October 28, 2014 in Conference Announcement, Events
[Updates appear with the Colloquium Program Preview and the Program Accomplished, Program Booklet with Abstracts included.]
We announce a Colloquium, co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, to take place on Friday, 14 November 2014 at Princeton University. Read the rest of this entry →
September 23, 2014 in Business Meeting, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Reception
The Skeptic
[Published on 23 September 2014, with updates]
With the completion of the Call for Papers and the reception of proposals for papers by 15 September 2014, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence plans its 5 sponsored and co-sponsored sessions for the next Congress. Their programs now settle into place for notification to the Congress by the deadline of 1 October. Following that process, we will be able to announce the programs and, in time, publish abstracts of papers as their authors might wish.
The next Congress will be the tenth year of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica and the second year of co-sponsorship with the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida. Our 2014 sessions with these organizations are reported and illustrated in our 2014 Congress Report. This is the first year of co-sponsorship for the Reception also with the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University.
July 16, 2014 in Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies
Deadline for Proposals: 15 September 2014
For the 50th Congress, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) prepares five Sessions to celebrate a wide range of interests and explorations in the realms of medieval, early modern, and related studies. We continue sponsorships and co-sponsorships of sessions, designed to showcase the work of younger, independent, and established scholars and teachers alike, in a constructive interchange between areas of expertise and spans of experience.
We invite proposals for papers for the 2015 Sessions. Please send your proposed title and abstract directly to the session organizers by 15 September 2014, along with the completed Congress Participant Information Form (PIF) [no longer online, following the deadline]. We welcome your questions and suggestions. Read the rest of this entry →
July 15, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference Announcement, Events
“Save the Date” Announcement (complete)
Symposium Program Page 1
Symposium Poster
[First published on 15 July 2014, with updates. And now with the corrected Program Booklet:
RGME Symposium 2014 Program & abstracts corrected]
The “Save the Date” Announcement (Save the Date 16-17 May 2014) set the stage by describing the intentions and scope of the subject. To sum up:
This symposium explored the workings of workshops, as revealed through the traces of artists, craftsmen, scribes, authors, editors, printers, and patrons, across a wide range of subjects, regions, and materials, in transitions from classical antiquity and early Christianity through the long Middle Ages and thence to the early modern period and beyond. We seek to discern how these editorial agents of whatever kind shaped and reshaped materials — tangible and intangible — in transmitting the legacy of the past, often in the process to form works which perhaps seemed more viable in changing times, expectations, and systems of belief. Memory may hold a significant place among the materials, processes, and forces at work in the processes of collecting, shaping, and, in many cases, transforming complex bodies of evidence in a robust or precarious voyage from the past.
The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence warmly thank the Sponsors, Donors, and Contributors to the Symposium, which formed part of the celebrations for our 2014 Anniversary Year. Other celebrations have included our Sessions at the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies in May, along with an Anniversary Reception. Read the rest of this entry →
June 25, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo
[Published on 25 June 2014, with updates]
Photography by Mildred Budny
Our sessions at the 2014 Congress formed part of the celebrations for our anniversary year. 2014 marks our 15th anniversary as a nonprofit educational organization and our 25th anniversary as an international scholarly society. At the Congress, we both sponsored sessions and co-sponsored sessions, as before, with the Societas Magica, in the eighth year of this co-sponsorship, and, for the first time, with the Center for the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida. As is our practice, various of our Trustees, Officers, and Associates participated in these and other sessions at the Congress.
January 1, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo
[First published on our first website on *6 December 2012, with updates there and here]
With its mission to “apply an integrated, holistic approach to manuscripts and texts in all forms,” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2013, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence held sponsored and co-sponsored sessions examining the material culture, production, and purposes of written records in Western Europe and beyond, and the dispersal, recovery, and study of those works in various forms and widespread locations. Besides these interlinked subjects, the year’s highlighted genres were astrology, the material technology of magic, and the symbolism of water in the Middle Ages.
