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Workshop in the History of Material Texts

The Workshop in the History of Material Texts is a weekly seminar that features scholars presenting a wide variety of research in book history, bibliography, manuscript studies, history of reading, publication and printing, and related topics.

Drawing of a physician picking herbs from Paris, BnF lat. 6862, f. 18v (detail)

Founded in 1993 by Professor Peter Stallybrass (English, emeritus) and the Penn Libraries, the Workshop in the History of Material Texts is a weekly seminar, held in the library, that features scholars presenting a wide variety of research in book history, bibliography, manuscript studies, history of reading, publication and printing, and related topics. Subjects range widely in chronology and in geography: from the ancient world to the modern and with a global scope. The usual format of the workshop is a presentation of approximately thirty minutes, followed by discussion. Talks are accompanied by PowerPoint presentations, handouts, or other visual materials. Materials from Penn's special collections are often displayed as part of the workshop.

All are welcome to attend. Participants, including faculty, librarians, graduate and undergraduate students, conservators, booksellers, and others, come from a wide range of disciplines.

 

Workshops

Fall 2022 Workshops

Unless otherwise noted all meetings are held at 5:15pm in the Class of 1978 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.

Sep 12
  • Lecture
  • Workshop
  • Kislak
Open to the Public

History of Material Texts: Making the First Black Comic Book

All-Negro Comics (1947) is generally regarded as the first comic book produced by and for African Americans. This talk aims to build on a growing scholarly literature around the history of race and comics by looking at the process by which All-Negro Comics might have made its way into the hands of readers.

  • September 12, 2022
  • 5:15pm - 7:00pm
  • Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library and via Zoom
Front cover of All Negro Comics, 1947
Sep 19
  • Lecture
  • Workshop
  • Kislak
Open to the Public

History of Material Texts: Ideologies of the Codex in Richard Hakluyt and John Smith

Joseph Rezek (Boston University) speaks on the earliest Anglophone literature of colonization (1585-1624) and the relationship between ideologies of human variety and ideologies associated with print authorship.

  • September 19, 2022
  • 5:15pm - 7:00pm
  • Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library and via Zoom
Title page, John Smith, Generall HIstorie of Virginia (London 1624)
Sep 26
  • Lecture
  • Workshop
  • Kislak
Open to the Public

History of Material Texts: W. G. Sebald's Papers and Photographs

Ulrich von Bülow (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach) will discuss the papers of W. G. Sebald (1944-2001), preserved at the German Literary Archive in Marbach, Germany, and investigate the manuscripts for Sebald’s last great unfinished and unpublished book project.

  • September 26, 2022
  • 5:15pm - 7:00pm
  • Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library and via Zoom
Photographs for W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz. © DLA Marbach

Oct. 3: Richard Benson and the End of Printed Pictures
Peter Barberie (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Oct. 10: Reading Medieval Parchment through an Eighteenth-Century Lens
Alexis Hagadorn (Columbia University Libraries)

Oct. 17: Phillis Wheatley Passes An Evening with Someone Else’s Husband
Tara Bynum (University of Iowa)

Oct. 24: Why Are Clocks?
Elly Truitt (Penn)

Oct. 31: Writing Commentaries on Non-existent Texts: The Mystery of Ismail Ankaravi’s Commentary on the 7th Volume of Rumi’s Masnavi
Jamal Elias (Penn)

Nov. 7: The Ten Commandments and/as Erasable Wax Tablets
Peter Stallybrass (Penn)

Nov. 14: Indigenous Epistemology and Early Modern Science: The Creation of 'De historia animalium Novae Hispaniae' (1571–1577) [Co-sponsored by the Penn Department of History]
Marcy Norton (Penn)

Nov. 21: Paper + Digital: No Longer Format Agnostic
Margaret McAleer (Library of Congress)

Nov. 28: Learning with the Tress Collection
Julie Davis (Penn)

Dec. 5: Finding Octavia E. Butler in the Archives and around Black Pasadena
Chi-ming Yang (Penn)

Spring 2022 Workshops

For Fall 2021 and Spring 2022, we will present the Workshop in person in the Class of 1978 Pavilion, at the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, and via Zoom. If you would like to receive details on how to attend upcoming meetings, please sign up for our listserv using this link or visit the Workshop website.

