Interpreting the Ancients

November 20-22, 2025

Coinciding with the exhibition Reinventing Aristotle, on view this fall at Penn Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, this year's symposium centers on the unceasing conversations with antiquity held across the pages of manuscripts, before and after the age of print. Embracing a transnational perspective, speakers will explore how the material media of transmission influenced the reception of ancient authors and contributed to their reinterpretation, reinvention, and rediscovery over the centuries.

The program will begin Thursday evening, November 20, 5:00 pm, at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia (view on map), with a keynote conversation between Reinventing Aristotle exhibition curators, Eva Del Soldato, Associate Professor of Italian Studies (FIGS) at the University of Pennsylvania, and Hannah Marcus, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, to be moderated by Lynne Farrington, Senior Curator at the Kislak Center. The symposium will continue November 21-22 at the Kislak Center.

The program is available here.