Textuality, Materiality and Reading Practices is a working group comprised of faculty and graduate students within the humanities to stimulate discussion among scholars from across different academic disciplines, with different geographical and temporal foci, that work on textual materiality and learn from each other. The workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum to foster scholarship that explores the entangled histories of reading and its artifacts. We ask such questions as: What does reading and its artifacts look like from a panoptic but kaleidoscopic vista? How does reading, textuality and materiality preserve tradition and innovate change?
Launched in 2016-17, the group meets 10 times a year at 12:00PM to 1:20PM in 202 Jones. The group is moderated by AnneMarie Luijendijk, Professor of Religion and is part of Comparative Antiquity: Humanities Council Global Initiative.
Spring 2020
February 6
Melissa Reynolds (History; Society of Fellows) “From devotion to instruction: Reading the ‘book of paynture’ in late medieval England.”
February 20
Tom Conlan (East Asian Studies): “The Transmission of Omission: Understanding Japan’s 14th-15th Centuries Through Altered Histories (Taiheiki Oninki).”
March 5
Jennifer Rampling (History): “Alchemical Images as Marginal Annotations.”
March 26
AnneMarie Luijendijk (Religion): “Dirty Manuscripts and the Chemical Testing of Organic Stains.”
April 9
AnnMarie Rasmussen (German; Stanley Kelley Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Department of German): “Image, Mistake, Mnemonic?: Understanding Non-syllabic Script on Medieval Badges.”
April 23
Paul Dilley (Institute for Advanced Study): “Experiments in Digital Editing with the Life of Eupraxia.”
Fall 2019
September 19
Martin Kern (East Asian Studies): “What To Do With Newly Looted Manuscripts? The View From Early China”
October 3
Daniela Mairhofer (Classics): “Dating Minuscules.”
October 17
Verena Lepper (Stewart Fellow in the Humanities Council and in the Department of Religion): “Virtual Unfolding of Folded Papyri.”
November 7
Richard Calis (History): “Reconstructing the Ottoman Greek World.”
December 5
Helmut Reimitz (History): “Remaking the parchments of the past: the practice of compiling history books in the Carolingian period.”
2019-20 Participants
- AnneMarie Luijendijk, Religion; Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity
- Martin Kern, East Asian Studies
- Anthony Grafton, History
- Daniela Mairhofer, Classics
- Melissa Reynolds, History; Society of Fellows
- Bryan Lowe, Religion
- Tom Conlan, East Asian Studies
- Sally Poor, German
- AnnMarie Rasmussen, German; Visiting Scholar
- Verena Lepper, Berlin State Museums; Visiting Faculty
- AJ Berkovitz, Religion
- Matthew Larsen, Religion; Society of Fellows
- Richard Calis, History (graduate student)
- Jin-Woo Choi, History (graduate student)
- Brian Steininger, East Asian Studies
- Helmut Reimitz, History
- Buzzy Teiser, Religion
- Seth Perry, Religion
- Elizabeth Erikson, Classics (graduate student)
- Minhao Zhai, Religion (graduate student)
- Sinae Kim, Religion (graduate student)
- Paul Dilley (IAS, University of Iowa)
- Denis Feeney, Classics
- Claire Apostoli, Classics (graduate student)
- Jenny Rampling, History
- Jian Wei XU, East Asian Studies
