2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia

December 31, 2024 in Announcements, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia

2025
RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia

Agents and Agencies
in the Shaping
or Re-Shaping of Books

[Posted on 30 December 2024]

As in 2023 and 2024, for 2025 the RGME prepares an integrated pair of Spring and Autumn Symposia (as Parts 1 and 2 for the year). For those predecessors, see:

2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia,
with the year’s Theme of “Structures of Knowledge”
2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia”,
with the year’s Theme of “Bridges”

This year, they respond to our Theme for the Year, “Thresholds and Communities”.

First Steps

London, British Museum. Door-sill carved as a carpet. From Room I, door c, the North Palace of Ashurbanipal II at Nineveh. Photograph (2014) Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

First, in January 2025, to set the stage, our first Episode for the year for our online series “The Research Group Speaks” explores the theme of “Thresholds and Communities” and describes the year’s planned projects and activities. Their centerpiece is the pair of Spring and Autumn Symposia. For this episode and the theme, see:

Episode 19. “At the Gate”

This event and other activities through the year prepare the ground, follow-up, and follow-though for the Spring and Autumn Symposia.

The Interlinked Pair
of Symposia

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

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 (like both our 2023 Symposia and our 2024 Autumn Symposium). Perhaps parts of them will also occur in-person (like our three-day 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College in hybrid format and our 2025 Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo planned for hybrid format).

The dates and titles for these Symposia have been set. Details of their Programs are taking shape, as we continue to make preparations.

Agents & Agencies

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

We explore 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 might 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.

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.

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.

Aachen, Schatzkammer, Aachen Gospels, fol. 13r. The Four Evangelists at Work. Circa 820. Image via Karolingischer Buchmaler um 820, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

In the image below, we draw attention to the large, closed volume being held diagonally by a figure at far right, as he faces toward the king at the center. Given its context within the book and its historical setting, that very volume would contain as its frontispiece the image which we see here. Designed and engraved by Sébastien Le Clerc (1637—1714), the scene depicts an idealized visit by the king, Louis XIV of France (1638–1715, ruled from 1643), to the Académie Royale des Sciences founded in 1666.

Sébastien Leclerc I, Engraving on paper. King Louis XIV visits the Académie Royale des Sciences in an idealized view. Image Public Domain.

Note on the Image. Engraving on paper by Sébastien Leclerc I (1637–1714), 1671. Within a large room overlooking the gardens and containing a multitude of specimens, scientific apparatus, and other materials for study, Louis XIV (1638–1715, King of France from 1643) visits his Royal Academie des Sciences in an idealized view. Image Public Domain.

Various large-scale publications by this Academy employ Le Clerc’s image as their monumental frontispiece. Among them would be one held in this image by its author, as identifiable from images during his lifetime.

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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 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. Such might occur, for example, as leaves or scraps 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.

Justinian Wrapper folded from back with flap.

Budny Handlist 7: Medieval Leaf reused as Folder. seen from Back with Flap and Tie. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

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.

The 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo in November 2025 is designed, picking up the pieces, to showcase the legacy of such despoilers or ‘biblioclasts’ who dispersed the fragments of manuscripts and printed books far and wide. The 2025 RGME Autumn Symposium considers such phenomena within the larger context of the ‘afterlives’ of books in many other forms as well.

New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of "Otto Ege Manuscript 14".

“A Long Shot”. New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of “Otto Ege Manuscript 14”.

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.

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Watch this space as the plans take shape.

For our activities planned for 2025, see:

2024 Activities and 2025 Planned Activities

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Registration

To register for each symposium or both, please visit the RGME Registration Collection.

RGME Events

Registration is free. We encourage you to make a volunteer donation when you register, to help support our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers.

After you register, the Zoom Link for the online event or the online functionality of a hybrid event will be sent to you before the event.

Eventbrite Registration

Episode 19. “At the Gate: RGME Activities for 2025”

Thank you for joining us!

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Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
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Christine de Pizan, La cité des dames, in the copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Français 1179, folio 3 recto. Image Public Domain via gallica.bnf.fr.

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Tags: "Thresholds and Communities", Books as Agents, Manuscript studies, RGME Symposia, The Agency of Books
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Memoirs

July 23, 2024 in Announcements, Bembino, Manuscript Studies, Memoirs, Research Group Speaks (The Series), RGME Recollections, RGME Symposia, Seminars on Manuscript Evidence

Remembering
Those Who Have Gone Before

[Posted on 22 July 2024]

In our 2025 Anniversary Year, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence reflects on people who have gone before us and whom we wish to recollect as companions or mentors, advisers, colleagues, and friends contributing to the origins, history, and growth of our organization across the years.

Part of that process has yielded the formation of our own nonprofit educational publishing house. Our books and booklets in printed form and digital formats include Memoirs, to which we add this year.

1. Oleg Andreevich Grabar

The first of these Memoirs appeared quietly in 2015 as a 4-page booklet. It offers a Memorial for Oleg Grabar, art historian and archaeologist:

In Memory of
Oleg Andreevich Grabar
[Олег Андреевич Грабар]
(3 November 1929 – 8 January 2011)

Composed by Leonid A. Beliaev, the text was published first in Russian. By request, it was translated from the Russian into English, set in multi-lingual RGME Bembino, provided with a photograph by permission, and laid out as a booklet corresponding with our RGME Style Manifesto.

Although Oleg did not participate in RGME activities, he generously gave advice for our research over several years while our Director worked as a part-time research assistant for his colleague Giles Constable (see below). The translation and publication of the English version of the Memoir in Russian were carried out for its author, an RGME Associate, at the request and with the assistance of a long-term supporter and advisor of the RGME. Note that the RGME font Bembino supports the Cyrillic font appropriate for portions of the text of the published Memoir.

The booklet can freely be downloaded:

Memorial for Oleg Grabar.

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2. Vivien Anne Law

For our blog on Manuscript Studies, in 2014 our Director, Mildred Budny, provided a blogpost called Memorials. Principally it shares recollections of friend, colleague, and long-time RGME participant (first as Associate of our international scholarly organization in England and then as Trustee of our non-profit corporation), Vivien Anne Law (1954–2002). This forms part of a larger report or Memoir responding, in part, to the opportunity to examine and advise on Vivien’s archives in late 2005 at the request of her widower, Sir Nicholas Shackleton (1937–2006).

Our Director’s paper for our 2002 Colloquium at the British Museum in London in March (a month after Vivien’s death) is dedicated to her memory, as well as that of another, dear, friend and mentor.

2002 Colloquium on “Shaping Understanding: Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World (400–1100)”.

Vivien Law in her Garden in Cambridge, England,June 1996 Photograph © Mildred Budny

Vivien Law in her Cambridge Garden in June 1996 (Photograph © Mildred Budny)

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3. Giles Constable

Also for our blog Manuscript Studies, this year we posted a set of recollections about of Giles Constable (1 June 1929 — 17 January 2021), friend, colleague, mentor, and RGME Associate and Honorary Trustee. These recollections do not comprise an obituary as such, because Giles often and firmly expressed his wish for no such thing, nor any Memorial Service or Festschrift for him in his honor.

Instead, after an interval of mourning, we record appreciation for his contributions as a presence and guiding force for our organization since its early years in the United States, following the move of our principal base from the United Kingdom to Princeton, New Jersey, in October of 1994.

Recollections for the 2024 RGME Anniversary Year, Part 1. Giles Constable.

Giles Constable reading in his office at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Also, his generous encouragement of our work for manuscript studies by long-term loans or gifts made it possible closely to examine, over time, groups of original specimens of medieval manuscripts, manuscript fragments, documents, seals in metal or wax, early printed materials, bindings, and associated records. The work included conservation, photography, research, seminars, display, and publication in our blog and other forms.

Discoveries abounded, and found expression in those publications as well as in various of our RGME events. For example:

2014 Seminar on Manuscripts and Their Photographs, held at the Index of Christian Art of Princeton University in its Seminar Room.

