SIMS | “Loss” Conference

The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce the 14th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.

Engaging with pre-modern books and manuscripts necessarily involves reckoning with the paradox of loss. While a historical document from the distant past is the material survivor of a singular attempt to hedge against the disappearance of an idea, image, or text, the extant specimen always has to be considered alongside missing exemplars, damage and erasure, lost comparanda, and the vanished life-worlds that produced the object in the first place. This symposium will interrogate the notions of loss, survival, and recuperation in manuscript studies, so often in the background but rarely acknowledged as defining features of the field.

Bringing together scholars, librarians, curators, and conservators, we will investigate losses unknowable and quantifiable, ancient and recent, large and small, physical and digital. How have chance survivals shaped literary and linguistic canons? How might the topography of the field appear differently had certain prized unica not survived? What are the ways in which authors, compilers, scribes, and scholars have dealt with lacunary exemplaria? How do longstanding and emergent methodologies and disciplines—analysis of catalogs of dispersed libraries, reverse engineering of ur-texts and lost prototypes, digital reconstructions of codices dispersi, digital humanities, cultural heritage preservation, and trauma studies to name a few—serve to reveal the extent of disappearance? How can ideologically-driven biblioclasm or the destruction wrought by armed conflicts — sometimes occurring within living memory — be assessed objectively yet serve as the basis for protection of cultural heritage in the present? In all cases, losses are not solely material: they can be psychological, social, digital, linguistic, spiritual, professional. Is mournful resignation the only response to these gaps, or can such sentiments be harnessed to further knowledge, understanding, and preservation moving forward?

The online program will take place in morning and afternoon sessions (EST) from Wednesday, November 17, to Friday, November 19. The symposium will end with a keynote address by Professor Elaine Treharne, Stanford University.

Other speakers include:

• Matt Aiello, University of Pennsylvania
• Olivia Baskerville, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Federico Botana, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Georgios Boudalis, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki
• Laura Cleaver, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Kate Crosby, King’s College London
• Eyob Derillo, The British Library
• Siân Echard, University of British Columbia
• Susan Einbinder, University of Connecticut
• Natalia Fantetti, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Joanna Fronska, Institute de Recherche et d’histoire des textes (CNRS), Paris-Aubervilliers
• Kathryn Gerry, Bowdoin College
• Elina Gertsman, Case Western Reserve University
• Dot Porter, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Penn Libraries
• Sana Mirza, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
• Hannah Morcos, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Pierre-Louis Pinault, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Angéline Rais, Institute for English Studies, University of London
• Heghnar Watenpaugh, University of California, Davis
• Yunxiao Xiao, Princeton University

Program details are available via the tab above. Registration is open to all but required for the zoom link. To register, click here.

We are also planning an open round of pre-recorded 5-minute Lightning Round Talks treating manuscript loss in or as a consequence of digital projects. Stay tuned for further details and a call!

For more information on the Schoenberg Symposium Series, click here.