2025 Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo
January 6, 2025 in Announcements, Co-Sponsorships with the RGME, Conference, Conference Announcement, DRAGEN Lab, RGME Recollections, University of Waterloo
This link for the
2025 Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo
“Break-Up Books and Make-Up Books:
Encountering the Legacy of Otto F. Ege and Other Biblioclasts”
Friday to Sunday, 21–23 November 2025
redirects you to another link, which retains the record of a plan that could not come to fruition:
That plan had to be aborted.
1. The University and its DRAGEN Lab, which asked to host the 3-day international RGME hybrid colloquium in the first place and set the dates, changed plans with scant notice, despite remonstrations. It abandoned the project, at great financial and other costs to the RGME for the year 2024, during which our plans had focused in good faith on that partnership.
The University and its DRAGEN Lab, despite promises and demands that we provide the documentation and other organizational work, from our own projects and commitments, did not support the grant applications twice over, despite requesting us to help substantially to help to write and then revise for one and the next of two missed application deadlines of 1 March and 1 May. Resourcefully we offered a proposal (Prospectus for Collaboration and companion Memorandum) for a 15 June deadline with constructive, experienced suggestions for co-sponsorship nevertheless.
With no reply, we were left at considerable cost to plan the event without support.
2. Over time, regrouping and turning resourcefully to friends, colleagues, and institutions, the Colloquium found a host at Princeton instead. Thus we could honor the intentions and dedication of colleagues, near and far, who responded to my invitation for contributions when we first issued the call in January.
Poster 1. 2025 Autumn Colloquium: Save-the-Date. Poster set in RGME Bembino.
The event took place with a different structure and with different supporters and sponsors.
For the revised, revived version of the event, now see:
Perhaps of interest are these descriptions of some practices and guidelines for co-sponsorship, drawn from RGME experience over decades, for hosted events at institutions in the United States and beyond:
- Prospectus for Collaboration
- and its companion Memorandum
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
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Updates
1. Foreground [25 February 2026]
It has come to our attention that representatives of the University of Waterloo continue to claim credit for the event, after the RGME managed, at great cost and hardship for a small organization with very few resources and no employees, no office spaces, and a very limited endowment (having to undergo being drained by exploitation of our skills and resources), to hold the 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the requested time and with the requested participant. Perhaps an acknowledgement of thanks, perhaps, for the RGME enforced, uncompensated labor is appropriate?
2. Background [20 November 2025]
The Journey Toward an Event
For years the RGME has promoted, showcased, undertaken, and published research on fragments of manuscripts and printed books, including cases dispersed by Otto F. Ege and other biblioclasts — as reported, for example, on our website, at a variety of our events, and in our blog (see its Contents List).
The RGME began to plan an event for 2025 on Otto Ege and fragments in response to a request during Session 4 on 25 October in our 2024 Autumn Symposium. Planning for it developed through discussions in conversation and at various RGME meetings through December.
With the suggestion in late December that the University of Waterloo might host the event, the RGME was invited by a representative of the University in early January 2025 to hold the event in hybrid format there, hosted by the DRAGEN Lab. The university chose the dates of 21-23 November 2025 for the event, which we confirmed with prospective participants. The university requested the RGME 1) to develop a program for the event through our network of international contacts in many spheres relating to work on the subject, 2) help to find major funding for the event, 3) co-write and then revise a major grant application for a Canadian government Connection Grant, and 4) undertake to produce the event — as the RGME had done successfully for such co-sponsored events over many years, including recently in hybrid format for the invited 2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College.
Accordingly, with that commitment, the RGME undertook to set up the program, find matching grants, help significantly to write the grant application and then revise it, at UWaterloo’s request. We did so on the understanding that the application would be submitted in timely fashion for the event as designed, and that the RGME would gain benefit from that investment of our time, work, focus, and expertise for the specific purpose, as agreed. When UWaterloo proved unable to honor that commitment, without proposing or discussing a viable, credible, alternative, we had to seek other, reliable sources of funding and support for the 2025 design, which had a specific date, set of RGME commitments, assigned RGME resources, and cast of contributors dedicated to it.
The success of the rescue operation to enable the colloquium to take place on time within 2025, as needed at short notice, forms a testimony to collaborative good resourcefulness and good will. We thank all individuals and institutional sponsors who worked together to make it possible.
Private Collection, Leaf from ‘Ege MS 14’. Part of the Book of Jeremiah, Recto, Detail. Photograph by Mildred Budny.