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Making (and Remaking) Texts Past, Present, and Future

2023-2024 SIMS Graduate Student Fellow Julia Pelosi-Thorpe, PhD student in Italian Studies/Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, leads a workshop on how manuscripts have been created and re-created across time by enacting creation and recreation through crafting collages, codices, and cut-outs based on digital facsimiles.

Seating is limited. Registration is required for this event.

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Friday, February 9, 2024, 3:00 - 5:00 pm
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Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, Kislak Center, Rooms 626 and 627
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Open to the Public
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Hosted by: SIMS

Collages of manuscript miniatures on vellum, probably from a breviary in Northern France, possibly Rouen, in the late 15th century. It feature a centerpiece of 9 panels with mostly Biblical pictures on them, with a piece of text on each side of the outer frame, with strips of illuminated borders around the edges.

Manuscripts come to us across hundreds of years, and many undergo myriad mediations as they traverse deep time. What are some common modifications people have made to manuscripts? How did they do this? And how were manuscripts created in the first place?

Come and look at some of the manuscripts held at Penn that have been cut up, remixed, rewritten, and rebound. Hear Penn experts discuss these texts, including an overview of the materials and practices through which manuscripts were made initially. Then, take a pair of scissors and cut your own from paper print-outs drawn from the OPenn repository.

Through crafting our own collages, codices, and cut-outs, this two-hour workshop encourages us to learn through enacting as we explore how manuscripts have been created and recreated across time by human beings.

Julia Pelosi-Thorpe is an Italian-Australian PhD student in Italian Studies/Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Her interests include reception/adaptation/translation studies, cultures of textual production from scribal to print to digital, and language pedagogy. In addition to the SIMS Graduate Student Fellowship, she was a 2022–2023 Graduate Project Assistant with the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts and a 2023 Mellon Doctoral Summer Fellow at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities.

Headshot of Julia Pelosi-Thorpe

Image: 19th-century collage of miniatures and script from medieval breviary. From the Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative (Ms. Coll. 713).