2025 RGME Autumn Symposium on “Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books”

August 24, 2025 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, Visits to Collections

2025
RGME Autumn Symposium

Part 2 of 2 in the 2025 Symposia on
“Agents and Agencies
in the Shaping
or Re-Shaping of Books”

“Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books:
From Page to Marketplace and Beyond”

Online Format
(Friday to Sunday 17–19 October)

[Posted on 20 August 2025, with updates]

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 947, recto. Image via https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:6517512$1i.

The RGME continues with its integrated pair of 2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia, as Parts 1 and 2 for the year. The 2025 Autumn Symposium in October takes shape as Part 2 of 2. For Part 1 of 2, which took place in March, see:

For the predecessors in 2023 and 2024, see:

In 2025, they respond to our Theme for the Year:

Our Spring Symposium as Part 1 of 2 for 2025 took place successfully in online format in March.

We thank our contributors, organizers, advisers, sponsors, and hosts.

British Library, Royal MS 14 E. v, vol. 1, fol. 3r. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Interlinked Pair
of 2025 Symposia

Following the momentum of activities and enthusiasm in our 2024 Anniversary Year, the pair will draw upon the customary informal, but structured, approach of our events, symposia included.  These symposia will take place online or in partly hybrid format.

“Agents & Agencies” for 2025

As principal focus, our 2025 Symposia consider the myriad aspects and impact of agents and agencies (human and other) in the creation, dissemination, use, abuse, re-creation, safe-guarding, and enjoyment of books across time and place.

I. Spring Symposium (Part I of 2)

“Makers, Producers, and Collectors of Books:
From Author/Artist/Artisan to Library”

Friday to Sunday
28–30 March 2025 by Zoom

This event explored the genesis and gestation of books, from first thoughts to processes of production leading to the finished product, and then to their owners and users.

For example, for the first stages, we could consider the author alone in his or her study, putting pen to page or thought to written word. Around him might, naturally, whether close at hand or in his memory or imagination, stand other books as examples or sources of inspiration, imitation, or perhaps plagarism.

The work of composing, copying, revising, and producing draft, fair, or final copies of the texts (with images where and as indicated) could be undertaken by more than one author, artist, and/or artisan. If so, would they work in tandem, sequence, or competition? Well, that might depend.

As the work progresses, there arrive further stages which create the issue or publication of the book, which then may enter the world in processes of dissemination, instruction, and incorporation within an individual or collective collection — or, it might be, from collection to collection, in one shape or another. The changed shapes could, of course, pertain to the book itself and/or the ownership.

British Library, Royal MS 14 E. 1, vol. 1, fol. 3r. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Note on the Image. Frontispiece/headpiece for the first volume of the Speculum Historiale (or Miroir historial) by Vincent of Beauvais (1184/1194 – c. 1264) in the Old French translation by Jean de Vignay (circa 1282/1285 – c. 1350). Bruges, circa c. 1478–1480, for Edward IV (1442–1483, king from 1461–1470 and again from 1471-1483). On this page, at the front of Vincent’s text, above its opening columns of script, the author sits as scribe in a book-furnished study, framed within an architectural arcade and set within an elaborate border containing the king’s arms below.

See more:

*****

II. Autumn Symposium (Part 2 of 2)

“Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books:
From Page to Marketplace and Beyond”

Friday to Sunday, 17–19 October 2025
 Online by Zoom

In the Autumn Symposium, we follow up the explorations of the Spring Symposium as we turn to consider the ‘afterlives’ of books once they reach their audience, whether through the marketplace or other modes of presentation and distribution. Such conditions may acquire a life of their own, as readers, annotators, users, owners, thieves, despoilers, and others had or took a hand in shaping or reshaping their destinies — that is, of the books, those agents, and book history.

As examples, we may point to readers who would reshape the pages by placing their comments, revisions, scribbles, or sketches upon them. So, too, forgers as well as plagarists might appropriate others’ work as their own, say by reshaping its structure, grafting on other pieces, or extracting parts to re-assemble and redistribute in other forms for their own purposes. And then there are outright hoaxes, by which inventions purport to represent an activity or creation which exists only or principally by that newly implemented form.

Appropriation of others’ work might also occur, for example, as leaves or scraps of books were extracted, cut into further pieces, perhaps refolded, and reused as coverings or parts of bindings for other texts (manuscript or printed), or for other repurposed materials. Call it recycling for the sake of the materials themselves, put to different uses.

A different form of reuse concerns the fragmentation of books for the purpose of extracting leaves or part-leaves to serve as specimens of script, decoration, illustration, and/or graphic design. That approach forms the subject of our 2025 Autumn Colloquium on Fragments. See:

Picking up the pieces of such fragmentation, that event is designed to showcase the legacy of such despoilers or ‘biblioclasts’ who dispersed the fragments of manuscripts and printed books far and wide and to celebrate the many initiatives to study and, in some measure, reconstruct the traces of that legacy. It considers such phenomena within the larger context of the ‘afterlives’ of books in many other forms as well.

The rôles of forgers, fakers, and frauds as agents in the production, re-creation, and distribution of books looms large in the history of books, perhaps from time immemorial. Our Symposium sets their activities or accomplishments into the context of “Agents and Agencies” as we examine the broad setting of books overall.

Speakers, Presiders, and Respondents

Participants who may speak, preside, or respond include (in alphabetical order):

Mildred Budny
Reid Byers
Meghan Constantinou
Jamie Cumby
Hannah Goeselt
Justin Hastings
Eve Kahn
Jennifer Larson
Steven Lomazow
Jack Lynch
Irene Malfatto
Beppy Landrum Owen
Anna Siebach–Larsen
David W. Sorenson
Janie Wright
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz

And others.

Program Overview (online by Zoom)

Day 1. Friday 17 October at  1:30 – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)

Day 2. Saturday 18 October at 9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)

Day 3. Sunday 19 October at 10:30am – 12:00am EDT (GMT -4)

Program of Sessions

Poster

The 2025 Autumn Symposium Poster is available for download. You are welcome to copies to circulate, keep as souvenirs, and show your friends.

Symposium Booklet

We publish the 40-page illustrated Symposium Booklet, available in two formats for printing.

We give thanks to the contributors, photographers, collectors, advisors, editor, layout designer, and others who created the collective booklet.

British Library, Royal MS 14 E. v, vol. 1, fol. 3r. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks

We give thanks to the speakers, respondents, advisers, back-up support, and participants for contributing to the symposium and its 2025 series of Spring and Autumn Symposia.

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Registration

  • https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2025-rgme-autumn-symposium-tickets-1236732924469

Registration is free. We encourage you to Pay What You Can by the option for Registration with a Voluntary Donation.

This year, the RGME has undergone setbacks with grants and funding, so that we ask your help. Any amount will give encouragement and contribute to recovering momentum. We thank you for your support.

Donations, which may be tax-deductible, help us to continue with our activities and sustain our mission for an organization principally powered by volunteers.

Please note that, after registration, the Zoom link will be sent as an email from the RGME a few days before the event. For security reasons, we do not distribute tickets or links through Eventbrite or Zoom.

To register for other RGME events, please visit the RGME Registration Collection.

For our activities planned for 2025, see:

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*****

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 947, ‘verso’. Images via https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:6517512$1i.

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