2024 Autumn Symposium: “At the Helm”

February 19, 2024 in Anniversary, Conference, Conference Announcement, RGME Symposia

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

Friday and Saturday, 25–26 October 2024 by Zoom

[Posted on 19 February 2024, with updates including the Symposium Program, Posters, and Symposium Booklet with Program, Abstracts, and Images]

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”.

By request, as its momentum and enthusiasm develops, this Symposium has extended its span, from one day to two full days.

Part 1 in April

Part 1 is planned in hybrid format, with access in person and online.  It was 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”

Part 2 in October

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

This time, taking charge on the Bridge of a nautical vessel of passage (Bridge, Wheelhouse, or Pilothouse; Bridge or Pilothouse), we focus on selected cases to examine such teaching practices and resources at work.

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

Friday and Saturday 24–25 October 2024
by Zoom

Friday 9:45 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)
Saturday 9:00 am – 5:15 pm EDT

In keeping with our tradition – informal, but structured – for our RGME Symposia (as with our 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia), we offer 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 2024 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.

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

The poster is available to download. Please circulate and display it, if you wish.

For more information and to register, see below.

Speakers, Presiders, Curators, Scholars, Students, and Collectors include (in alphabetical order)

John Henry Adams (Librarian, Ellis Library, Rare Books & Special Collections University of Missouri Libraries)
Jessica Blackwell (Librarian, Special Collections & Archives, University of Waterloo)
Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Reid Byers (The Baxter Society, President; The Grolier Club, convener of the New England group; Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, convener of Living with Books)
Altay Coskun (Professor, Classical Studies, University of Waterloo)
Özgen Felek (The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University)
Mariana Julieta Guzmán Gómez-Aguado (Doctoral candidate in Medieval Art, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia)
Justin Hastings (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Antony R. Henk (Ph.D. Candidate, English Medieval Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum)
John Lightcloud
(PhD Student, History, University of Waterloo; DRAGEN Lab Member, University of Waterloo)
Wendy Liu (Undergraduate Student, Department of Classics, University of Waterloo)
Laura Morreale (Independent Scholar)
Beppy Landrum Owen (Council Member, Grolier Club; Trustee, Rare Book School; graduate student, Master of Liberal Studies program, Rollins College)
David Porreca
(Associate Professor, Department of Classical Studies; Co-Director, Medieval Studies Undergraduate Program; and President, Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo)
Ronald D. Patkus (Head of Special Collections and College Historian, Adjunct Associate Professor of History on the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Chair)
Mark Samuels Lasner (Senior Research Fellow, Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library)
Anna Siebach–Larson (Director, Rossell Hope Robbins Library and Koller-Collins Center for English Studies)
David W. Sorenson (Alan G. Berman, Numismatist)
Betsy Subiros (Senior, Department of Art History, Vassar College)
Anne Rudloff Stanton (Associate Professor, Medieval Art and Associate Director, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri)
Et al.

Collections in the spotlight include

Kitchener, Ontario, University of Waterloo, Archives, Edgar William Pyke Collection, Silver Drachma, Athens, 470-467 BC, Reverse: Standing Owl, wide-eyed, with inscription AOE.

Kitchener, Ontario, University of Waterloo, Archives, Edgar William Pyke Collection, Silver Drachma, Athens, 470-467 BC, Obverse: Head of Athena in profile facing right.

Initiatives include

As part of the Symposium, the session showcasing the Pyke Collection will employ Zoom Break-out Rooms to convey and enhance the pedagogical experience of encountering specimens in the collection in workshop-style exercises, with guides to research aids and techniques for coin-identification.

More to come! Watch this space.

Dressed in a long blue garment, the author sits at work on a bench beside a lectern holding an opened book to which he holds a quill pen to page.

© 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.

Program on Its Own

See this link to download the 4-page Symposium Program for Friday and Saturday 25-26 October.

NOTE: If you encounter issues with the download, we suggest that you try:
open the link in a new window

or
double-click on the link
.

As consecutive pages:

or

Or as foldable booklet:

Symposium Booklet (Program + Abstracts)

Now we issue the 64-page Symposium Booklet with Program, Abstracts, and Images.  We thank the contributors for their work and the presenters, collectors, collections, and photographers for the images.

It is our tradition to produce Symposium Booklets honoring our contributors, as a souvenir or keepsake of thanks from the RGME as an established nonprofit educational Publishing House.

This Symposium Booklet is available in pdf format for download in two versions, as suitable for your printing requirements.

NOTE: If you encounter issues with the download in an error message, we suggest that you try:
open the link in a new window

or
double-click on the link
.

1) as consecutive pages quarto size (8 1/2″ × 11″ sheets)

2) as a foldable booklet (11″ × 17″ sheets)

Registration

Registration is free. Voluntary donations are welcome, as suggested in registration.

Register for this Event

RGME Eventbrite Portal for our Collections of Events

Your donations for our Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization principally powered by volunteers and pro-bono contributions may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.  Because we keep overheads low, your donations can directly help to maintain and foster our work and mission. See:

Save-the-Date Poster 2024 Autumn Symposium

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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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More to Come

Watch this space as our plans develop.

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

Next up:

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