16th Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop
“Immaterial Culture”
February 5-6, 2021
About
The sixteenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop took place Friday, February 5, and Saturday, February 6, 2021, on the theme of “Immaterial Culture.” Sessions met virtually via Zoom. The workshop was led by Professors Maura K. Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English), and hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, with support from the UT Department of English.
BL Harley MS 647 f. 13v
The 2021 workshop considered some of the recent challenges that researchers have faced with the suspension of travel, the closing of libraries and universities, and the quarantine restrictions that have kept so many of us in our homes. How can our field, which has always emphasized the importance of physical place and tactile artifacts, work successfully in isolation and at a distance? What does it mean for us when our work takes place in an incorporeal world of light and numbers rather than ink and flesh, in matrices of data rather than dusty rooms? Participants explored the advantages and disadvantages of this “immaterial culture,” and thought about how our work is shaped by access or lack of access to manuscripts, texts, catalogues, and objects.
2021 Workshop Schedule
DAY ONE
Friday February 5
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10:00-11:45 EST 15:00-16:45 GMT |
Erin Sweany, Vassar College “Wellcome 406 and Hands-Off Codicology” |
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11:45-1:00 EST |
Break |
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1:00-2:45 EST 18:00-19:45 GMT |
Rosie Maxton & Lucy Parker, University of Oxford “Fragments of a Chaldean Family History: Collaborative Research on (Virtual) Eastern Christian Manuscripts in the Time of COVID-19” |
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2:45-3:00 EST |
Break |
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3:00-4:45 EST 20:00-21:45 GMT |
Erica Weaver, UCLA “Glossing for Attention in the Lambeth and Royal Psalters” |
DAY TWO
Saturday February 6
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10:00-11:45 EST 15:00-16:45 GMT |
Giovanni Varelli, University of Oxford “Managing Frustration Positively: Working with Early-Medieval Liturgical Chant Palimpsests” |
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11:45-1:00 EST |
Break |
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1:00-2:45 EST 18:00-19:45 GMT |
Kelin Michael, Emory University “Digitization, Funding, and (lack of) Travel: New Approaches to an Art Historical, Object-Based Dissertation during the COVID-19 Pandemic” |
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2:45-3:00 EST |
Break |
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3:00-4:45 EST 20:00-21:45 GMT |
Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar “Of Manuscripts, Merchants, Monsters, and Maps, or: Creating Virtual Research Spaces for Medievalists” |
BONUS CONCURRENT EVENT!
Mapping La Sfera was a 2-day digital breakout event, running concurrently with the Manuscript Workshop and led by Laura Morreale. Participants used the time outside of the regularly scheduled Workshop program (above) to map locales named in three manuscript versions of a 15th century Italian geographic treatise, Goro Dati’s La Sfera. The group shared the results of their project during the final session of the Workshop. Details on this special breakout event can be found here.
BL Harley MS 647 f. 10v