Circulations

November 21-23, 2024

Before the age of print, manuscript books and documents were the lifeblood of premodern intellectual, religious, literary, and civil life. They circulated knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and values throughout the highly connected yet distinct book cultures of the premodern world. Today, even though performing a different role as artifacts of these times, the surviving witnesses of premodern manuscript cultures continue to move and nourish new lines of cultural, scientific, and scholarly inquiry. This year's topic takes the notion of circulation as a starting point to consider not only how manuscripts produced in various scribal cultures circulated information throughout the premodern world but also what the mechanisms were, and are, that have generated, shifted, and complicated the movement and circulation of the books themselves from the time of production to the present day. The symposium is organized in partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia (view on map).

The program will begin Thursday evening, November 21, 5:00 pm, at Penn Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts (view on map), with a reception and keynote address by Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America. The symposium will continue November 22-23 at the Kislak Center.

The symposium will be held in person with an option to join virtually. Registration for each day you plan to attend in person is appreciated! The zoom link will be the same for the entire event.

The program schedule is available here.