Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life of Illuminated Book (circa 1510). Image via Wikimedia Commons..

“From Cover to Cover”

Activities Devoted to Manuscripts, Early Printed Books & Beyond
From Collecting & Cataloguing to Deciphering & Beholding

2020  Spring Symposium
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Princeton University
* Friday & Saturday 13–14 March 2020

Update 5 April 2020

The Symposium Booklet is now published and available for download. See Keeping Up: Updates for Spring 2020.

* Update 9 March 2020 

This event is now cancelled, as Princeton University and other institutions respond to current health concerns, and take precautions regarding travel and meetings of various kinds in person.  The Symposium might be rescheduled, conditions permitting.  

Its plan is described in the announcement to Save the Date for our 2020 Spring Symposium .

Meanwhile, the Research Group aims to complete the Symposium Booklet and distribute it to contributors, registrants, and others, as a souvenir of our speakers’ good intentions.  Already, as a sign of appreciation, the Research Group has adopted the custom of posting on our website the abstracts of contributors who become unable to attend to present in person (as with the 2018 Congress, among others).

This time, under wider — even global — circumstances affecting the ensemble as a whole, we wish to show appreciation for the remarkable enthusiasm and dedication for the collaborative event demonstrated by our hosts, sponsors, speakers, moderators, and others.  This knowledge is something to remember with satisfaction, gratitude, and praise.

The publication could, perhaps, give a token to show for our shared efforts, and to demonstrate something of the spirit of dedication and focus which prepared to assemble for the event itself.

This aim might help to ease some of the disappointment over cancellation, while the cancellation itself might ease some uncertainties about travel at present.

*****

P. S.  Only once before, in more than 30 years of activities in many centers in the United States and elsewhere (see our Events and Congress Activities}, has the Research Group had to cancel an event.  It, however, was only 1 Session among 7 sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies in May 2013, when the Session organizer and 2 presenters were unable to travel to the Congress.  We honored their intentions to contribute by continuing to record their abstracts and the statement of purpose of the Session on this  website.

Similar solidarity pertains to our record of this intended 2020 Spring Symposium.  This post (You are Here) reports the Cancellation or Postponement.

In the post announcing the Symposium, describing its scope, and providing its Program, not only do we now report the Cancellation or Postponement (as here), but also we preserve the description of the event in the updated version just before the decision to cancel this Symposium, among many gatherings at Princeton University and elsewhere at the beginning of the week in which the Symposium was planned to take place. See Save the Date.

2020 Symposium Poster 2

New York, Grolier Club, *434.14Aug1470Folio. 15th-century German binding for historical texts in print (Augsburg, 1470) and manuscript (1462). Image courtesy Meghan Constantinou.

*****

Watch this space and visit our FaceBook Page for updates.  For questions and suggesions,  please contact [email protected].