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5. Patrick Wormald

Now, in preparation for our Episode 17. “RGME Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections” in September 2024, our RGME Associate and Trustee David Ganz offers a Memoir of our RGME Associate Patrick Wormald (1947–2004).

Coffee Break at the 2002 British Museum Colloquium.

Patrick Wormald at the 2002 Colloquium

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In Memoriam

See also RGME Officers, Associates, and Volunteers: In Memoriam.

Another Memoir composed by our Director in booklet format, published in a limited edition:

“The Guessing Game: A Memoir of My Uncle Bob, Robert Roger McEwan (1918‒2007)” (Princeton, New Jersey: Milly Budny Designs, 2017)

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Others?

Are there others whom you wish to remember? Please let us know. Would you like to contribute a Memoir of some kind about someone you recall with appreciation and seek to record?

For example, you could Contact Us or write to the [email protected] with your requests or suggestions.

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Episode 17 of “The Research Group Speaks”

As part of our anniversary celebrations, the RGME prepares an Episode in our online series “The Research Group Speaks” to consider our past, present, and future.

Episode 17. “RGME Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections”

It will, for example, offer recollections of people who have loomed large in our history, and whom we remember with affection, admiration, and gratitude. Among them are Giles Constable, Vivien Law, and Patrick Wormald (see above). Please join us.

To register:

Episode 17. Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections
Saturday 21 September 2024, 1:00–2:30 EDT (GMT-4) online via Zoom

See you there?

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Tags: Giles Constable, Memoirs, Oleg Grabar, Patrick Wormald, Vivien Law
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2024 Grant for “Between Past and Future” Project from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Libraries Program

April 5, 2024 in 2024 Grant, Announcements, RGME Symposia

Announcement

2024 Grant to the RGME from
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
Research Libraries Program
for

A Year-Long Project with Paired Symposia

“Between Past and Future”
(Parts I–II)

[Posted on 5 April 2024]

RGME Logo in Color (2014).

Gratefully we announce that The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, through its Research Libraries Program, has awarded the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) a grant for 2024 to carry out a one-year Project centered upon our Spring and Autumn Symposia in this Anniversary Year as a co-ordinated set of events. Drawing upon fruits of the 2023 Project for our Library & Archives funded by the Foundation, this year’s grant in our Anniversary Year creates a new Project focused upon links between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts.

“Between Past and Future:
RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia in 2024
for Teaching in the Liberal Arts with Original Sources,
at Vassar College and Beyond”

Last year, we focused upon the task of “Building the Plan for Recording, Structuring, and Accessing the RGME Library & Archives”. Now, we launch the work of crafting a set of events centered upon a return to our in-person Symposia and their follow-up in the plan for our 2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia.

Building upon RGME integrated approaches across the years, these events are expressly dedicated to building bridges to aid passage across obstacles and standing watch on the bridge of a vessel poised to steer an enlightened course. Our voyage contemplates connections “Between Past and Future” , specifically for encountering myriad original sources, as found notably in Special Collections, and considering them as opportunities for “Teaching Events”.

This year’s Project embarks on a fresh campaign, as it builds upon last year’s funded Project to begin the process of structuring our Library & Archives as a collection.

Grant from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for the RGME Library & Archives in 2023.

Both grants have been awarded through the Research Libraries Program, for which “the overall objective . . . is to improve the ability of research libraries to serve the needs of scholarship in the humanities and the performing arts, and to help make their resources more widely accessible to scholars and the general public.”

“Between Past and Future”: The Way Forward

The project funded by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant will span the entirety of the 2024 calendar year, concluding with an end-of-the-year report.

Building upon the 2023 Pilot Project for the RGME Library & Archives, the 2024 year-long Project centers upon our Spring Symposium taking place at Vassar College in April in hybrid format, at the invitation of Head of Special Collections, Ronald D. Patkus, familiar as participant (2019–2023) with our Symposium Series both in-person and online. Enthusiasm among speakers, respondents, presiders, consultants, and others joining the 2024 Spring Symposium Program informs the plan to create a curated set of RGME Symposia which not only co-produce this exceptional event, but also follow from it. (The Spring Symposium Program is available in pdf as consecutive pages or foldable booklet.)

Poster 1: Save-the-Date for 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar.

The 2024 Autumn Symposium makes it possible to undertake an integrated follow-up for the Spring event without burdening Vassar with organizational work, by using RGME structures of paired Spring & Summer Symposia and our various other online events. They all function mainly through pro-bono donations, from pre-production through post-production and follow-up, to involve minimal expenses, for which regularly we must seek support above our organization’s expenses.

As a one-day online event, the Autumn Symposium has its program partly in place, with some participants from the Spring Symposium and openings to be filled through it, notably by meetings for planning at and around the Spring Symposium. In this flexible way, the ‘casting’ of the Autumn Symposium as a set of “Teaching Events” can assemble its program with relative ease of preparation to ‘enact’ the processes of teaching through encounters with Special Collections, for in-person and online audiences alike.

The 2024 Project is grounded upon our practice to interlink events (notably Symposia) and to employ a flexible, structured, approach to programming. Here we integrate the work for the Spring Symposium at Vassar College with some “first fruits” soon in a shorter event online, much like the paired events of earlier Spring & Autumn Symposia which grew from our occasional Symposia over the years. Examples include our

2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia on “Materials and Access”
2022 Spring and Autumn Symposia on “Structured Knowledge”
2020 Spring Symposium at Princeton University: “From Cover to Cover”

Both 2024 events have companion RGME publications, both digital and printed. They comprise webposts, blogposts, paired posters (preview, program), recordings, and more, notably the illustrated Symposium Booklets. We publish them mostly by pro-bono work from start to final proof, for issue in print and pdf. Costs for their printing and distribution (at in-person events and by mail as required) call for support.

The perspectives on the theme of the Spring Symposium present a coherent, multi-disciplinary, and multi-generational scholarly program in a sequence of teaching events with expertise and materials in multiple centers. They stand poised, as proclaimed by the Symposium title

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

London, The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 36, fol. 65r, top left. Historiated initial enclosing a ship under sail with the poets Dante and his guide Vergil. Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedia, Canto 1, Purgatorio. Northern Italy, 15th century.

The Autumn Symposium carries it forward with a selection of virtual visits placed

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

This follow-up event allows presenters the opportunity, with minimal preparation, to showcase collections (public and private) in virtual visits guided by curators, in the company of teachers and students both on-site and online. The informal style accords with our proven approach for online events as roundtables, interviews, conversations, master classes, and workshops.

For example: “The Research Group Speaks”: The Series.

Thus, we might channel the purposeful momentum for the Spring Symposium in its central event and a simpler follow-up with participants including Vassar representatives: faculty, staff, students, and alums.

Center Stage

The Vassar Symposium in the Spring occupies center stage for the Project. Taking place in hybrid format from Friday to Sunday 19–21 April 2024, this event gathers participants at Vassar by invitation, with attendees both in person and online.

2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

Its production rests upon organizational work and resources from both Vassar College and the RGME, guided by a Spring Symposium Advisory Planning Committee comprising Ronald Patkus, Elizabeth Lastra, Mildred Budny, and Barbara Williams Ellertson. The event expressly showcases

The Catherine Pelton Durrell ’25 Archives and Special Collections Library,
the companion exhibition at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and
the publication of the new commissioned catalogue on Medieval & Renaissance Books held by both Special Collections and the Art Center.

It also celebrates

the significant donation of the acquisition of the Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

Vassar College’s resources, people, and representatives stand as focus, as the scope attends also to a wider context of accomplishments. Thus will gather experts and practitioners in the fields of Special Collections, teaching, learning, and the Liberal Arts, with speakers from different centers (also abroad) and stages or directions of engagement. They include librarians, archivists, curators, collectors, manuscript and rare-book vendors, faculty, students, and former students working in the field. Featured contributions include reports by recent Vassar College alumnae working with Special Collections, current Vassar students engaging with materials in the Vassar collections, and Vassar alums of longer duration revisiting and reviving such engagement.

