Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop

Call for Applications:

13th Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop: “Transmission”

February 2-3, 2018

 

The thirteenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop will take place Friday and Saturday, February 2-3, 2018, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The workshop is organized by Professors Maura K. Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English), and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

For this year’s workshop, we invite papers that explore the idea of “Transmission.” Few texts are preserved in their author’s own hand; most surviving manuscripts are copies of copies, each hand-made, and each differing to a greater or lesser degree, by design or accident, from the copy before it. The more successful or important or popular a work, the more copies were produced, and the more difference and variation exists among the surviving copies; but even a work that survives in only one copy may represent the end of a series, potentially a long one, of moments of textual reproduction. Texts may travel in groups or be tucked into solitary margins; they may gather in closely-knit families or diverge in significant and sometimes strange ways. Whatever hidden chances may have led to their survival, every manuscript has a story to tell about its origins, its readers, and its place as a link in the chain of transmission. How do we reconstruct these stories? Do the traditional tools of textual criticism reflect the reality of textual transmissions? What can a text tell us about its own history? We welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and graduate students in any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies, or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text and its context, discuss their approach to working with their material, and exchange ideas and information with other participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to be more like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer both practical advice and theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We particularly invite the presentation of works in progress, unusual manuscript problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation.

The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who do not wish to present their own work but are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies.

Further details will be available later in the year; please contact Roy Liuzza or the Marco Institute for more information.

 

How to Apply:

The deadline for applications is November 15, 2017.

Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page letter describing their project to Roy M. Liuzza, preferably via email to rliuzza@utk.edu, or by mail to the Department of English, University of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430.

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Past Manuscript Workshops