2024 Autumn Symposium
“At the Helm:
Spotlight on Special Collections
as Teaching Events”

London, The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 36, fol. 65r, detail. Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedia, Canto 1, Purgatorio. Northern Italy, 15th century.

Part 2 (of 2) in the series of

2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Bridges”

To follow up from

Part 1 (of 2)
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

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

“Study on a Medieval Bridge” at Amares, Braga District, Portugal. Image by Pedro Nuno Caetano (2019) via Wikimedia Commons via Creative Commons 2.0 Generic.

[Posted on 18 February 2024, with updates]

This event forms a pair with the Spring Symposium (Part 1) in the 2024 RGME Anniversary Year, for which our Theme is “Bridges”.

• “Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Part 1

Part 1 is planned in hybrid format, with access in person and online.  It will be held over three days in April, from 18 Friday to 22 Sunday 2024.  Its Title tells its purpose, focus, and mission:

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

• Spring Symposium ‘Home Page’
  2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

Part 2

Part 2, to be held online for one day in October, provides an integrated follow-up for the Spring Symposium centered upon Vassar.

This time, taking charge on the Bridge of a vessel of passage, we focus on selected cases to examine such teaching practices and resources at work.

“At the Helm:
Spotlight on Special Collections as Teaching Events”

In keeping with our tradition – informal, but structured – for our RGME Symposia (as with our 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia), we can allow presenters the opportunity, with minimal preparation, to showcase collections (private and public) in virtual visits guided by curators or collectors, in the company of teachers and students on-site and online.

Our goal here is to channel the purposeful momentum for the Spring Symposium at Vassar College in a simpler follow-up demonstrating the mission in action of teaching with the material evidence in Special Collections.  Whilst the Spring Symposium focuses (but not exclusively) on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the Autumn Symposium welcomes a wide variety of periods, cultures, and genres of material.

© The British Library, Harley MS 4425, fol. 133r, detail. Roman de la Rose: Portrait of Jean de Meun, author, pauses at the work of writing in an open book with double columns of text. Bruges, c. 1490 – c. 1500.

Registration

Registration is free. Voluntary donations are welcome.

RGME Eventbrite Portal

• Research Group on Manuscript Evidence @ Eventbrite

This Event

• 2024 Autumn Symposium: Tickets

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Coda
At Sea and “At the Helm”

London, The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 36, fol. 65r. Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedia, Canto 1, Purgatorio. Northern Italy (Siena), 15th century.

A Note on the Image:  Within the historiated initial P of Per opening Canto 1 of Purgatorio in the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (circa 1265 – 1321), a ship under sail carries the poets Dante and his guide Publius Vergilius Maro (70 – 19 BC).

The manuscript (London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 36, is one of the most beautiful and largely illustrated of the many surviving medieval manuscripts of this important text. See, for example, Yates Thompson 36 in The World of Dante.

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Watch this space as our plans develop.

Meanwhile, we invite you to explore our events between now and then.

• RGME 2023 and 2024 Activities.

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