The Autumn Symposium in online format on Saturday 26 October 2024, also with ancillary events, continues the engagement between original sources — medieval and more, across centuries, genres, styles, and languages — and the people who study and care for them, teach from them, and learn from them. Among them on the Programs for both Symposia are representatives from Vassar, both present and past.

2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm”

As follow-up and follow-through, the Autumn Symposium offers virtual, curated visits to Special Collections of several kinds, institutional and private, with focus upon original materials, as witnesses with their own stories to tell. Its online visits (in this country and abroad) will showcase collections and programs dedicated to promoting pedagogy. One, by request, would exhibit some highlights of RGME Library & Archives, as revealed in our 2023 funded Pilot Project, along with results of our on-going research on manuscripts and related materials in our own and others’ collections.

The Plan for the Project

The grant for 2024 gives support for multiple aspects of the work to organize and accomplish both Symposia and to integrate them both with each other as a co-ordinated set and with the other RGME activities throughout the year. Among the funded elements are provisions for organizational logistics including online and in-person technical and logistical back-up for the paired Symposia, the preparations of their publications (traditional and digital) from conception through distribution, and the part-time services of an Intern Executive Assistant/Associate to aid the RGME Director to plan, refine, and complete events and integrate them as a cohesive pair dedicated to teaching original sources from the Medieval/Renaissance and other realms.

This latter position, unprecedented in the history of the RGME, offers invaluable support for the Director’s work to plan, co-ordinate, undertake, and follow through the work of RGME activities both in person and online as the year unfolds. In announcing the 2024 Project and its Grant, we also announce the appointment of its new Intern Executive Assistant/Associate, our RGME Associate Hannah Goeselt. Her work is familiar to the RGME already through her guest blogpost in August 2023 for our blog on Manuscript Studies as well as her contributions to our 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia and Episode 15 in our online series “The Research Group Speaks”. We celebrate her contributions, look forward to further contributions, and thank her for her help in joining the ground-breaking 2024 Project.

The Project’s results aim for the two Symposia plus publications and ancillary activities, with the Vassar Symposium as the star. They incorporate knowledge gained from the 2023 Pilot Project , as does the plan of the Spring Symposium at Vassar itself. Mentorship for the Intern Executive Associate would provide professional experience at close hand with a master to teach, by doing, the steps to produce an educational series in its many manifestations, in person, online, and published.

Toledo, Castilla la Mancha, Spain, Puente de San Martín. Photograph by Ввласенко/Volodymyr Vlasenko via CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed license.

The Project will span the full 2024 calendar year, with pre-production/production/post-production in continuous, interlinked cycles. It is designed to express, enhance, and interlink with the celebrations of our 2024 RGME Anniversary Year, for which the chosen Theme is Bridges.

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (see our Mission Statement) exists to promote research on written sources across the ages, with our own nonprofit educational publishing house. Powered principally by volunteers, with some outside support, the RGME prepares this Project for its 2024 Anniversary Year, which celebrates 25 years as a Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization (incorporated at Princeton, New Jersey, in November 1999); and 35 years as an international scholarly organization (founded at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1989). Its seeds, by its Founder Director Mildred Budny’s training, are grounded in a Vassar College Liberal Arts Education, with its emphasis on “going to the sources”.

Our Project brings fruits home.

The 2024 Project serves as the centerpiece and major focus for our activities in our 2024 Anniversary Year. With this year’s Theme of Bridges, we attend to our mission, guided by our experience, advisors, co-organizers, collaborators, contributors, friends, resources, and generous support, to travel “Between Past and Future” in an enlightened, integrated program of activities with companion publications of a variety of kinds, both traditional and digital. We give thanks for the support which sustains the plan in its journeys to accomplishments, both online and in person, for this year and beyond.

The Way Forward

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence is most grateful for the generosity of spirit, the model, and the financial support of The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for this next significant step in the continuing history of our organization, as we now turn to an integrated year-long Project poised “Between Past and Future” in constructing and strengthening bridges of multiple kinds between fields of study, original materials, institutions, individuals, generations, and forms of engagement with the legacy of the past, in its written and other traces, as it works its way in transmission towards the future.

Contact Us

For information, please contact [email protected] or Contact Us.

For updates, please visit

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
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Friends of the RGME.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Toledo, Castilla la Mancha, Spain, Puente de San Martín, view from the north-west. Constructed in the late 14th century over the River Tagus. Photograph (24 May 2017) by Ввласенко/Volodymyr Vlasenko via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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Tags: 2024 Autumn Symposium, 2024 Project "Between Past and Future", 2024 RGME Anniversary, 2024 Spring Symposium, Archives and Special Collections Library of Vassar College, Bridges, Building Bridges, Medieval & Renaissance Books at Vassar College, Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
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2024 Anniversary Symposium: The Booklet

February 28, 2024 in Anniversary, Announcements, Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia

“Manuscript (HE)ART”
Symposium Booklet

for the
2024 Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(24 February 2024)

Co-Organized
by Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

[Posted on 27 February 2024]

The 64-page illustrated 2024 Anniversary Symposium Booklet is now available for our 2024 Anniversary Symposium “Manuscript (HE)ART” held online on 24 February 2024.

2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Program

2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Plan

You may download it as a pdf in two versions, depending upon your printer, paper stock, and preferences.

1) as consecutive pages for 8 1/2 in. x 11 in. sheets (quarto or letter)

2) as a foldable booklet for 11 in. x 17 in. sheets (tabloid, ledger, or B size) to fold in half

If you wish a copy of the printed version, please contact [email protected].

For the event, on the day, we circulated a Preview of the Booklet, with Authors’ Corrections, as a pdf.

Now we issue the Booklet, with a few more corrections, both in print and pdf, for wider circulation. It offers a souvenir of the occasion, with the Program, Abstracts for the presentations, companion Illustrations, the Speakers’ Bios, and a few Notices, including a list of “Contributions to Digital Humanities” by Jesse D. Hurlbut.

2024 Anniversary Symposium Booklet: Front Cover

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Coming Attractions

Watch for our next events.

2023 and 2024 Activities

2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

And more!

For updates, please visit

News
our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give.

See Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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Tags: RGME Anniversary, RGME Anniversary Symposium, RGME Symposia
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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 first including the Symposium Program, Posters, and Symposium Booklet with Program, Abstracts, and Images, and then reporting the issue of the corrected Symposium Booklet after the event, in more than one stage, as refinements came forward]

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

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”

Spring Symposium ‘Home Page’
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College
Report
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College: Report

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.

Poster 2 for RGME 2024 Autumn Symposium

For more information and to register, see below.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Archives and Special Collections Library of Vassar College, Edgar William Pyke Collection of Coins, History of Bridges, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, RGME Anniversary Year, RGME Library & Archives, RGME Symposia, Special Collections, Special Collections of Ellis Library University of Missouri, Teaching Events, Virtual Visits to Collections
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2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: The Plan

October 18, 2023 in Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia, Uncategorized

Manuscript (HE)ART

An RGME Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by
Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom
10:00 am – 3:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

Announcement Part 2: The Plan

[Posted on 18 October 2023]

After announcing the Program for this Symposium, we describe its Plan.

For the Program and information about registering for this event, see:

2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Program.

Meet our First WebMaster

Jesse Hurlbut and the Château de Chambord in 2023. Photograph by Patricia Stevenson.

An accomplished medievalist , manuscript historian, photographer, blogger, and scholar of French language and literature (See Jesse Hurlbut: Curriculum Vitae), Jesse has generously served as our first WebMaster (2004–2023).

He generously offered to give the RGME a website (which we did not have), selected the domain name, created the design in consultation not only once but twice (first in Drupal, then in WordPress), expanded its facilities and storage capacity, upgraded the site, secured it after a widespread spam attack, and continued to maintain our website across the years, from supporting the hosting of the site to sustaining the domain name itself.

