Thinking Outside the Codex

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is pleased to announce the 6th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year's symposium will encourage participants to "think outside the codex" and turn the tables on traditional approaches to manuscript study. We will explore such topics as how format shapes and limits interpretation, use, and production of manuscripts and how technologies have changed and challenged traditional methods of scholarship. We are especially considering instances of and responses to failure in the history of manuscript production and scholarship. In doing so, we hope to provoke new questions and forge new approaches to the study of the pre-modern book.

To kick off the event, a reception and the keynote address will be held Thursday evening, November 21, at the Free Library of Philadelphia. This year's keynote speaker will be Peter Stallybrass, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, and Director of the History of the Material Text Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania.  The symposium begins Friday morning at the newly renovated Kislak Center of the University Pennsylvania Libraries.