Introduction to Medieval Book-making

Working with a text of their choosing, participants will experiment with aspects of ancient and medieval book-making. We will explore historical writing implements, scripts, and practices in page design, and discuss themes including ancient and medieval practices of information technology, text-image relationships in the book medium, the relationship of material culture to textual traditions, and the representational power of books. The Program in Medieval Studies will sponsor a trip to a special exhibition on manuscript illumination at the Morgan Library in New York during the Wintersession period; this workshop is designed to be a complement to the exhibition for those who wish to go, so they can experience first-hand what it's like to work on the kind of books that will be on display. The workshop is also designed to be fully independent of the excursion, so that anyone curious about the process of historic book design has the opportunity for a hands-on introduction to the topic.

What to expect:
Single workshop (one-off workshop –" 2 hours total)

Meet the facilitators:
The workshop is led by a group of faculty: Sarah Anderson (English), Caroline Cheung (Classics), Janet Kay (A&A), and Beatrice Kitzinger (A&A/Medieval Studies). We all incorporate elements of practical experimentation into their courses on ancient and medieval material culture. We approach the subject from varied training in archaeology, art history, and textual studies, and look forward to learning from one another as well as from the session participants. We teach, respectively, in the departments of Art & Archaeology, Classics, and English; our fields of research concentrate in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

To request accommodations for this event, please contact the workshop or event facilitator at least 3 working days prior to the event.

For more information on the excursion to the Morgan Library exhibition, please visit the Medieval Studies website: medievalstudies@princeton.edu, and/or email Beatrice Kitzinger (bkitzinger@princeton.edu) and Sarah Porter (sp7@princeton.edu).

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