Graduate Seminars
The History of Material Texts
The seminar in the history of material texts is a forum for research across disciplines and across periods, for all those interested in the history of the book, bibliography, histories and theories of reading, and the intersections between intellectual history and material culture, including the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, editing and subsequent history of texts as material objects in manuscript, print, digital media or other forms. It is based in the Faculty of English but welcomes speakers and participants from history, the history and philosophy of science, classics, modern languages, Asian and Middle Eastern studies and archaeology and anthropology, among others.
For more information, contact Jason Scott-Warren, Faculty of English (jes1003@cam.ac.uk) or Sarah Cain, Corpus Christi College (stc22@cam.ac.uk).
Seminars 2011-2012
Past Terms
Easter Term 2011
5 May Professor James Raven (University of Essex): The Sites of Printing and Bookselling in London in the Eighteenth Century
19 May Reading group on recent work on paratexts and the history of the book. Texts for discussion (below) are online via the Faculty Library’s CamTools site: please email Sarah Cain (stc22@cam.ac.uk) for further details or hard copy.
- William Sherman, ‘On the Threshold: Architecture, Paratext, and Early Print Culture’, in Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, ed. Baron/Lindquist/Shevlin (Amherst, 2007), 67-81; and
- Franco Moretti, ‘Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740-1850)’, and Katie Trumpener, ‘Critical Response I: Paratext and Genre System: A Response to Franco Moretti’, Critical Inquiry, 36 (2009), 134-74.
Lent Term 2011
27 Jan Harriet Phillips: “Waste Paper: Early Modern Broadsides as Popular Print, and MarieLéger-St-Jean: “long for the penny number and the weekly woodcut”: Early Victorian Popular Authors and their Readers
24 Feb Managing curious collections: Stuart Stone (Radzinowicz Library): a visit to the collection of ‘banned books’ from the Home Office; Katie Birkwood (St John’s College Library): Managing the Fred Hoyle Collection of papers, books and other material texts
Please note that the seminar on 24 February will begin at 5.30 in the Radzinowicz Library at the front of the Institute of Criminology on the Sidgwick Site, for a ‘show and tell’ of banned books, and will move for the second presentation and discussion to the Faculty of English.
Michaelmas Term 2010
14 Oct Prof. Anne Coldiron (Florida State University): Printers Without Borders: Translation and Literary Transnationalism in the Long Sixteenth Century
11 Nov Prof. Jim Secord (University of Cambridge) Nebular Visions: Image and Text in John Pringle Nichol’s Architecture of the Heavens
Easter Term 2010
29 Apr Reading group and discussion of new directions in the light of two articles: Leah Price, ‘From The History of a Book to a “History of the Book”’, Representations, 108 (2009), 120-138; and Bill Brown, ‘Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things)’, Critical Inquiry, 36 (2010), 183-207. Both articles are online via JSTOR, LION and the Faculty Library’s CamTools site. Please email the seminar convenors for further details or hard copy.
27 May Subha Mukherji (Downing): ‘The voice of things: some archival evidence’, and Christopher Burlinson (Jesus): ‘Maps and letters in the early modern archive’
Lent Term 2010
21 Jan Ruth Ahnert (Murray Edwards) and Becca Weir (Jesus): Writing, Occasion and Media
(1530s, 1860s)
18 Feb Hester Lees-Jeffries (St Catharine’s): Shakespeare: Text, Memory, Object; and Kit
Grover (designer), in conversation, on literary souvenirs. Participants are invited, but
not required, to bring literary souvenirs and memorabilia for a ‘show and tell’
discussion.
Michaelmas Term 2009
15 Oct Dr Jason Scott-Warren (Gonville and Caius): Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book
12 Nov Prof. Sue Powell (University of Salford): After Arundel but before Luther: The First Fifty Years of Print
Easter Term 2009
23 Apr Dr Sebastiaan Verweij (Scriptorium Project, Cambridge): ‘Eikit addit & copeit out off ye print’: Reading and Mending the Troy Book in Renaissance Scotland
30 Apr Dr Giles Bergel (Oxford): ‘Ballad history and the history of the ballad: “The Wandering Jew’s Chronicle”, 1630-1820’
7 May Special seminar in conjunction with Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Clark Lectures: Professor Roger Chartier (Directeur d’Études, École des Hautes Études en SciencesSociales, Paris; Professeur, Collège de France): ‘Written Culture and Literature in Early Modern Europe. Some propositions.’
(This seminar will take place in the Allhusen Room, Trinity College, at 5pm: please note the change of time and venue.)
Lent Term 2009
Special Seminar:
Scriptorium / History of the Book Seminar on Commonplace Books, Prof. Dr. Thomas Kohnen (University of Köln), 'Commonplace-book communication: Role shifts and text functions in Robert Reynes's notes contained in Tanner MS 407', Queens' College, Old SCR, 5.15pm, Tuesday 3rd March
The seminar will resume in Easter Term 2009.
Michaelmas Term 2008
16 October 2008
Dr Ian Williams, Christ’s College
‘He creditted more the printed booke’: Common Lawyers’ Receptivity to Print, 1550-1640
20 November 2008
Dr Kathleen Tonry, University of Connecticut
Reading Print’s Histories
Easter Term 2008
1 May 2008
Jean Khalfa, Trinity College, Cambridge
Poetics of the page as space: 20th century artists' books in France
15 May 2008
Mark Chinca, Trinity College, Cambridge
The Art of Dying in Lutheran Germany
Lent Term 2008
24 January 2008Dr Fredrik Hagen, Christ's College
Why Egyptologists can't read Egyptian Papyri
7 February 2008
Dr Ian Gadd, Bath Spa University
'Leaving the Printer to his Liberty' : Printing and Publishing Jonathan Swift's Political Tracts, 1711-14
21 February 2008
Victoria Kingham, The Modernist Magazines Project, De Montfort University: 'Aspects of the modern in early American magazines '291' (1915-1916) and 'The Soil: A Magazine of Art' (1916-1917)'
6 March 2008
Dunstan Roberts, Trinity Hall
Deletion, Self-Censorship, and the Reformation Reader
Michaelmas Term 2007
18 October 2007
Prof. Adrian Poole, Faculty of English and Trinity College
The Collected Edition of Henry James (Junior)
(Note: this talk is postponed from an earlier date.)
25 October 2007
Dr Angus Vine, the ‘Oxford Francis Bacon’ project, CRASSH
Bacon’s Bookkeeping
8 November 2007
Dr Rebecca Rushforth, ASNaC and the ‘Parker-on-the-Web’ project
Using the Parker-Library-on-the-Web Project
22 November 2007
Dr Richard Beadle, St John’s College and the Faculty of English, and Dr Christopher Burlinson, the ‘Scriptorium’ project
The Digital Miscellany and the Material Book
Decorative border image on this page is © Cambridge, St John's College, MS C. 21, f.2v (detail), reproduced with kind permission of the Master and Fellows of St John's College.