The goal of the workshop is to introduce graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and junior faculty to research methodologies involved in studying the codicology of European manuscripts - the material aspects of books made by hand between 1200 and 1500. This includes techniques for understanding sheet materials (parchment, paper), inks, ruling (lines on the page), bookbinding types (both regionally and across time), and collation (organization of sheets in a manuscript).
This methodological survey provides scholars from a wide range of disciplines the tools they need to decode aspects of manuscripts that are often overlooked, but that can provide important information about the production and use of texts over time, such as textual production, transmission, manuscript provenance and dating.
The workshop is useful for those studying medieval and early modern languages and literature, history, art history, manuscript studies, library science, and related disciplines. The workshop will utilize manuscripts in the Newberry Library collection produced before 1500, but the methodologies presented here will be of equal use to scholars of early modern manuscripts, as well.
Prerequisites: None.