Digital Launch Event: The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe

This symposium, co-hosted by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) at University College London, and the Warburg Institute, University of London, caps off a four-year, international collaboration between Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries, the Princeton University Library, and CELL at UCL, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This launch concludes this effort to provide a dynamic viewing capability of the scattered contents of two of the most important libraries of the English Renaissance, as well as a digital research environment that allows scholars to view, search, link, and map hundreds of thousands of manuscript annotations left in the margins of these books by two “serial annotators,” John Dee and Gabriel Harvey. The Archaeology of Reading will allow generations of future scholars the ability to study not only these rare books, but also the methods and practices employed by Renaissance readers as they interpreted the books in their private libraries over 400 years ago.

This conference is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required to attend. Please book no later than Wednesday, 23rd January 2019. Please address any queries to lucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk

The conference is followed by a reception at the Polish Embassy, which is restricted to pre-confirmed registrants only. Your forename and surname will be given to the Polish Embassy - if you do not wish your name to be given or you do not wish to attend the reception please email lucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk and your name will be removed.

***Please bring passport or other official ID to gain access to the building***

Schedule

8:30-9:00: Coffee and continental breakfast service

9:00-9:15: Opening Remarks, Bill Sherman (Warburg Institute), Thoughts on the History of Reading

9:15-10:15: Panel 1: Reading John Dee’s Marginalia, Part I

• Sara Miglietti (Warburg Institute), What Is an Annotator? Thoughts in the Margins of Marginalia Studies
• Jenny Rampling (Princeton University), Paging John Dee: Reconstructing Alchemical Practice from Manuscript Notes

10:15-10:30: Coffee Break

10:30-12:00: Panel 2: Cross-Reading Dee’s and Harvey’s Marginalia

• Anthony Grafton (Princeton University), Reading the Classics: The History of Reading as Reception
• Frederic Clark (University of Southern California), Historia and the Universal Library: Bibliography and the Reconstruction of Antiquity in the Work and Reading of John Dee
• Matt Symonds (University College London), Signs of “Cosmopolitan Reading” in the Books of Gabriel Harvey and John Dee

12:00-1:30: Lunch (provided in the Jessel Room for all registrants)

1:30-2:30: Panel 3: Reading Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia

• Earle Havens (Johns Hopkins University), Studying to Be a Courtier: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Library
• Chris Geekie (Sorbonne Université), “The fantasticall mould of Aretine or Rabelays”: The Uses of Literature in Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia

2:30-2:45: Coffee Break

2:45-3:45: Panel 4: Reading John Dee’s Marginalia, Part II

• Neil Weijer (Johns Hopkins University), Believe It or Not: Assessing Authority in John Dee’s Books
• Philip Palmer (Clark Library, University of California, Los Angeles), Dee Reading Colón Writing Columbus

3:45-4:00: Coffee Break

4:00-5:00: Panel 5: Encoding and Decoding Dee’s and Harvey’s Marginalia

• Jaap Geraerts (University College London), Patterns of Reading: Topical Marginal Notes and the Reading Strategies of John Dee and Gabriel Harvey
• Heather Froehlich (Pennsylvania State University), Reading Multilingual Transcription Data in Dee and Harvey’s Marginalia

5:00-5:45: Symposium Roundtable Q&A: Books, Reading, and Libraries: Past, Present, and Future

• Winston Tabb (Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University
• Katie Birkwood (Royal College of Physicians Library)
• Stephen Ferguson (Princeton University Library)

6:00pm: Transport to the official reception.

6:30-8:00pm: AOR Launch Reception, Hosted by His Excellency Arkady Rzegocki, Polish Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Polish Embassy (47 Portland Place, Marylebone, London).

In the interest of security, reception is restricted to pre-confirmed registrants only. Your forename and surname will be given to the Polish Embassy - if you do not wish your name to be given or you do not wish to attend the reception please email lucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk and your name will be removed.

***Please bring passport or other official ID to gain access to the building***