A Conversation with Meg Phillips, the Penn Libraries Inaugural Elizabeth A. R. Brown Archivist
We recently spoke with Phillips to learn more about Elizabeth A. R. Brown — or Peggy, as she was often called — her peers, and how Phillips imagines scholars of the future using the materials in the Medieval Historians Archive.
Last year, the Penn Libraries received a $5 million gift from the late historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown, alongside the gift of her professional papers. This bequest established an archive preserving the professional papers of medieval historians and an endowed archivist position to develop and manage it.
Today, that new archive is taking shape.
"The Medieval Historians Archive is intended to pull together the collections of prominent scholars of medieval history, art history, and other types of medievalists from other fields," explained Meg Phillips, who was recently appointed the Penn Libraries' Elizabeth A. R. Brown Archivist. Phillips also chairs the Medieval Historians Advisory Committee, a group that includes medievalists from Penn and beyond, as well as a representative of Brown's estate.
On September 12, the Penn Libraries hosted "Making the Medieval Archive: Celebrating Elizabeth A. R. Brown at Penn." This symposium officially launched the Medieval Historians Archive and brought together scholars, Brown's former colleagues and family members, and Penn Libraries staff, to begin imagining what, exactly, this new archive would look like.
Not long after the event, I spoke with Phillips to learn more about Elizabeth A. R. Brown — or Peggy, as she was often called — her peers, and how Phillips imagines scholars of the future using these materials. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what brought you to the Penn Libraries?
I fell in love with medieval history in college. I had fantastic lecturers, and I think that's honestly what lit the flame. I love the medieval period because it gives me a sense of the depths of time. Medieval ways of life are very foreign to us, but you can see the beginnings of the institutions, including universities, that we're living with today. The roots of many of the things that we recognize as part of our world grew out of the Middle Ages, and I think that's interesting and important.
But I pivoted into libraries and archives while I was a graduate student and have never looked back — until I saw this job posting that combined both my interests in archives and medieval history. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to come to Penn and build the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians Archive.
What have you been working on so far? Have you had an opportunity to start working with the Medieval Historian's Archive?
The first thing I worked on was the Kibre family papers, which now have a finding aid online. Two of the three Kibre sisters were medievalists in the mid-20th century, which is very cool. Pearl Kibre was a prominent scholar of the medieval history of science. Her sister Adele was an accomplished medievalist, too, but in addition, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor for the CIA, during World War II. She was stationed in Stockholm, where she gathered scientific and academic information for the Allies.
Right now, I'm processing the papers of Mary-Jo Arn, one of two collections that came in after Peggy's announcement that she wanted to create a medieval historians archive. Arn was a specialist in the poetry of Charles d’Orléans.
Another new collection is the papers of medieval historian Marcia Colish, a scholar of medieval scholasticism who taught at Oberlin. I was just looking up her bibliography, and it's amazing. I can go into the stacks at Van Pelt and pull out the books that she wrote and get a sense of her life's work from the publication standpoint before digging into her papers, which is a great way of developing a deep respect for someone.
How about Peggy Brown's papers specifically? Have you been able to look at them very much?
We do not own Peggy's papers yet, but I was recently able to work with her estate to arrange for a loan of 11 boxes from the storage unit where they are currently stored. It was great to be able to get a little preview of the kinds of things that are in her collection.
I'm excited to get started on her collection because it looks like it's going to be really interesting. Peggy was a famous letter-writer. She wrote long, detailed letters debating points of scholarship with many other medievalists, which should make the papers rich and useful to researchers.
One fun surprise I found in the boxes I borrowed was correspondence with Katharine Hepburn about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Peggy asked Hepburn how she arrived at her interpretation of Eleanor of Aquitaine for the 1968 movie The Lion in Winter.
She was also engaged in some interesting academic controversies, including whether Marguerite Porete was indeed the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls. In addition to correspondence about that issue, I found a cluster of letters related to same-sex unions in the Middle Ages, something I knew nothing about. It's going to be fascinating for me to learn new things about the Middle Ages while organizing these papers of medievalists.
How do you imagine people using these archives in the future?
The [Making the Medieval Archive] event gave me the clearest sense yet of what people are going to be interested in. A number of people took me aside and essentially said, oh, I'm eager to see this thing or that thing.
In some cases, people are interested in seeing unpublished works or detailed drafts with footnotes that did not end up in the published version.
People also are interested in the images Peggy took of manuscripts that they can't get to easily. For example, Peggy was able to make a research trip to the USSR before the Soviet Union broke up, and she took detailed notes of medieval manuscripts that were available in archives in St. Petersburg. Some had been moved there by French aristocrats fleeing to Russia after the French Revolution. Her notes could be valuable to scholars who cannot access the originals.
The Medieval Historians Archive will provide insights into the historiography of medieval history, too – what questions did scholars ask and how did our understanding of the period change over time? How was the period taught to students?
In addition, although we didn't set out to collect the papers of female medievalists, several of the early collections are from women. These papers will shed light on the experiences of women academics at a time when there were very few.
What are you looking forward to tackling next?
It's exciting. I'm in a very lucky position because this is a brand-new initiative. I get to build something and shape it from the ground up.
I want to give credit to Nick Herman, who really launched this initiative and kept the project moving until I could be hired. He is still a great colleague and collaborator. He received inquiries from several people over the last year who had heard about Peggy's gift and were either looking for a place to donate their own papers or knew of a collection that needed a home. I've been gradually following up with those people in the hope of adding their collections to the archive. I’ve also been learning a lot from Head of Archives and Manuscripts Processing Holly Mengel, who is making sure I get the archival part of the work on a solid footing. All of my new colleagues have been very helpful and friendly!
At the “Making the Medieval Archive” event, I was able to meet people who knew Peggy Brown, and I got a much clearer sense of her personality from their reminiscences. That event was a great opportunity to meet Peggy’s close associates, people that will be able to help me understand Peggy’s own papers so I can organize and describe them appropriately.
I also got to pull about a dozen documents from the boxes sent by the estate, lay them out on the table in the Lea Library, and talk to people about what I had found. People were fascinated. They were reading her letters and seeing references to their own advisors and other people they knew. It really gave me a much more robust sense of who Peggy Brown had been as a person.
The event in September also helped clarify my vision for the Medieval Historians Archive. The archive will document and sustain an ongoing conversation among medievalists, among this whole community of people who were corresponding and helping shape each other's ideas over decades. Now all these people will remain in conversation with each other here at Penn. And new scholars, scholars who haven't even entered the field yet, will be able to join the conversation when they use the archive. It will connect them in one place, but across time. That’s something only archives can do.
Date
November 5, 2025