Lost, dispersed, and marginalised manuscript collections
Provisional programme – for updates refer to the blog of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures. For more information: clement.salah@queens.ox.ac.uk or shaahin.pishbin@queens.ox.ac.uk
Day 1: Tuesday 16 June: The Making and Unmaking of Libraries
Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford
9:00 Welcome
9:15–9:30 Shaahin Pishbin & Clément Salah, “Introduction to Forgotten Libraries”
Session 1: Reconstructing Dispersed Libraries
9:30–10:00 Henrike Lähnemann, “Superfluous precious objects: Reconstructing the
manuscript production of the Medingen nuns”
10:00–10:30 Nour Obeid, “Writers’ Libraries as Houses of Trouble: Fragmentation and
Reconstruction in the Arab Region”
10:30–11:00 James White, “The Hyperlinked Manuscript: Reading and Bibliography in
Seventeenth-Century Iran”
11:00–11:30 Coffee Break
Session 2: Endowment, Community, and the Formation of Libraries
11:30–12:00 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “Endowment practices and the formation of Jewish
libraries in the Islamicate world”
12:00–12:30 Ronny Vollandt, “Karaite library in Jerusalem”
12:30–14:00 Lunch
Session 3: Displacement, Empire, and Reconfigured Collections
14:00–14:30 Hallie Swanson, “Between Royal Collection and Oriental Repository: The
Forgotten Library of Fort William College”
14:30–15:00 Gulguncha Lalbekova, “Imperial Legacies and Displaced Heritage: The Case
Study of Badakhshani Ismaili Manuscripts in Russian State Archives”
15:00–15:30 Coffee Break
Session 4: Marginalised Traditions and Hidden Repositories
15:30–16:00 Balasubramanyam Chandramohan, “Forgotten Manuscripts: Lost, Dispersed
and Marginalised Manuscripts- a case study of Tamil and Telugu Palm leaf
Manuscripts”
16:00–16:30 Udaya Cabral, “Hidden Knowledge Hubs: Recovering the Neglected Palm-Leaf
Manuscript Collections of Sri Lankan Monastic Libraries”
19:00 Dinner at Queen’s
Day 2: Wednesday 17 June: Tracing and Reconstructing Forgotten Collections
Taylorian Room 2, Taylor Institution, Oxford
Session 5: Tracing Lost Collections Through Fragments and Objects
9:00–9:30 Zoe Screti, “Finding Life in Fragments: The Obfuscation of Autograph Albums
in Archive Catalogues”
9:30–10:00 Holly Smith, “The Fragile Fates of Medieval Music Manuscripts – A Story of
Preservation and Loss”
10:00–10:30 Ana Dias & Julia Smith, “‘The chest of anonymous relics’: Reconstructing the
earliest relic collection of Sens cathedral (France)”
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
Session 6: Catalogues, Data, and the Production of Invisibility
11:00–11:30 Matt Lampitt, “(Un)Mapping the March: Lost Books, Ghost Data”
11:30–12:00 Sian Witherden, “Defining ‘Rejected’ and ‘Unidentified’ provenance in
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain”
12:00–12:30 Maeve Hagerty, “Valued at nothing’: Unsettling the (Post)Colonial Archival
History of the Danson Erotica Collection”
12:30–14:00 Lunch
Session 7: Libraries Without Shelves: Singular Objects and Dispersed Worlds
14:00–14:30 Elisian Ralli, “A lost library by design: ‘Bibliophilie créatrice’ and the
reinvention of the modern manuscript”
14:30–15:00 Thea Gomelauri, “Forced Migration of Rustaveli’s Epic Poem: Bodleian
Library MS. Wardrop d.27”
15:00–15:30 Coffee Break
15:30–16:30 Roundtable: What is a Library When It Disappears?
17:00–18:00 Drink reception at Queen’s