A couple of photographs register aspects of Jesse’s spirited engagement with the material heritage of the past in manuscript and other forms. We have gladly come to know aspects of that engagement, directly and indirectly, while engaging in study and observing ripples of his influence across a range of fields.

First (below), as shown after he had won a manuscript fragment in a drawing by a bookseller at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2014. On the way out of the building (Valley III) which housed both the main reception for the Congress and the book exhibits, he paused to show me his new leaf. His expression speaks volumes.

Jesse Hurlbut holds his newly won manuscript leaf at the Kalamazoo Congress on 10 May 2014. (Photography by Mildred Budny)

Second (top right, at the head of this post), on a trip to France, at the Château de Chambord, as expressed in a photograph which he posted on his birthday in 2023.

Symposium as Thank-Offering

When Jesse announced his plan to retire as WebMaster, with months of generous advance notice so that we might figure out how to replace his multiple roles in running our website and keeping it in operation by the subscriptions for hosting the site and for securing the domain name.

And so, by conferring among ourselves and asking advice beyond the RGME, there was formed the RGME Website Advisory Committee, to guide and oversee these responsibilities, which support the ability to edit and update the public-facing structure of the website, in the hands of the WebEditor (our Director). An Acting WebMaster volunteered to step in during the continuing transition period, while the RGME might seek the resources to fund and sustain the maintenance of our site longterm.

The RGME also sought some way, which might be appropriate and feasible, given our sets of resources and capabilities, to show our thanks to our first WebMaster. We wished to express our gratitude, both individual and collective, for the extraordinary donation which he has made over the years for our work, communications, online presence, and publications – many of which are visible or downloadable on our site.

And so emerged the plan for this Symposium, which stands outside our customary series, but which draws upon the habits, skills, and network of contacts giving shape to those events and others increasingly over the past several years in response to online opportunities. The plan for a Symposium, its title, scope, and date was shaped, in stages, by the two co-organizers, in consultation. Prospective speakers and presiders responded generously, and the plan came into being.

Then we could inform Jesse about the plan, its purpose, its scope, its participants, its date, its Save-the-Date Poster, and an announcement of the event. He made some suggestions, which deftly improve the forms or formulas of expression of our heartfelt plan for thanksgiving. For these suggestions, too, we give thanks.

The Plan for the Symposium

The Symposium has two halves or sessions. Each is the domain of one of the two co-organizers, Jessica L. Savage and Katharine C. Chandler.

1) Le monde en fleurs: Visualizing the Natural World of Late Medieval France

This considers visualizations as seen through the art and manuscripts of medieval France “in flower” and especially over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

2) Medieval Manuscripts in the Social Media Public Sphere

This session will be focused on connections, crowdsourcing, and community-building through social media with medieval manuscripts.

The first is the domain of Jessica Savage. The second is that of Katharine Chandler.

In their words:

In gratitude for Jesse’s service to the field and this Research Group, we are thrilled to gather the speakers listed below for a Symposium to express thanks for his contributions to the world of manuscript studies.

The morning session, “Le monde en fleurs: Visualizing the Natural World of Late Medieval France,” will focus on the art and manuscripts of medieval France “in flower” and especially over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Contributions include papers on French literature, women’s books, symbolism of the floral, animal, and monstrous, and highlights in the codicology and patronage of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.

An afternoon of five presentations will dive into the topic “Medieval Manuscripts in the Social Media Public Sphere,” focused on connections, crowdsourcing, and community-building through social media with medieval manuscripts, including the digitization and imaging of manuscripts. The contributions close with a special response paper on Jesse Hurlbut’s websites and a Roundtable for the afternoon presenters, including our invited guest Jesse Hurlbut, to engage in scholarly dialogue.

Speakers and Presiders

Participants in the proceedings of the event include (in alphabetical order):

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Mildred Budny
Haleigh Burgon
Katharine C. Chandler
Joyce Coleman
Thomas E. Hill
S.C. Kaplan
Laura Morreale
Johan Oosterman
Samantha Pious
Tina-Marie Ranalli
Jessica L. Savage
Anna Siebach-Larsen
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz

Our invited guest, Jesse D. Hurlbut will also offer comments as part of the afternoon Roundtable.

For their titles, the sequence of presentations, and information about registration for the event, see

2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Program

The Save-the-Date describes the Plan and display an emblematic image chosen to express the hearty and heartfelt theme. (You may download it here.)

Save-the-Date Poster for 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut. Poster set in RGME Bembino.

The Symposium Booklet

Published for the event, the 64-page illustrated 2024 Anniversary Symposium Booklet is available freely as a pdf on our website. See 2024 Anniversary Symposium: The Booklet.

You may download it in two versions, depending upon your printer, paper stock, and preferences.

1) as consecutive pages for 8 1/2 in. x 11 in. sheets (quarto or letter)

2) as a foldable booklet for 11 in. x 17 in. sheets (tabloid, ledger, or B size) to fold in half

If you wish a copy of the printed version, please contact [email protected].

Image as Emblem

There the image appears labelled as “Dragon Heart”. Note its combination of hearts (three hearts within one) with a pair of dragon-like creatures who climb one of the concentric rings of a diagram.

We love the choices. “Close to our heart”, we can say.

The ‘inhabited’ image belongs to a page in a Libellus enigmatum (“Little Enigmatic Book”) of circa 1521 by François Demoulins de Rochefort (born circa 1470–1480 – died 1526). The page is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, MS Latin 8775, folio 3r.

For information about the manuscript, see

https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc68091z.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, MS Latin 8775. fol. 3r. François Demoulins de Rochefort, Libellus enigmatum. Circa 1515, Paris or Val de Loire. Image Public Domain.

You can ‘turn the pages’ of the digital facsimile via gallica.bnf.fr/ark:12148/cc68091z, with other ‘inhabited’ images populated with a variety of creatures, from dragons in the circles to eagles, a swan, and a rooster at the bottom.

Ce manuscrit célèbre la “triade Angoulême”. Il comporte trois peintures au contenu allégorique et divinatoire, formées de la même façon, avec un coeur en contenant trois plus petits. Autour d’eux s’enroulent des cercles concentriques comportant des inscriptions en latin des saintes Ecritures, au contenu réputé magique. Au-dessous se trouvent des animaux, respectivement un aigle et ses deux aiglons (Louise de Savoie), un cygne (Marguerite d’Angoulême) et un coq (François Ier).

— https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc68091z.

*****

An Innovative Event as Forerunner

Baltimore , Walters Art Museum, MS. W.148, folio 33v, bottom right, with fighting creatures. Image via Creative Commons.

This Symposium’s co-organizers, Jessica Savage and Katharine Chandler, co-organized their first event for the RGME last year with an innovative approach to our series of Symposia.

Following the set of Surveys for the RGME conducted by Jessica Savage in 2022, a subject was identified, a Call for Proposals was issued, the program was selected, and thus was born the successful Pre-Symposium for the 2023 Spring Symposium, with a half-day online event of “Lightning Talks” on Intrepid Borders. See:

The illustrated Booklet for the Spring Symposium and Pre-Symposium can be downloaded from there.

With this “informed and supportive” model (in Jessica’s words), characteristic of the RGME, the wish to show our collective thanks to Jesse could find expression. The responses to the plan demonstrate that the shared wish to give thanks not only for his contributions to the RGME as WebMaster, but also to the wider world of manuscript studies and their online manifestations.

*****

Anniversary Celebrations for 2024

For 2024, in our Anniversary Year, the Theme for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) is “Bridges”. See

Bridges for our Anniversary Year.

This Anniversary Symposium, as an expression of thanks to Jesse Hurlbut, RGME WebMaster Emeritus, is the first of the RGME Symposia for the year.

We hope to welcome you to the event.

Questions or Comments?

Save-the-Date Poster for 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut.

If you have questions about the Symposium, please contact

[email protected].

