Our Panels
at the Annual Convention of the
Midwest Modern Language Association
[Update: Now see Panels at the M-MLA Convention (2016–2019).]
“Seeing the Light”. Chandelier and Ceiling Murals at the Netherland Plaza Hotel.
Since 2016, through the initiative and dedication of our Associate Justin A. Hastings, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence has sponsored Permanent Panels at the Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA), held each November in a different center.
With the approval of the Convention Committee, the tradition of our participation began with the preparations for the 2016 Convention, held at Saint Louis, Missouri. With the success of our Panels there, we approved the continuation of this tradition from year to year. The experience of the 2017 Convention both encourages and reinforces our willingness.
We thank Justin for suggesting and organizing these Panels, choosing their subjects in accordance with the selected themes for the individual Conventions, seeking papers for the Panels, selecting their programs, moderating the contributions, and overseeing the smooth, collegial accomplishment of their discourse. We also thank the Convention Committee for its help and hospitality.
This venue for Research Group activities at an established conference, and the accompanying expansion into more areas and periods of study than the mainly medieval focus of the International Congress on Medieval Studies (our customary Congress venue), forms a welcome development in the history of the Research Group and its scholarly Events of many kinds over decades.
2016 Convention at Saint Louis
That year, the responses to our Call for Papers on the subject of “Marginalia in Manuscripts and Incunables in North America” yielded 2 Panels:
They addressed an interrelated pair of themes:
I. Between Text and Page: Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts
II. Between Manuscript Page and Printed Page — And Back Again
As with our conference sessions at the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies and our other scholarly Events, including Symposia, Colloquia, Seminars, Workshops, and more, we may — if our authors wish – publish the Abstracts for the Papers in these Panels. As with those other Abstracts, we provide Indexes of the Abstracts by Author and by Year.
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2017 Convention at Cincinnati
“Seeing the Light”. Chandelier and Ceiling Murals at the Netherland Plaza Hotel.
With the accomplishment of the 2017 M-MLA Convention in Cincinnati, we happily report the Permanent Panel which the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence sponsored, in the second year of its participation at the Convention. Like last year’s pair of sponsored Panels, described in our 2016 M-MLA Report, this year’s Panel was expertly organized by our Associate Justin Hastings of Loyola University Chicago, institutional host of the Midwest Modern Language Association.
The plan for our 2017 Panel arose in responding to the theme chosen for the 2017 Convention, “Artists and Activists”. Naturally, we selected the themes of “Artists, Activists, and Manuscript Evidence”, which might also include, printed books and other forms of written materials.
Our Call for Papers invited contributions for multiple subjects and approaches, including textual, art-historical, codicological, and palaeographical, with a focus upon facets, or stages, of the material evidence of manuscripts in their travels across time and space. The variety of responses to the Call shaped the Program for the Panel, as announced both in the Convention Program Book and for our 2017 M-MLA Panel.
Our Panel carried this focus, in the form of a challenge.
Make It and/or Break It:
the Material Evidence
of Creating, Using, Disseminating, and Dispersing Manuscripts
Updates for our 2017 M-MLA Panel Announcement soon provided the Abstracts for the 3 papers, also with images.
With the successful accomplishment of the Panels, we present the 2017 M-MLA Report. It includes more images and some updates for the Abstracts.
Fountain of Books outside the Main Library of the Cincinnati Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
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2018 Convention at Kansas City
Consuming Cultures and Manuscript Evidence
2018 Convention
Kansas City, Missouri
November 15–18, 2018
© The British Library Board. Harley MS 628, folio 160 verso, detail. Psalm 101 begins with the initial ‘d’ for ‘Domini’.
Panel Chair: Justin Hastings, Loyola University Chicago
1. Chikako D. Kumamoto, College of DuPage, Addison, Illinois
“ ‘The Press and the Fire’ and ‘Discretion’:
Distributing Cognition and Its Reception through Paratextual Apparatus in Print and Manuscript Culture”
[This paper was withdrawn:
Jessie McDowell, Loyola University Chicago
“Medieval Manuscripts and Interoperability:
Scholarly Editing, Collaboration, and the Digital Artisan”]
2. Justin Hastings, Loyola University Chicago
“Sexual Consumption and Paratextual Restraint in Lady Margaret Cavendish’s ‘The Convent of Pleasure’:
Newberry Library Case Y 135.N43”
The detailed program for the 2018 Panel, with abstracts for the papers, has its own post:
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2019 Convention at Chicago
The scope and program for the 2019 Panel are described here.
Duality and Manuscript Evidence
Thursday 14 November 2019
Chair: Justin Hastings (Loyola University Chicago)
1. Morgan Aronson (Smithsonian Libraries)
“A Text Twice Born: Exploring the Origin of a Scientific Manuscript”
2. Emily Sharrett (Loyola University Chicago)
Initial Title: “Generating London out of Roman Remains:
John Stow’s A Survay of London (1598, 1603)”
Final Title:
“Moral Guidebook from Medieval Bohemia:
A Study of Newberry Library MS 31.1”
3. Justin Hastings
“Emily Dickinson’s Choosing:
Biblical Intertext and Fascicle 33”
Bust of the God Janus. Vatican City, Vatican Museums. Photo by Fubar Obfusco via Wikimedia Commons.
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