Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript Studies
Convenors: Daniel Wakelin, Martin Kauffmann
Meetings will take place online via Zoom on Mondays at 2.15pm (GMT) in weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7. Original manuscripts will be shown. Registration is required.
On-line: email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk stating the seminar date or dates you wish to attend.
Week 1 (18 January)
Julian Luxford (University of St. Andrews)
The Tewkesbury benefactors' book
Week 3 (1 February)
Bodleian and John Rylands curators
Newly acquired medieval book coffers at the Bodleian and the John Rylands Libraries
Week 5 (15 February)
Adam Whittaker (Birmingham City University)
Medieval music theory in Bodleian manuscripts
Week 7 (1 March)
Marc Smith (École des chartes)
Late medieval writing models: contextualizing MS. Ashmole 789
Seminar in the History of the Book
Hilary Term 2021
Fridays at 2:15pm (GMT)
Conveners: Cristina Dondi (Lincoln College, Oxford) and Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book)
January 22
Matthew Payne, Keeper of the Muniments, Westminster Abbey
‘Follow the Money: Wynkyn de Worde, Jacques Ferrebouc and the Bardi’
Matthew Payne has written widely on the book trade in early Tudor England, and on the history of Westminster Abbey.
January 29: Special session at 5:00pm GMT
Goostly Psalmes in Oxford and New Haven
Henrike Lähnemann, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
‘Translating, Singing, Printing the Reformation. The Queen’s College Sammelband with Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes’
with a showing of The Queen’s College copy and the Bodleian and Beinecke fragments
Kathryn James, Beinecke Library, Yale University
Kathryn James is the Curator for Early Modern Books and Manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Library. She is the author of English Paleography & Manuscript Culture, 1500-1800 (2020).
Matthew Shaw, The Queen’s College, Oxford
Matthew Shaw is Librarian of The Queen’s College, Oxford. He is a former curator at the British Library and librarian of the Institute of Historical Research.
Sarah Wheale, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford
Sarah Wheale is Head of Rare Books at the Bodleian Libraries.
February 5
Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli, University of Florence (Italy)
‘The Borromei’s trade unveiled: digging for information in fifteenth-century account-books’
Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli is Associate professor of Economic history at the University of Florence, senior research fellow of Queen Mary University of London and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His research concentrates on late-medieval and early-modern trade and banking,
February 12 – No seminar
February 19
Alessandro Bianchi, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford
‘Hidden in plain sight. Printed books from the Japanese Mission Press in the Bodleian Collections’
Alessandro Bianchi is the manager of the Bodleian Japanese Library and curator of the collection of Japanese rare books and manuscripts. After receiving his PhD from the University of Cambridge, he worked at the British Library, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and Haverford College.
February 26
Kanupriya Dhingra, SOAS, University of London
‘Streets and Serendipity: “Locating” Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar’
Kanupriya Dhingra is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies, SOAS, University of London.
March 5
Benjamin Wardhaugh, University of Oxford
‘Hunting for readers in sixteenth-century editions of the works of Euclid’
Benjamin Wardhaugh is a historian of mathematics based in the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on early modern mathematics, including practices of mathematical reading and the early modern reception of Euclid's Elements of Geometry.
March 12
William Stoneman, Cambridge, MA
‘Buying Incunabula at Gimbel Brothers Department Store: A Curious Chapter in the History of American Book Collecting’
William P. Stoneman retired in December 2018 as Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Houghton Library of Harvard University.
* NOTE: venues may change to online presentation
Tuesday 23 Februrary 5 pm
Anna Contadini (SOAS), Book culture of the Arab world: an illustrated herbal of the 13th century
Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies* or online
Thursday 4 March 5:15 pm
Paul W. Nash (The Strawberry Press), The mystery of the Catholicon: did Gutenberg invent stereotyping?
Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College* or online
Thursday 11 March 5:15 pm
Vaibhav Singh (University of Reading) The 'unwise economy' of tracts: lithography at the American Marathi Mission in nineteenth-century Bombay
Lecture Theatre, Weston Library* or online
Thursday 6 May 5:15 pm
Jacob Ridley (Magdalen College), Polemo-Middinia: scatalogical Scots-Latin at the Sheldonian Press
Venue TBC* or online
Thursday 27 May 5:15 pm
Leverhulme Doctoral Students, Oxford, Publication beyond print (five short talks)
Lecture Theatre, Weston Library* or online
Tuesday 8 June 5:15 pm
Dirk Van Hulle (Oxford), Genetic criticism and bibliography: a rapprochement
Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College* or online