Please reach out to us, if you wish, in these ways:

Leave your Comments below
Contact Us
Visit our FaceBook Page
Join the conversation on our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
Check out our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: Anniversary Symposium, Jesse Hurlbut, Liber Enigmatum, MANUSCRIPT (HE)ART Symposium, RGME Symposia
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2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Program

October 18, 2023 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia, Uncategorized

“MANUSCRIPT (HE)ART”

An RGME Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by
Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom
10:00 am – 4:00 pm EST (GMT-5)

Announcement Part 1: The Program

[Posted on 18 October 2023, with updates]

We announce the 2024 RGME Anniversary Symposium, as an expression of thanks to our RGME WebMaster Emeritus, Jesse Hurlbut, upon his retirement. This Symposium is the first in our Symposia for 2024, when the RGME celebrates an anniversary of 35 years as an international scholarly society founded in England, and 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey.

Jesse’s contributions to the RGME as Associate and WebMaster date from 2005, a few years after our incorporation in 1999 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The generosity of his contributions to the RGME and many others in fields of manuscript and other studies across the years lead us, in the company of some of his former students and colleagues, to offer this Symposium in thanks.

For the background for this Symposium, see the companion post to this one:

2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Plan

The First WebMaster of the RGME

An accomplished medievalist, manuscript historian, photographer, blogger, and scholar of French language and literature, Jesse Hurlbut generously served as the first WebMaster of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (2005–2023). Following Jesse’s retirement on 30 June 2023, we wish to offer this event in thanks, to examine subjects related to his interests, work, and teaching in the world of manuscript studies. The Symposium brings together former students, colleagues, and friends to share their work and work-in-progress in various subjects or projects which his work, teaching, and example may have helped to inspire or refine.

Jesse Hurlbut and the Château de Chambord in 2023. Photograph by Patricia Stevenson.

The Purpose

Our Save-the-Date Poster expresses the plan in word and image for an Anniversary Symposium full of “MANUSCRIPT (HE)ART”. (You may download it here.)

Save-the-Date Poster for 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut. Poster set in RGME Bembino.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: 2023 Autumn Symposium Progam, Anniversary Symposium, Giving Thanks, Jesse Hurlbut, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, RGME Symposia
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2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

October 16, 2023 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, Reception, RGME Symposia, Uncategorized

2024 RGME Spring Symposium
at Vassar College

Vassar College: Current Seal.

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

Friday to Sunday, 18 to 21 April 2024

(hybrid, with both in-person events
and online participation by Zoom)

Celebrating the Acquisition of the
Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection
of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts

[Posted on 16 October 2023, with updates]

Update 15 April 2024: Now see the updated Program (below).
Update 16 April: For registrations, now see Late Registrations (below)

2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College:
“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges
between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”

Friday to Sunday, 19 to 21 April 2024

https://library.vassar.edu/…/2024-RGME-Spring-Symposium…

(hybrid, with both in-person events and online participation by Zoom)

*****

For 2024, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence celebrates an anniversary. Our Theme for the Year is “Bridges”. See “Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year.

Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, “The Open Missal”. Ludger tom Ring the Younger, circa 1570.

Among our celebrations, the RGME continues with its Symposium Series. With a Spring Symposium at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, the RGME Symposia return to an in-person event, this time as a hybrid event also with online participation.

In 2023, the RGME began to return to in-person events with its activities at the partly-hybrid 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies. This step came after the cancellation of the Congress in 2020 and an online Congress in both 2021 and 2022. For 2024, our Symposia join this return, with the invitation to hold our Spring Symposium at Vassar College.

For some of our Symposia, whether in-person at Princeton University in 2019 (and intended there in 2020), or online by Zoom in 2022, 2023, and 2024, our RGME Associates at Vassar have given presentations about their work, the Library, and Special Collections. See, for example,

Now we visit Vassar to join the celebrations for a new catalogue and exhibition of Medieval and Renaissance Books in the collection. We do so by gathering scholars, librarians, curators, cataloguers, collectors, vendors, teachers, and others to participate in an RGME Symposium which showcases the materials in the light of expertise and appreciation dedicated to them.

The choice of the Program and other components of the Symposium is guided by the Vassar/RGME Symposium Advisory Committee, and by other advisers both at Vassar and elsewhere. The Advisory Committee comprises

Note on the Image

Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. The Open Missal (circa 1570) attributed to Ludger tom Ring the Younger (1522-1582). Image via “The Open Missal”.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Early Printed Books, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, History of Bridges, Les Enluminures, Manuscript studies, Manuscripts & Early Printed Books, Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection, RGME Anniversary Year, RGME Symposia, Symbols in Vassar Architecture, Vassar College, Vassar College Library, Vassar College Special Collections and Archives
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2023 Autumn Symposium “Between Earth and Sky”

March 21, 2023 in Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia, Uncategorized

2023 Autumn Symposium
“Between Earth and Sky”

Part 2 of 2 in the
2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Materials & Access”

Saturday 21 October 2023
9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) by Zoom

[Posted on 21 March 2023, with updates]

For 2023, the Year’s Theme for the Research Group is “Materials & Access”.

The RGME continues with its pair of Symposia for 2023, continuing its expanded pattern of paired day-long virtual Spring and Autumn Symposia launched in 2022.

"Centered". Photograph Ⓒ 2014 Mildred Budny. Image of Dew at the center of Sedum.

This year, the Spring and Autumn Symposia will take place by Zoom respectively on:

Saturday, 25 March 2023
Saturday 21 October 2023 (“The Sweetest Day” 2023)

Each Symposium in the pair explores a wide range of spheres, subjects, case-studies, and issues connected with the duality of Materials of many kinds and varieties of Access to them.

Part 1, “From the Ground Up”, explored the terrain for Materials and Access in a wide variety of fields.

Part 2, “Between Earth and Sky”, examines the conditions and opportunities for Materials and Access in the world as we might know it, both in the Here and Now and beyond.

1 of 2. 2023 Spring Symposium,
with a Pre-Symposium of Lightning Talks

Pre-Symposium: “Intrepid Borders” (24 March 2023)

Spring Symposium: “From the Ground Up” (25 March 2023)

Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS. W.148, folio 33v, bottom right. Image via Creative Commons.

The Spring Symposium acquired a companion event, in the form of a half-day virtual Pre-Symposium with Lightning Talks selected from responses to a Call for Proposals and organized by Katharine C. Chandler, Jennifer Larson, and Jessica L. Savage.

Information about these companion events, which took place on Friday afternoon 24 March and all day Saturday 25 March 2023:

2023 Spring Pre-Symposium on “Intrepid Borders”

2023 Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”

The blooms of Snowdrops emerging “From the Ground Up”. Photograph Ⓒ Mildred Budny.

The 2023 Spring Pre-Symposium/Symposium Booklet records the Program for both events and the Abstracts for their Presentations, with Illustrations. The digital version can be downloaded freely here in two formats, for your printing facilities and preferences.

Consecutive Pages (quarto size, or 8 1/2″ × 11″ sheets)
consecutive pages
Foldable Booklet (11″ × 17″ sheets), to be folded in half
foldable booklet

2 of 2. 2023 Autumn Symposium:
“Between Earth and Sky”

Saturday 21 October 2023 by Zoom

Ravenna, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ceiling Mosaic. Photo: Petar Milošević / CC BY-SA, Wikipedia.

Grounded in the experiences and expertise of our fields of study, our 2023 Autumn Symposium might take notice of view-points across time and place which can inform and enlighten our explorations of materials, memory aids, and forms of understanding transmitted from the past.

Note on the Image

With an eye toward the heavens, a visitor looking upward in the late-antique Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, created for an empress in Ravenna, Italy, can glimpse the mosaic ceiling patterned with star-studded and celestial skies of deep blue.

Photograph by Petar Milošević, via CC BY-SA License via Wikipedia.

