2016 M-MLA Report
March 14, 2017 in Announcements, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, Reports
Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books
Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University Chicago)
at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri
[Report for our Panels on Marginalia in Books for 2016 M-MLA]
Invitation Letter, Plus Marginalia, for ‘Marginalia in Manuscripts’, 24 June 1994
The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, in keeping with the M-MLA conference’s theme of “Border States,” sponsored its pair of Special Session Panels examining materials in North American collections. The responses to the Call for Papers for our sponsored Special Session yielded two panels rather than one, and extended their scope both temporally and geographically.
The subjects, and their range, accord well with the Research Group’s long-term interest in the physical characteristics of books, their modes of production, and their processes of use across time. The subject of “Marginalia in Manuscripts” formed the focus of one of the Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” in our early years based in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College. Our blog on “Manuscript Studies” — plus some printed books — includes reports of discoveries grounded in close analysis of their surfaces, marginalia often included.
Do we practice what we preach? Well, we prefer to refrain from writing in books belonging to others, as we recommend to you, but our own pages? That might be different. Witness the Master Copy of the Invitation Letter to that Seminar (see here). Marginalia Lives On!
For the 2016 Panels, we publish the Abstracts for the Papers.