually on
Thursday, 13 May at 11:00 am EDT and at 1:00 pm EDT

2021 Congress Program, pages 92–93 and 100–101.

Medieval Magic in Theory:
Prologues to Learned Texts of Magic

Congress Session 103, Virtually on
Tuesday, 11 May at 11:00 am EDT

2021 Congress Program, pages 38–39.

Revealing the Unknown, Parts I–II

Congress Sessions 181 and 201, Virtually on
Wednesday, 12 May at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm EDT

2021 Congress Program, pages 66 and 73.

Details follow here.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Bibliomancy, History of Documents, History of Magic, Manuscript studies, Matthew Paris, Medieval Lapidaries, Medieval Prologues, Medieval Seals, Picatrix, Reused Antique Gems, Scrying, Seals and Signatures, Sortilège, Thomas Hoccleve
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2019 Congress Behind the Scenes Report

May 6, 2020 in Anniversary, Conference, Events, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Reception, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

Light at the End of the Corridor

Behind the Scenes

RGME Activities
at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies

[Posted on 6 May 2020]

At the End of the 2019 Congress. A view down the dorm corridor, with Light at the End of the Tunnel.

At the End of the 2019 Congress: “Light at the End of the Corridor”.

Following the successful completion of our activities at the 2019 Congress, we offer an informal glimpse Behind the Scenes. Customarily, the completion of the Congress is followed by its Report. Occasionally, there also follows a Behind-the-Scenes Report. For the 2019 Congress, we planned already then to offer such an additional, informal Report, but events and tasks arising along the way back from the Congress pushed back its timetable for completion. Then, in steady succession, other tasks and activities occupied attention.

Some are reported in our blog about our Congress Activities, as we prepared for the 2020 Congress, while others have their say in our blog about Manuscript Studies, and in our reports about other Events, including the 2020 Spring Symposium. The required cancellation in March and April 2020 of that Symposium and the 2020 Congress as a whole led to further re-arrangements. Among other things, we attended to publishing the 2020 Symposium Booklet and the Abstracts for all our 2020 Congress Sessions as “souvenirs” of what had been planned. Research Group plans and adaptations, including possible rescheduling of parts of those events, are reported in the announcement about Keeping Up: Updates for Spring 2020. Now, as the appointed time would have come to travel to the 2020 Congress as formerly intended, we revisit the 2019 Congress with its Behind-the-Scenes Report, including some hindsight.

Earlier Reports from Behind-the-Scenes

Tardis

For the 2016 Congress Report, its Follow-Up Report took shape under the title of Doctor Who-Done-It. That term had its inspiration from a conversation on the way from one of the Research Group co-sponsored Sessions to our Reception, likewise co-sponsored with the Societas Magica. Then it was revealed that our Director, Dr. Mildred Budny, drives an equivalent of the Tardis (a conveyance for “Time and Relative Dimension in Space”).

As described on the official website for Doctor Who (see also Doctor Who), the Tardis is the “Doctor’s method of travel through both time and space — all Gallifreyan Time Lords use TARDISes for getting from A to B — and from then to now.” Who knew that this conveyance would also figure among the activities behind the scenes at the 2019 Congress?

The conversation at the 2016 Congress had to do with transporting some copies of the Illustrated Catalogue to the Reception for collection by their new owners. 2016 was the first year that our Director elected to drive, rather than to fly, to Kalamazoo for the Congress — because of the new arrangements by which the Research Group, as its co-publisher, took over the distribution of that Publication, and through which our Director had identified prospective owners, who wished to collect their copies at the Congress (rather than, say, to have to cover the international shipping costs). At that Congress, our Director could be seen with some of these copies in tow, on a wheeled luggage cart, on the way from one Session or Meeting to another. On the way to the Reception, there came the question if the ones that time were the only ones that had been brought. “Oh, no! These are not the same ones that you have seen on earlier days of the Congress. These are new, and there are more where they came from, for tomorrow.””

“Ah”, said Collin. “Where do they [meaning the new ones] come from?”
“Ah”, said our Director, “They come from the back of my car. There are the refills.”
“Oh! So your car is the Tardis”.

And so came the title Doctor Who-Done-It.

At the next Congress, the 2017 Congress Report included an image of that conveyance, again in the company of the Illustrated Catalogue and one of its new owners.

Book Signing for Mildred Budny's Illustrated Catalogue, on a Sunny Afternoon outside Fetzer at the 2017 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Tardis Included.

Book Signing Scene outside Fetzer at the 2017 Congress. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Gathering

Arriving at the Congress base to register on the Eve of the Congress, some of us gathered, as customary, at Bilbos Pizza. Then it was time to place the Research Group Posters on billboards, where permitted and where space allowed.

RGME and Other Posters at the 2019 Congress.

The landscapes also await Arrivals. Here, outside one of the Dorms — inside which, on occasions, we visit the Board Room (see below).

Plant Life to Greet the Congress Attendees. Row of Hostas alongside the Walkway. Photograph Mildred Budny.

Plant Life to Greet the Congress Attendees. Photograph Mildred Budny.

Setting the Stage

Preparing to start the Sessions and to engage in their Question-and-Answer discussions, our participants engaged in arranging the projection and other aims. The official Report for this Congress includes some Group Portraits of contributors to the different Sessions. Here, two Speakers set up the projection for their joint paper at our first Session of the Congress, the Organizer of one of our co-sponsored Sessions participates in its discussion, and the Respondent for that Session strokes his beard as he delivers his paper.

Ian Cornelius and James Eric Ensley prepare to tell us about “The Lost Medieval Exemplar of Beinecke Library, Takamiya MS 23”

Eric and Ian Check the Projection for their Joint Paper at the 2019 Congress.

Vajra Regan listens to the progress of his Session on “Embedded in the Mainstream: Ritual Magic Incorporated in ‘Legitimate’ Texts”, one of the 2 Sessions co-sponsored by the Research Group and the Societas Magica .

Vajra at his Session at the 2019 Congress.

Michael A. Conrad offers an erudite Response to Vajra’s Session by his observations “In Plain Sight: The Promotion of Astrology and Magic at Royal Courts in the Thirteenth Century in Transcultural Perspective”.

Michael Presents His Paper at the the 2019 Congress.

It was then that we learned that often, giving Papers, Michael ponders while he holds his beard — an observation which he readily confirmed.

Michael Presents His Paper and Beard at the the 2019 Congress.

2019 Reception and Business Meeting Invitations.

Our Business Meeting

This year’s Open Business Meeting was an outstanding success. So many attendees — newcomers gladly included — that we had to bring in more chairs. Our Associate, William H. Campbell, volunteered to find those arrangements. As customary, Derek Shank recorded the Minutes. Constructive suggestions abounded.

Scheduled for lunchtime (lunch provided) on the first full day of the Congress, and right after our first Session (only 1 building away), the Meeting offered an excellent way to launch our activities at the Congress and beyond. Apparently there are no photographs of the occasion, but the 1-page Agenda not only sets the stage, but also provides a concise record of our achievements and aims for 2017–2018 and beyond, with requests for suggestions and contributions in funds and in kind.

The 2019 Agenda is now downloadable. Please join us!

Our Reception

As in some previous years, our Reception was co-sponsored with the Societas Magica . Conversation flowed, and some manuscript materials were examined.