As before, we co-sponsored sessions with the Societas Magica and King Alfred’s Notebook LLC (respectively in the eighth and second years of this co-sponsorship). Also, three of our Trustees and many of our Officers, and Associates presented papers at the Congress in a variety of sessions.
Here we report the Programs for our Sessions, publish the Abstracts of their Papers, and illustrate the Posters for the Sessions. For the first time, we designed Posters for all of our Sessions at the Congress, Sponsored and Co-Sponsored. At the 2011 Congress we had one Poster, and two Posters at this 2013 Congress for our Sponsored Sessions, all with images courtesy of David W. Sorenson, whose donation of images inspired their creation. The series of Posters now stand exhibited in our Gallery of Posters on Display. The Posters are set in our own multi-lingual digital font Bembino, available for download for FREE here.
January 1, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Conference Announcement, Events, Exhibition
We held a Symposium at Princeton University on 22 & 23 March 2013 with the theme of “Identity & Authenticity: Creating, Recreating, Transmitting & Preserving Identities Across Time & Place”. Here we publish the Symposium Posters, Program, and Abstracts of the Papers, with thanks to all our Sponsors, Contributors, and Participants.
Friday & Saturday 22 & 23 March 2013
McCormick 106, Princeton University
Poster 1
Poster 2
The challenges of shaping, reshaping, maintaining, conveying, and validating identity, both personal and collective, are perennial human concerns. Our symposium explored subjects, regions, and materials from the early medieval period to the present day. Presentations considered, for example, Western European and Syriac manuscript discoveries, Byzantine liturgical textiles, medieval seal-matrices and “forgeries,” Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic magical recipes from the Cairo Genizah, the transmission of Islamic paper, the reliquary of John the Baptist owned by the Knights of Malta and the Tzars, the medieval-style Hammond Castle in Massachusetts, the challenges and opportunities of collecting medieval manuscripts nowadays, and digitization projects dedicated to manuscripts and archives for teaching and research.
We also thank the Department of Art & Archaeology of Princeton University for the rooms, media services, and facilities for the event.
Having a Look
Opening Remarks
James H. Marrow (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)
Moderator: Celia Chazelle (Department of History, The College of New Jersey)
Alan M. Stahl (Firestone Library, Princeton University), “The Virgin in the Garden: The Making of a Pilgrimage Site in Medieval Venice”
Eleanor A. Congdon (Department of History, Youngstown State University), “Who was Antonio Contarini? Solving the Prosopographical Riddle of a Venetian Merchant in the Datini Archives”
Ortal-Paz Saar (School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study / Tel Aviv University), “A Genizah Magical Fragment and Its European Parallels”
[Note: Now published as “A Genizah Magical Fragment and Its European Parallels”, Journal of Jewish Studies, 65:2 (2014), 237–262, described here]
Moderator: Colum Hourihane (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University)
Karl F. Morrison (Department of History, Rutgers University), “Assimilating the Libri Carolini in the Seventeenth Century”
John H. Rassweiler (The Rassweiler Collection, Princeton), “Some Experiences with the Validation of Medieval Seal-Matrices of the Common People”
Martha E. Easton (Department of Communication and the Arts, Seton Hall University), “Authenticity, Anachronism, and the Experience of the Past at Hammond Castle”
Moderator: Kathleen E. McVey (Department of History, Princeton Theological Seminary)
Philip Michael Forness (Department of History, Princeton Theological Seminary), “The Identities of a Saint: An Initial Inquiry into the Manuscript Tradition of the Homilies by Jacob of Sarug”
Jack B. Tannous (Department of History, Princeton University), “Syril of Scythopolis in Syriac: Observations on a Manuscript from the Sinai New Finds”
George Kiraz (Editor in Chief, Gorgias Press / Department of Middle Eastern and South-East Asian Languages & Literature, Rutgers University), “The Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal Archive of Mardin: Digitization and Challenges”
Moderator: James H. Marrow (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)
Thomas A. Carlson (Department of History, Princeton University / Beth Marduthuo Research Library, Piscataway), “Identity and Identification in the Digital Humanities: The Challenges and Experience of Syriaca.org”
Barbara A. Shailor (Department of Classics, Yale University), “A Mellon Foundation Project at Yale University: The World of Digitally-Enabled Scholarship for Research and Teaching”
Moderator: Colum Hourihane
David W. Sorenson (Quincy, Massachusetts), “Recent Studies in Islamic Paper and What They Can Tell Us About Texts (and Images)”
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence), “A New Fragment of the Vitas Patrum from the Covers of an Early Printed Postille: An Early Case of Western Paper?”