Participants

Participants for the 2023 Autumn Symposium, variously as Presenters, Respondents, Presiders, Moderators, and Advisers, include (in alphabetical order):

Phillip A. Bernhardt-House, Mildred Budny, Barbara Williams Ellertson, Hannah Goeselt, Justin Hastings, Jennifer Larson, Laura Light, John McQuillen, Ann Pascoe-van-Zyl, Ronald Patkus, David Porreca, David W. Sorenson, Kathy Young, N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, and others.

2020 Symposium "From Cover to Cover" Poster 1

2020 Symposium Poster 1

Among them are Speakers who now reprise or offer a variant on the papers which they planned for the RGME 2020 Spring Symposium in person at Princeton University. Their illustrated Abstracts for that cancelled event describe the intentions then. See 2020 Spring Symposium (Save the Date) and the published Symposium Booklet, available as a pdf laid out

in consecutive pages,
or as foldable booklet.

A similar Symposium Booklet is planned for the 2023 Autumn Symposium.

For the Preliminary Program for the 2023 Autumn Symposium, see below. As it takes fuller shape, its details will appear here. For an e-version of the companion Symposium Booklet, see below.

Full-length figure of Philosophy at the front of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy in a 10th-Century Anglo-Saxon copy.

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.3.7, fol. 1r. Frontispiece image of Philosophy Personnified for Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, with commentary. Image via CC 4.0 International License, via https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/O.3.7

A ‘Poster Person’

As a beacon for the event, we reflect on the majestic standing figure of Lady Philosophy appearing as a frontispiece in a Late Anglo-Saxon manuscript. Standing upright with a steady frontal gaze, wrapped in flowing garments, she rests her feet upon hilly ground, while she holds up to the sides an elongated book in one hand and a foliate scepter in the other. This is a favorite book and image.

Preliminary Program

(For Registration, see below.)

Speakers, Respondents, and Presiders for the event include the Director and Associates of the RGME as well as others.

Recording. We will record the event for our records, also with the aim of making the recording available for viewing afterward, subject to processing and permission.

Please watch this space for updates.

Schedule and List of Presentations
(the order may vary)

Full Day: 9:30 am to 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) with breaks

Morning

Session 1. “Sources, Resources, and Encounters”
9:30–11:15 am EDT (GMT-4)

Presider: Jennifer Larson (Classics Department, Kent State University)

Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
“Opening Remarks”

Kathryn Young (University Archivist / Curator of Rare Books, Loyola University Chicago)
and
Justin Hastings (Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of English, Loyola University Maryland)
“Crowning a King, Interpreting Society, and Scaring the Kids:
First-Year Composition Students Meet the Archives and Special Collections”

Ronald Patkus (Head of Special Collections and College Historian, Adjunct Associate Professor of History on the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Chair, Vassar College)
“Preview of 2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College”
— April 2024 (hybrid):
“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”

London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius A. VI, fol. 4v, detail.

Lunch Break. 11:15 am – 12:30 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Afternoon

Session 2. “By Land and By Sea”
12:30-2:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Presider: Hannah Goeselt (Library, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston)

Ann Pascoe-van-Zyl (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, Trinity College Dublin)
“Affective Landscape Imagery in the Old English Psalms and the Old English Elegies”

Eleanor Congdon (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Youngstown State University, Ohio)
“Letters to Ambrogio Malipiero, a Venetian Vice Consul in Syria during the 1480s“

David Porreca (Department of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo, Kitchener, Ontario)
“An Introduction to the Edgar William Pyke Coin Collection at the University of Waterloo”

David W. Sorenson (Allen G. Berman, Professional Numismatist)
“Response: Collecting and Studying Coins as Records of History” [if David’s variable work timetable permits him to attend]

Break. 2:00–2:30 pm EDT

Session 3. “Having a Look, Looking Anew, and Looking Forward”
2:30–4:00 pm EDT

Presider: Jessica L. Savage (Art History Specialist, Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University)

Laura Light (Director and Senior Specialist, Text Manuscripts, Les Enluminures, Chicago, New York, and Paris)
“Do Manuscript Descriptions Influence Scholarship?
The Case of Thirteenth-Century Latin Bibles”

John T. McQuillen (Associate Curator, Printed Books and Bindings, Morgan Library and Museum, New York)
“Ars moriendi Blockbooks: What Can Watermarks in Paper Tell Us?”

Barbara Williams Ellertson (The BASIRA Project: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art and Research Associate of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia)
“A Preview of a new Open Access Resource: Searching the BASIRA Project Database”

Break. 4:00–4:30 pm EDT

Presider: David Porreca

Session 4. “Accessing Materials / Bridging Time and Place”
4:30–5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Phillip Bernhardt-House (Academic Vagabond)
“A Few Reflections on Materials and Their Access:
Accessibility Concerns and Scholarship”

Mildred Budny
Concluding Remarks:
“From ‘Materials and Access’ in 2023 to ‘Bridges’ in 2024:
Accomplishments and Prospects for an Anniversary Year”

2023 Autumn Symposium Booklet Cover.

The Illustrated Symposium Booklet

As the Symposium approaches, the illustrated Symposium Booklet becomes ready.

Our practice is to make the illustrated Symposium Booklet available close to the time of the event, for distribution in printed and digital formats. The e-version (in pdf format) will be downloadable in two formats:

as consecutive pages.
as foldable booklet.

Registration for the 2023 Autumn Symposium

To register for the event, visit the RGME Eventbrite Collection.

RGME Events on Eventbrite.
2023 Autumn Symposium Tickets.
General Admission
or
Admission with Voluntary Donation

Registration is required; there is no charge for admission. We welcome donations.

Donations for our mission and activities may be tax-deductible. Registering for the event offers an option for you to make a donation easily and conveniently. See also

Donations and Contributions.

We thank you for your interest and support.

More Information and Updates

Watch this space for more information as it unfolds.

Questions? Ask [email protected].

2023 RGME Events

Other events are planned for the Year. See

“The Research Group Speaks”: The Series

The next episode for this online series is Episode 14 on Sunday 19 November 2023
2:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom. See

Episode 14: Translating the Latin Hermetica by Committee

2024 RGME Events for an Anniversary Year

Announcements of our events planned for 2024 are coming soon. Some will be announced for the 2023 Autumn Symposium. They include:

2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College:
“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”.

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*****

Tags: "Between Earth and Sky", 13th-century Latin Bibles, Ars Moriendi, BASIRA Project, Blockbooks, History of Mercantile Correspondence, History of Watermarks, Materials and Access, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Old English Elegies, Old English Psalms, Philosophy Personnified, Pyke Coin Collection, RGME Autumn Symposium, RGME Spring Symposium, RGME Symposia, Special Collections, Teaching Collections, Teaching with Special Collections
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2023 Spring Symposium: “From the Ground Up”

January 12, 2023 in Conference, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia

2023 Spring Symposium
“From the Ground Up”

Part 1 of 2 in the
2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Materials & Access”

[Posted on 12 January 2023 , with updates]

With its chosen Theme of “Materials & Access” for the Year 2023, the Research Group prepares a pair of Symposia, continuing its expanded pattern of paired day-long virtual Spring and Autumn Symposia launched in 2022. Until then, RGME Symposia had occurred on occasion at one per year, sometimes annually and sometimes at intervals. Whereas previously they occurred in person, at various centers (like the 2020 Spring Symposium, which had to be cancelled on account of lockdown for Covid), the Symposia in 2022 and 2023 take place online by Zoom.

This year, the Spring and Autumn Symposia will take place by Zoom on:

Saturday, 25 March 2023
Saturday 21 October 2023 (“The Sweetest Day” 2023)

And There’s More

In a further expansion, the 2023 Spring Symposium will be preceded by a half-day Pre-Symposium which presents a series of Lightning Talks. They will emerge from the Call for Proposals, issued on 10 January 2023, with a deadline of 12 February 2023.

2023 Pre-Symposium Call for Papers: “Intrepid Borders” Lightning Talks.

Following that deadline, the Program of Talks for the Pre-Symposium has been selected and is now announced.

