Past Lectures
2019 - 2020
Spring 2020
Subscribed: The Manuscript in Britain, 1500-1800
An exhibition at the Beinecke Library, January 18 - April 19, 2020, including:
Paper-businesses: Manuscript and Power in Early Modern England
Curated by Kathryn James
The Critics’ Gallery: The Manuscript as Critical Object
Curated by Ray Clemens, Johanna Drucker, Diane Ducharme, Anastasia Eccles, Marta Figlerowicz, Susan Howe, David Scott Kastan, Nancy Kuhl, Larry Manley, Lucy Mulroney, Cathy Nicholson, John Durham Peters, Sara Powell, Joe Roach, Peter Stallybrass, Emily Thornbury, and Michael Warner
Pastime With Good Company: Writing and Leisure in Early Modern England
Curated by Eve Houghton
Subscribed: The Manuscript in Britain, 1500-1800
An exhibition at the Beinecke Library, January 18 - April 19, 2020, including:
Paper-businesses: Manuscript and Power in Early Modern England
Curated by Kathryn James
The Critics’ Gallery: The Manuscript as Critical Object
Curated by Ray Clemens, Johanna Drucker, Diane Ducharme, Anastasia Eccles, Marta Figlerowicz, Susan Howe, David Scott Kastan, Nancy Kuhl, Larry Manley, Lucy Mulroney, Cathy Nicholson, John Durham Peters, Sara Powell, Joe Roach, Peter Stallybrass, Emily Thornbury, and Michael Warner
Pastime With Good Company: Writing and Leisure in Early Modern England
Curated by Eve Houghton
Curated by Kathryn James
The Critics’ Gallery: The Manuscript as Critical Object
Curated by Ray Clemens, Johanna Drucker, Diane Ducharme, Anastasia Eccles, Marta Figlerowicz, Susan Howe, David Scott Kastan, Nancy Kuhl, Larry Manley, Lucy Mulroney, Cathy Nicholson, John Durham Peters, Sara Powell, Joe Roach, Peter Stallybrass, Emily Thornbury, and Michael Warner
Pastime With Good Company: Writing and Leisure in Early Modern England
Curated by Eve Houghton
Curated by Eve Houghton
These public panel discussions all relate to the Spring exhibition, and will be held on Wednesdays, at 5pm, on the Beinecke Library mezzanine, on the following dates:
The Manuscript & Affect
January 29, 2020
Marta Figlerowicz (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale University), Peter Stallybrass (Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania), David Scott Kastan (George M. Bodman Professor of English, Yale University)
The Manuscript as Play
February 19, 2020
Anastasia Eccles (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University); Eve Houghton (Graduate student, Department of English, Yale University); Joseph Roach (Sterling Professor Emeritus of Theate and Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University)
The Manuscript: Form & Meaning
March 4, 2020
Michael Warner (Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies, Yale University); Lucy Mulroney (Associate Director of Collections, Research, and Education, Beinecke Library); Kathryn James (Curator, Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library)
The Manuscript: Lost, Absent, Imagined
Scheduled for March 25, 2020; cancelled due to covid
Emily Thornbury (Associate Professor of English, Yale University); Catherine Nicholson (Associate Professor of English, Yale University)
Fall 2019
Alexandra Franklin (Coordinator, Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library) and Richard Lawrence (Printer, Oxford)
"Textcraft: Teaching Practical Printing for the History of the Book"
September 11, 2019
Eric Slauter (Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago)
"Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an American Book"
October 23, 2019
Sarah Kay (Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University)
"Medieval Books from the Spheres to the Critical Zone: Lion and Panther Singers and their Manuscripts"
November 13, 2019
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University)
"How to Read a Petition: Bureaucracy and Book History in Colonial South Asia"
December 4, 2019
2018 - 2019
February 19, 2020
Anastasia Eccles (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University); Eve Houghton (Graduate student, Department of English, Yale University); Joseph Roach (Sterling Professor Emeritus of Theate and Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University)
The Manuscript: Form & Meaning
March 4, 2020
Michael Warner (Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies, Yale University); Lucy Mulroney (Associate Director of Collections, Research, and Education, Beinecke Library); Kathryn James (Curator, Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library)
The Manuscript: Lost, Absent, Imagined
Scheduled for March 25, 2020; cancelled due to covid
Emily Thornbury (Associate Professor of English, Yale University); Catherine Nicholson (Associate Professor of English, Yale University)
Fall 2019
Alexandra Franklin (Coordinator, Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library) and Richard Lawrence (Printer, Oxford)
"Textcraft: Teaching Practical Printing for the History of the Book"
September 11, 2019
Eric Slauter (Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago)
"Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an American Book"
October 23, 2019
Sarah Kay (Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University)
"Medieval Books from the Spheres to the Critical Zone: Lion and Panther Singers and their Manuscripts"
November 13, 2019
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University)
"How to Read a Petition: Bureaucracy and Book History in Colonial South Asia"
December 4, 2019
2018 - 2019
Scheduled for March 25, 2020; cancelled due to covid
