The Rosenbach Lectures are the longest continuing series of bibliographical lectureships in the United States. Rosenbach Fellows typically present three lectures over a period of one-two weeks.
The Rosenbach Fellowship in Bibliography, established by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in 1928, honors a gift for that purpose from A.S.W. Rosenbach, one of America's greatest book dealers and collectors. Its intention is to further scholarship and scholarly publication in bibliography and book history, broadly understood. Rosenbach Fellows typically present a series of three lectures over a period of one to two weeks while in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
The series began in 1931, with Christopher Morley as the first Rosenbach Fellow. Over the years, lecture topics have included fifteenth-century printing, the relationships between print and manuscript, papermaking, book illustration, American reading and publishing, and reading in the digital age. Among recent lecturers are Paul Needham, Ann Blair, William Zachs, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Mary J. Carruthers, Charles Burnett, Michael J. Suarez, and Peter D. McDonald. Many of these lectures have been published as book-length studies by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
In this series of three lectures, Joan Judge explores the relationship between physical books and historical common knowers in early twentieth century China.
In this series of three lectures, Kelly Wisecup examines how Indigenous peoples made and used the page to address structures of dispossession.
In this series of three lectures, Elizabeth McHenry turns her attention to several overlapping areas of Black print culture studies that have yet to be sufficiently explored: the business of printing, the history of Black printers, and the extension of African American literary and print culture.
Most Victorians who owned books employed servants. In this three-part series, Leah Price (Rutgers University) asks, how did print shape this high point of domestic service? How did negotiations among masters and servants shape the channels through which printed matter flowed?
In this three-part series, Peter D. McDonald addresses the challenge of uncovering, and then relating, the fugitive history of reading’s inwardness.
In this series of highly illustrated lectures, Michael Suarez offers a fresh perspective on British abolition, richly informed by political prints and personal correspondence, newspapers and pamphlets, account books and committee minutes, parliamentary reports and private diaries.
![Ptolemy, [Almagest], LJS 268, 132v](/sites/default/files/styles/card_3x2/public/migrations/2019-07/feature-sq-ljs268.jpg?itok=pZbJgm5P)
These lectures will examine evidence from manuscripts in the Schoenberg Collection of University of Pennsylvania Library of the process of translation of Arabic, Greek and Latin manuscripts.
Join us for Carlo Ginzberg's lectures on the history of paleontology, antiquarianism, and lost history.
Cognitive Geometries explores the close relationships in medieval creative practice among geometric shapes, meditation, and the human ability to create original works.
Kirschenbaum explores how the age of digital literature has changed archiving and scholarship now and in the future.
What can we learn from looking at multiple copies of a book?
![detail from [The Alchemist] Tiré du Cabinet de Mr. le Brun](/sites/default/files/styles/card_3x2/public/2022-10/alchemist-amanuensis.png?itok=UO5cuoJl)
Blair examines the often-overlooked help and support scholars received in early Modern Europe.
![Detail from Biblia Latina, [Mainz: Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust, before August 1456], courtesy of the William H. Scheide Library, Princeton University Library](/sites/default/files/styles/card_3x2/public/2022-10/guttenberg_300.jpg?itok=vW0qhBQn)
Needham's lectures cover the early development and spread of printing technologies in Europe.
Lynne Farrington, chair (Director of Programs/Senior Curator, Kislak Center, Penn Libraries)
Peter Diamond (PhD Candidate, English, Penn)
Jesse Erickson (Astor Curator and Department Head, Printed Books and Bindings, Morgan Library & Museum)
Deven Patel (Associate Professor of South Asia Studies, Penn)
Sean Quimby, ex officio (Associate University Librarian & Director, Kislak Center, Penn Libraries)
Megan Robb (Associate Professor of Religious Studies)
Joshua Teplitsky (Joseph Meyerhoff Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History/Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Penn)
Whitney Trettien (Associate Professor of English, Penn/Faculty Director, Price Lab for Digital Humanities)
Featured image: Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach (1876-1952); Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B2- 5222-7.