Scott Gwara (Department of English, University of South Carolina – Columbia / King Alfred’s Notebook, LLC & De Brailes Medieval Art LLC), “Medieval Manuscripts in the Strangest Places”
Enjoying the Company
Moderator: Mildred Budny
Henry D. Schilb (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University), “Serbian and Christian Identity in the Embroideries of the Nun Jefimija”
Rossitza B. Schroeder (Visiting Fellow in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University / Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California), “The New Chosen People: The Old Testament in Late Byzantium”
Ida Sinkevič (Department of Art, Lafayette College), “The Afterlife of the Rhodes Hand of St. John the Baptist”
[Note: This has been published here]
Displays by:
Examining the Originals
Scott Gwara (De Brailes Medieval Art LLC)
David Sorenson (Specimens of Islamic Paper)
Eleanor Congdon (Specimens from the Datini Archive)
Thomas A. Carlson (The Syriac Reference Portal)
*****
The Symposium Booklet, edited by Mildred Budny and laid out in RGME Bembino, contains the
2013 Symposium Program & Abstracts of the Papers.
[The version uploaded on 29 September 2014 corrects a couple of typographical mistakes in the version circulated at the event.]
*****
Circulated online before the Symposium, the Program and Poster 2 are also available here on the online Calendar of the Program in Medieval Studies of Princeton University:
Medieval Studies Calendar Archive Princeton University
[Formerly here: “http://web.princeton.edu/sites/medieval/images/RGME%20Symposium%20Program.pdf”]
*****
Photographs by James Heidere
*****
January 1, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo
[First published on our first website on *15 December 2011, with updates there and here]
Our four Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions at the 2012 Congress examined the material culture and production of written records in Western Europe and beyond, and the dispersal, recovery, and preservation of those works in various forms and widespread locations. Besides these interlinked subjects, our highlighted genre was “Dream Books”, appearing in multiple manifestations in both manuscript and print.
One Session was the second in our series at the Congress on “Medieval Writing Materials”. Its series (2011–2014 and, intended, 2016) is listed in our Sponsored Conference Sessions.
This year, for the first time, after the debut of a single illustrated Poster for one of our sponsored Sessions at the 2011 Congress, an illustrated Posters accompanied both of our own Sponsored Sessions. Since 2015, the full series of illustrated Posters for Congress Sessions and other Events appear in our Gallery of Posters on Display. Read the rest of this entry →
January 1, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies
[First published on our first website on *20 January 2011, with updates]
At this Congress, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence held two sessions, respectively sponsored and co-sponsored, in the fifth year of co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica. As customary, Trustees and Associates of the Research Group participated in the Congress in various capacities.
Here we list the Programs of the sessions, along with Abstracts of Papers, and we publish the first of our Posters ever for such sessions.
The inspiration for the poster came from the generous offer by our session participant David W. Sorenson to give images of manuscripts free of charge for reproduction for such purposes. Thus the poster includes donated images and design, with images courtesy of David Sorenson and with layout in our copyright digital font Bembino, described and downloadable for FREE here: Bembino.
[Update: This ‘first edition’ inaugurated a tradition of illustrated Posters for our Congress Sessions in following years, as recorded in our Congress Activities, as well as for our other Events elsewhere, including Colloquia & Symposia. Since 2014, they are exhibited in our Gallery of Posters on Display.]