2023 ‘Pre-Symposium’ on “Intrepid Borders”

The New Ensemble: Pre-Symposium and Symposium

This year, with the Theme of “Materials and Access”, we not only prepare a pair of Symposia, but also extend the Spring Symposium with an accompanying ‘Pre-Symposium’ of Lightning Talks on the afternoon before. Selected through a Call for Proposals, these Talks explore the challenges of “Intrepid Borders: Marginalia in Medieval and Early Modern Books”. The plan for such sessions, their subject, the Call for Proposals, and the selected Program for the Lightning Talks are due to the initiative, enthusiasm, and organizational expertise of Jessica L. Savage and her co-organizers Katharine C. Chandler and Jenifer Larson. The fresh combination of exploratory Lightning Talks on Friday and the invited Symposium Presentations on Saturday opens our Symposia more widely.

The extended Symposium presents new and cumulative work, with reports of discoveries, work-in-progress, and collaborative projects. Some build upon work presented for the Symposia in 2022 (2022 Spring Symposium on “Structures of Knowledge” and 2022 Autumn Symposium on “Supports for Knowledge”).

We consider evidence from the medieval to modern periods and across a wide geographical, historical, and cultural range, both Western (Europe and North America) and non-Western (Ethiopia, Yemen, and Western India). From multiple centers, the Symposium plus Pre-Symposium gathers specialists, teachers, students, collectors, and others engaged or interested in activities relating to manuscripts, printed books, other media, and mixtures of them.

Program Booklet

To accompany the event and celebrate its contributors, we publish a combined Pre-Symposium/Symposium Program Booklet, with Abstracts of Presentations and companion Images. See below for information how to receive a copy in print or by download on this site.

*****

2023 half-day Pre-Symposium and full-day Symposium (online)

I. “Pre-Symposium of Lightning Talks” on Friday afternoon 24 March 2023

“Intrepid Borders:
Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts and Early Modern Books”

A Virtual Lightning Talks / Half-Day Symposium
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Co-Organized by Katharine C. Chandler, Jennifer Larson, and Jessica L. Savage

2023 RGME ‘Pre-Symposium’ on “Intrepid Borders”

Registration for this event is required, and can be made through its portal:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intrepid-borders-pre-symposium-for-2023-spring-symposium-tickets-512253994487

Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS. W.148, folio 33v, bottom. Image via Creative Commons.

II. Symposium on Saturday 25 March 2023

“From the Ground Up”

Following the models of the 2022 Spring and Autumn Symposia, the 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia will showcase some of our ongoing series of subjects, as well as introduce new ones. We explore challenges and opportunities for approaching and accessing materials of many kinds in the history, production, transmission, study, and display of manuscripts and books, across time and place.

Registration for this event can be made through its portal:

2023 RGME Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”

Speakers, Respondents, Presiders, and Moderators (in alphabetical order):

Linde M. Brocato, Mildred Budny, Katharine C. Chandler, Hannah Goeselt, Justin Hastings, Zoey Kambour, Atria A. Larson, Jennifer Larson, Ann Pascoe-van Zyl, Ronald Patkus, Jaclyn Reed, David W. Sorenson, and others.

Occasion:

This Symposium occurs on 25 March, a day for, among other celebrations, the liturgical Feast of the Annunciation. (See below.) This manuscript image represents the decisive event with a rich interior, landscape exterior and inhabited foliage in the margins, and bookish features such as a speech scroll and an opened book on a table at the back.

Within a foliate border, the verse of Psalm 50:17 (Domine labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiatbit laudem tuam) fits between a framed image of the Annunciation above, with an opened book on a lectern and and inscribed unrolled scroll. The foliate border includes an ‘inhabited’ scrolling stem at the right, with angels, humans, and birds; and a garden scene below, where human couples play musical instruments and backgammon.

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS M.269, folio 16r. Book of Hours, France, circa 1460. Image courtesy The Walters Art Museum by CC0 License via https://www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W269/.

Program

Saturday 25 March 2023

9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) online by Zoom
with registration through Eventbrite
via 2023 RGME Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”

Session 1. “Laying the Groundwork”
9:30 – 11:00 am EDT (GMT -4)

Welcome and Introduction

Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)

Opening Keynote Presentation

Linde M. Brocato (Cataloging & Metadata Librarian, University of Miami Libraries)
“Grounding the Work, Making the Book”

Presider: Mildred Budny

Coffee Break
11:15 – 11:30 am EDT

Session 2. “The Lay of the Land”
11:30 am – 1:00 pm EDT

Presider: Jennifer Larson (Department of Classics, Kent State University)

Ann Pascoe-Van Zyl (School of English, Trinity College, Dublin)
“Landscape and the Mind in Exile: Four Old English Elegies”

Justin Hastings (The John Dickinson Writings Project, University of Delaware)
“The Horatian Ground of John Dickinson’s Farmer Persona”

Hannah Goeselt (Library and Information Science (MS): Cultural Heritage Informatics, Simmons University, Boston)
and
Zoey Kambour (Post Graduate Fellow in European & American Art at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon)
“Where Are We Now? Informal Updates since Last Year’s RGME Symposia”

Lunch Break
1:00 – 1:45 pm EDT

Session 3. “Materials & Margins”
1:45 – 3:15 pm EDT

Presider: Jaclyn Reed (Department of English and Writing Studies, University of Western Ontario)

Atria A. Larson (Associate Professor of Medieval Christianity, Saint Louis University)
“Gallery of Glosses:
An NEH-Funded Digital Humanities Project that Cultivates Scholarly Attention to Manuscript Margins”

David W. Sorenson (Allen G. Berman, Professional Numismatist)
“Examples of Paleography and Paper in dated Jain Manuscripts of the 15th through 19th Centuries”

Private Collection, Jain manuscript on paper, dated Vikrama Samvat (VS) 1552 = AD 1496 by colophon.

Tea Break
3:15 – 3:30 pm EDT

Session 4. “The Living Library (Part III):
Manuscripts & Collections as Sources for Teaching & Research”
3:30 – 5:00 pm EDT

Presider: Justin Hastings

Ronald Patkus (Head of Special Collections
and Adjunct Associate Professor of History on the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Chair, Vassar College)
“Nicholas B. Scheetz’s Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Vassar:
A Teaching Collection for a Teaching Collection”

Katharine C. Chandler (Special Collections and Serials Cataloger, University of Arkansas Libraries)
“Sister Manuscripts from the Carthusian Monastery of Chartreuse de Champmol”

Concluding Remarks:

Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
“Material Grounds for Teaching, Study, and Varieties of Access”

*****

In keeping with the 2023 Theme of “Materials & Access” and the focus of attention in the Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”, we may celebrate the emergence of fresh shoots and blooms as Winter turns to Spring, and the earth revives its cycle of growth and renewal.

We note that the date selected for this Spring Symposium, 25 March, represents the celebration of, among other things, the Feast of the Annunciation in the Christian liturgical calendar and the occurrence of the spring (or vernal) equinox (see also March equinox.

Image of illumination of earth by the sun on the Spring or Autumn Equinox (Vernal and Autumnal)

Depiction of the llumination of Earth by the Sun on the Spring or Autumn Equinox (Vernal and Autumnal) Image by Przemyslaw “Blueshade” Idzkiewicz via cc-by-sa license.

This is the second time that a RGME Spring Symposium included the date of 25 March in its events stretching over more than one day. See the 2012 Symposium on “Words and Deeds” Report for our Symposium on 25–26 March 2016 at Princeton University.

We thank the contributors and advisers for help in organizing this event, as well as its new companion the Pre-Symposium.

2023 RGME ‘Pre-Symposium’ on “Intrepid Borders”
2023-spring-symposium-from-the-ground-up (You are Here)

*****

Registration

Registration for the Pre-Symposium and the Spring Symposium is required for each event.

Registration for these events can be made through their portals:

The Program Booklet

Printed copies of the 2023 Spring Symposium Program Booklet can be distributed on request to participants and others. If you wish a printed copy, please contact please contact [email protected] and provide your mailing address.