Emily Thornbury (Associate Professor of English, Yale University); Catherine Nicholson (Associate Professor of English, Yale University)
Fall 2019
Alexandra Franklin (Coordinator, Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library) and Richard Lawrence (Printer, Oxford)
"Textcraft: Teaching Practical Printing for the History of the Book"
September 11, 2019
Eric Slauter (Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago)
"Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an American Book"
October 23, 2019
Sarah Kay (Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University)
"Medieval Books from the Spheres to the Critical Zone: Lion and Panther Singers and their Manuscripts"
November 13, 2019
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University)
"How to Read a Petition: Bureaucracy and Book History in Colonial South Asia"
December 4, 2019
2018 - 2019
"Textcraft: Teaching Practical Printing for the History of the Book"
September 11, 2019
Eric Slauter (Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago)
"Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an American Book"
October 23, 2019
Sarah Kay (Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University)
"Medieval Books from the Spheres to the Critical Zone: Lion and Panther Singers and their Manuscripts"
November 13, 2019
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University)
"How to Read a Petition: Bureaucracy and Book History in Colonial South Asia"
December 4, 2019
2018 - 2019
"Medieval Books from the Spheres to the Critical Zone: Lion and Panther Singers and their Manuscripts"
November 13, 2019
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Assistant Professor of English, Yale University)
"How to Read a Petition: Bureaucracy and Book History in Colonial South Asia"
December 4, 2019
2018 - 2019
The 2018-2019 program was organized around a series of public panel discussions on the theme of ‘the thing is,’ an exploration of the idea of the text as material object.
Spring 2019
Whitney Trettien (Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania)
Andrew Brown (Ph.D. Candidate in English, Yale)
Chair: Cathy DeRose (Digital Humanities Lab, Yale)
January 30, 2019
Heather Wolfe (Curator of Manuscripts and Archivist, Folger Shakespeare Library)
Peter Stallybrass (Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor English, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania)
Chair: Kathryn James (Curator, Beinecke Library)
February 20, 2019
Leah Price (Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature, Harvard)
Johanna Drucker (Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, School of Information Studies, UCLA)
Chair: Trina Hyun (Ph.D. Candidate in English, Yale)
April 3, 2019
Fall 2018
Bill Brown (Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, University of Chicago)
Marta Figlerowicz (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale)
John Durham Peters (María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies, Yale)
Chair: Michael Warner (Seymour H. Knox Professor of English, Professor of American Studies, Yale)
September 26, 2018
Tiffany Stern (Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)
David Scott Kastan (George M. Bodman Professor of English, Yale)
Chair: Stephen Orgel (Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities, Emeritus, Stanford University)
November 14, 2018
Deidre Lynch (Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Harvard)
Katie Trumpener (Emily Sanford Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale)
Chair: Jill Campbell (Professor of English, Yale)
December 5, 2018
Spring 2018
Juliet Fleming
Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies for the M.A. Program, New York University
"Cultural Graphology as a Regional Science"
January 17, 2018
Meredith McGill
Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University
"Print Formats and Poetic Genres: Rethinking Antebellum American Poetry"
February 28, 2018
Christina Lupton
Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
"Book Reading and the Materiality of the Future"
April 25, 2018
Fall 2017
Adam Smyth
Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book, University of Oxford
“Cultures of Waste: Recycling Bibles in Early Modern England”
September 20, 2017
Paul Needham
Scheide Librarian, Princeton University
“The Gutenberg Bible in its Manuscript Context”
November 1, 2017
Bruce Gordon
Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale Divinity School
“ ‘Blessed Jerome’: The Fate of the Vulgate in the Reformation”
December 6, 2017
Spring 2017
Zachary Lesser
Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
“Ghosts, Holes, and Rips: The Pavier Quartos Re-examined”
January 18, 2017
Patricia Crain
Aâssociate Professor of English, New York University
Reading Children: Literacy and the New Work of Nineteenth-century U.S. Childhood”
February 1, 2017
Tiffany Stern
Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London
“Playing Songs and Singing Plays: Ballads and Plays in the Time of Shakespeare”
March 29, 2017
Elizabeth McHenry
Associate Professor of English, New York University
“Making Negro Literature: Literary Workspaces at the Margins of Print Culture”
April 19, 2017
Fall 2016
Margreta de Grazia
Emerita Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
“Chronological Cruxes in the Shakespearean Canon”
October 12, 2016
Peter Blayney
Adjunct Professor, Department of English, University of Toronto
“Book-Piracy in the Reign of Mary Tudor”
November 9, 2016
Peter Stallybrass
Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
“What Is a Letter?”