Unless otherwise noted all meetings are held at 5:15pm.

Dec 02

Pamela H. Smith (Columbia University): "Making and Knowing in Early Modern How-To Texts"

An intriguing late sixteenth-century anonymous manuscript, Ms. Fr. 640, contains over 900 "recipes" for objects of art and of everyday use. This lecture will explore the meanings and conceptualization of making and materials in early modern how-to texts, and also introduce the digital edition of Ms. Fr. 640.

  • Monday, January 24, 2022, 5:15pm, via Zoom
  • 9:46am - 9:46am
  • Zoom
Imitation coral.

Jan. 31: Failed Formats: Goethe’s Literary Anthology for the German People
Carlos Spoerhase (Bielefeld)

Feb 28
  • Workshop

Marcy Dinius (DePaul University): "David Walker's Textual Engagements"

This talk will be centered on Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, the radical political pamphlet published by activist David Walker in three editions in Boston between 1829 and 1830.

  • Monday, February 28, 2022, 5:15pm, in person and via Zoom
  • 5:15pm - 6:15pm
  • Zoom
Title page of Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, third edition (Boston: 1830).
Mar 14 - 17
  • Lecture
  • Kislak
Open to the Public

The Secret Life of Books

In this three-part series, Peter D. McDonald addresses the challenge of uncovering, and then relating, the fugitive history of reading’s inwardness.

  • March 14 - 17, 2022
  • Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Collage from William Kentridge’s 2nd Hand Reading project (2014), using the 1936 revised Oxford English Dictionary, Kentridge Studio
Mar 21
  • Workshop

Sarah Werner: "Speculations on Feminist Bibliography"

How can we combine feminist theory and praxis with the study of material texts? Come to this workshop for a chance to push at our boundaries, real and imaginary, and to explore together what feminist bibliography might be.

  • Monday, March 21, 2022, 5:15pm, in person and via Zoom
  • 5:15pm - 6:15pm
  • Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Image of a pink fist with "FEMINIST" spelled out on knuckles stamped over the title page of Fredson Bowers' Principles of Bibliographic Description (1949).
Apr 04
  • Workshop

Roger Chartier (Penn): "The Skin of an Innocent Lamb: Jack Cade and the Roman Law"

This lecture seeks to examine lines of dialogue by Jack Cade in the Second Part of Henry the Sixth (quoted from Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio) and how they relate to popular medieval perception, rebellion, and political attitudes towards books and manuscripts.

  • Monday, April 4, 2022, 5:15pm, in person and via Zoom
  • 5:15pm - 6:15pm
  • Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Apr 18
  • Workshop

Andrew Stauffer (University of Virginia) and Amanda Licastro (Penn Libraries): "Book Traces: Library History and the Marks of Collaborative Reading"

This lecture introduces the Book Traces project, which supports the discovery, cataloguing, and preservation of pre-1923 library books that bear traces of the past: inscriptions, annotations, insertions, and other modifications made by historical readers.

  • Monday, April 18, 2022, 5:15pm, in person and via Zoom
  • 5:15pm - 6:15pm
  • Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Stacked books with old covers.

 

Apr. 25: Honoring Jerry Singerman: A Celebration of His Work as Humanities Editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press

 

The Workshop in the History of Material Texts is supported by the School of Arts and Sciences through the Department of English and hosted by the Penn Libraries. The co-directors of the seminar are Professor Zachary Lesser (English), Jerry Singerman (Penn Press, emeritus), and John Pollack (Kislak Center, Penn Libraries).

Associated with the workshop is the book series in Material Texts published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, which includes many monographs that have emerged from presentations given at the workshop over the years.

If you would like to receive announcements about upcoming meetings, please sign up for our listserv using this link or visit the Workshop website. For more information, please contact Aylin Malcolm.

Featured Image: Drawing of a physician picking herbs, labeled 'scolapius' (from Asclepius, the god of medicine). Paris, BnF lat. 6862, f. 18v (detail).