The digital version can be downloaded freely here. We provide two formats, or ‘flavors’, of the digital Program Booklet, in consecutive pages and as a foldable booklet. The choice depends upon your printing facilities and preferences. Experience shows that the choice can be helpful.

Consecutive Pages (quarto size, or 8 1/2″ × 11″ sheets)
consecutive pages
Foldable Booklet (11″ × 17″ sheets), to be folded in half, producing a nested group of bifolia
foldable booklet

Please note that some images are included in the booklet through the License or Contract stipulating their reproduction for this publication alone. We ask you to respect these conditions.

We thank the contributors, private collectors, and institutions for the images and the permission to reproduce them. We wish also to extend thanks to these individuals, for their extra efforts in this quest: Ágnes Kelecsényi and Judit Jabloknay of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; and Graham Fereday and Gary Stringer of the Digital Humanities – Library and Culture Services of the University of Exeter; Exeter Cathedral Library.

Thanks also are due to the authors, photographers, owners and providers of photographs, organizers, compilers, editors, copy-editors, images and permissions researcher, typesetter, layout designer, proof-readers, printer, web-editor, and others.

That most of these tasks required for producing and publishing the booklet are carried out — and to the level of proficiency manifested on the pages — by one or two volunteers is a tribute to the collegial collaboration and dedication of our nonprofit educational organization, which has no paid staff whatsoever, and which has a shoestring budget. That budget is itself the product almost entirely of the generosity of volunteer donations, year by year.

These results can be accomplished mostly because of the pro-bono donations by so many contributors, who help to make the events possible, and for whom we give steady thanks.

*****

2023 RGME Events

Other Events are planned for the Year. See

“The Research Group Speaks”: The Series
2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program for Thursday 11 to Saturday 13 May 2023
2023 Autumn Symposium “Between Earth and Sky”
Registration here: 2023 Autumn Symposium Tickets for Saturday 21 October 2023 by Zoom

Philosophy personified as female figure, wearing headveil and mantle, holding at both sides a raised book and a foliate-topped scepter. Frontispiece figure for Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.

Trinity College, Cambridge, MS O.3.7, fol. 1r, top. Philosophy Personified, with book and scepter. Frontispiece figure for Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Image via CC 4.0 International License, via https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/O.3.7. Image cropped here to detail (unchanged otherwise).

Suggestion Box

Please Contact Us or visit:

our FaceBook Page
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give. See Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: Annunciation, Chartreuse de Champmol, Early Books, Glossing Glosses, History of Paper, Jain Manuscripts, John Dickinson, Manuscript Decoration, Manuscript Illustration, Manuscript studies, Manuscripts at Vassar College, Materials & Access, Nicholas B Sheetz Collection, Old English Elegies, Palaeography, RGME Symposia
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2025 RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia

Agents and Agencies in the Shaping or Re-Shaping of Books

First Steps

The Interlinked Pair of Symposia

Agents & Agencies

I. Spring Symposium (Part I of 2)

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

II. Autumn Symposium (Part 2 of 2)

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

Registration

Eventbrite Registration

Questions? Suggestions?

How to Join our Community

Remembering Those Who Have Gone Before

1. Oleg Andreevich Grabar

In Memory of Oleg Andreevich Grabar [Олег Андреевич Грабар] (3 November 1929 – 8 January 2011)

2. Vivien Anne Law

3. Giles Constable

5. Patrick Wormald

In Memoriam

Others?

Episode 17 of “The Research Group Speaks”

Announcement

2024 Grant to the RGME from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Libraries Program for

A Year-Long Project with Paired Symposia

“Between Past and Future” (Parts I–II)

“Between Past and Future: RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia in 2024 for Teaching in the Liberal Arts with Original Sources, at Vassar College and Beyond”

“Between Past and Future”: The Way Forward

Center Stage

The Plan for the Project

The Way Forward

Contact Us

“Manuscript (HE)ART” Symposium Booklet

for the 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut (24 February 2024)

Co-Organized by Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

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

Friday and Saturday, 25–26 October 2024 by Zoom

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”

Part 1 in April

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

Part 2 in October

“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

Manuscript (HE)ART

An RGME Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut (RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom 10:00 am – 3:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

Announcement Part 2: The Plan

Meet our First WebMaster

Symposium as Thank-Offering

The Plan for the Symposium

Speakers and Presiders

The Symposium Booklet

Image as Emblem

An Innovative Event as Forerunner

Anniversary Celebrations for 2024

Questions or Comments?

“MANUSCRIPT (HE)ART”

An RGME Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut (RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom 10:00 am – 4:00 pm EST (GMT-5)

Announcement Part 1: The Program

The First WebMaster of the RGME

The Purpose

2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College

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

Friday to Sunday, 18 to 21 April 2024

(hybrid, with both in-person events and online participation by Zoom)

2023 Autumn Symposium “Between Earth and Sky”

Part 2 of 2 in the 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia on “Materials & Access”

Saturday 21 October 2023 9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) by Zoom

1 of 2. 2023 Spring Symposium, with a Pre-Symposium of Lightning Talks

2 of 2. 2023 Autumn Symposium: “Between Earth and Sky”

2025
RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia

Agents and Agencies
in the Shaping
or Re-Shaping of Books

The Interlinked Pair
of Symposia

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

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

Remembering
Those Who Have Gone Before

In Memory of
Oleg Andreevich Grabar
[Олег Андреевич Грабар]
(3 November 1929 – 8 January 2011)

2024 Grant to the RGME from
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
Research Libraries Program
for

“Between Past and Future”
(Parts I–II)

“Between Past and Future:
RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia in 2024
for Teaching in the Liberal Arts with Original Sources,
at Vassar College and Beyond”

“Manuscript (HE)ART”
Symposium Booklet

for the
2024 Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(24 February 2024)

Co-Organized
by Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

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

2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Bridges”

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”

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

“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

An RGME Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by
Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom
10:00 am – 3:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

An RGME Anniversary Symposium
in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut
(RGME WebMaster Emeritus)

Co-Organized by
Katharine C. Chandler and Jessica L. Savage

Saturday 24 February 2024 online by Zoom
10:00 am – 4:00 pm EST (GMT-5)

2024 RGME Spring Symposium
at Vassar College

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

(hybrid, with both in-person events
and online participation by Zoom)

2023 Autumn Symposium
“Between Earth and Sky”

Part 2 of 2 in the
2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Materials & Access”

Saturday 21 October 2023
9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) by Zoom

1 of 2. 2023 Spring Symposium,
with a Pre-Symposium of Lightning Talks

2 of 2. 2023 Autumn Symposium:
“Between Earth and Sky”

Schedule and List of Presentations
(the order may vary)

Session 1. “Sources, Resources, and Encounters”
9:30–11:15 am EDT (GMT-4)

Session 2. “By Land and By Sea”
12:30-2:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Session 3. “Having a Look, Looking Anew, and Looking Forward”
2:30–4:00 pm EDT

Session 4. “Accessing Materials / Bridging Time and Place”
4:30–5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)

2023 Spring Symposium
“From the Ground Up”

Part 1 of 2 in the
2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia
on “Materials & Access”

“Intrepid Borders:
Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts and Early Modern Books”

A Virtual Lightning Talks / Half-Day Symposium
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT (GMT-4) online by Zoom
with registration through Eventbrite
via 2023 RGME Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”

Session 1. “Laying the Groundwork”
9:30 – 11:00 am EDT (GMT -4)

Coffee Break
11:15 – 11:30 am EDT

Session 2. “The Lay of the Land”
11:30 am – 1:00 pm EDT

Lunch Break
1:00 – 1:45 pm EDT

Session 3. “Materials & Margins”
1:45 – 3:15 pm EDT

Tea Break
3:15 – 3:30 pm EDT

Session 4. “The Living Library (Part III):
Manuscripts & Collections as Sources for Teaching & Research”
3:30 – 5:00 pm EDT