December 7, 2016
Spring 2016
Jonathan Rose
Professor of History, Drew University
“Don’t Believe This Paper: A Doubtful History of Skeptical Reading”
March 9, 2016
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French at Christ Church, University of Oxford
“What Can We Really Know? The History of the Book versus the History of Reading”
April 6, 2016
Fall 2015
Joseph Dane
Professor of English, University of Southern California
“How Many Chaucerians Does It Take to Count to Ten? Horrors of the Obvious in Humanities Research”
October 28, 2015
Stephanie Frampton
Assistant Professor of Classical Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Hitting up Herculaneum: Reading and Publishing Roman Graffiti in 2015”
December 9, 2015
Spring 2015
Mordechai Levy-Eichel
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Yale University
“‘Good and Useful Learning’: The Expansion of Mathematics in Early Modern English Printing”
January 22, 2015
Cathleen Baker & Caleb Smith
Conservation Librarian and Adjunct Lecturer, University of Michigan, & Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University
“The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict”
February 4, 2015
Kathy Peiss
Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History, University of Pennsylvania
“Information in Wartime: American ‘Bookmen’ and their Acquisitions in World War II”
March 4, 2015
Alexandra Gillespie
Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Toronto
“Chaucer in Fragments: Collating The Canterbury Tales”
April 15, 2015
Fall 2014
Henry Woudhuysen
Rector, Lincoln College, University of Oxford
“Adulteration and Vampment: The ‘Improvement’ of Rare Books, 1750-1950”
October 1, 2014
(Co-sponsored by the Renaissance Colloquium, Department of English.)
Blair Hedges
Professor and Director, Center for Biodiversity, Temple University
“Wormholes and the Science of Prints”
November 5, 2014
Garrett Stewart
James O. Freedman Professor of Letters, Department of English, University of Iowa
“Codex 2.0: Turning the Conceptual Page”
December 3, 2014
Spring 2014
Elizabeth Frengel
Reference Librarian, Beinecke Library
“When Extra-Literary Becomes Literary: The Endpaper Maps of E.H. Shepard and Jules Feiffer”
January 23, 2014
Marc Michael Epstein
Professor of Religion and Visual Culture, Vassar College
“Book Arts and the Expansion of the Methodological Toolbox for the Study of Medieval Judaism”
February 12, 2014
Timothy Barrett
Professor, University of Iowa, School of Library and Information Sciences
“Papermakers Who Made Parchment: Product Innovation in 14th- and 15th-Century European Papermaking”
March 5, 2014
Jessie Ann Owens
Distinguished Professor of Music, University of California – Davis
“From Concept to Printed Book: The Genesis and Manufacture of Thomas Morley’s 1597 Music Treatise”
April 9, 2014
Fall 2013
Leslie Howsam
University Professor of History, University of Windsor
“Mediated Histories: How Victorian Periodicals Parsed the Past”
October 2, 2013
Randall McLeod
Graduate Faculty, University of Toronto
“De motu cordis textus”
November 6, 2013
Peter Kornicki
Emeritus Professor of Japanese, University of Cambridge
“Sins of Omission: What the Publishers’ Catalogues of Edo-period Japan Left Out”
December 11, 2013
Spring 2013
Aaron T. Pratt
PhD Candidate, Department of English, Yale University
“Buying Playbooks in Early Modern England”
January 17, 2013
Roger Chartier
Annenberg Visiting Professor in History, University of Pennsylvania
“Author’s Hand and Printer’s Mind in Early Modern Europe”
February 6, 2013
Elizabeth Eisenstein
Emertius Professor of History, University of Michigan
“Reactions to a New Medium in the Old Millenium”
March 6, 2013
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland
“Track Changes: The Literary History of Word-Processing”
April 25, 2013
Fall 2012
Michael Warner
Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies, Yale University
“Preachers and Publics”
October 10, 2012
Robert Darnton
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Emeritus and University Librarian, Emeritus, Harvard University
“Blogging, Now and Then (250 Years Ago)”
October 24, 2012
David Brewer
Associate Professor of English, Ohio State University
“The Ancien Régime of Authorial Names”
December 13, 2012
(Co-sponsored by the 18th- and 19th-Century Colloquium, Department of English).