2014-15 (archive)

Hilary Term 2015 - Classes, Seminars, and Events

20 January, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Professor Shlomo Berger (University of Amsterdam) and Dr César Merchan-Hamann (Bodleian, Oxford) ‘Why ”history of the book” and why history of the Amsterdam Jewish Book 1650-1850?’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

21 January, Slade Lectures 2015
Professor Antony Griffiths, ‘The Print Before Photography’
Wednesdays, 5 pm, Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building. See programme.

27 January, Friends of the Bodleian Lecture
Professor Mirjam Foot (Emeritus Professor of Library & Archive Studies, UCL) ‘The life of a bookbinder in the 17th and 18th centuries’
1 pm, Convocation House
Booking is required; please see the online form

27 January, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Professor Myriam Silvera (Universitá degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata) ‘From manuscripts to books: the comparison between the manuscript tradition of a work by Isaac Orobio de Castro and the printed version of the same’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

27 January, first meeting of the Oxford Material Texts Reading Group
Reading: Lisa Gitelman, ‘A Short History of _____’, in Paper Knowledge (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 21-52.
7:30 pm, The Old Bookbinder’s Ale House, Jericho.
E-mail Adam Smyth or Dennis Duncan for details of future meetings.

28 January, Research Materials Work-in-Progress Group
Karl Kinsella (DPhil. student, Keble College), Richard of Saint Victor and his three-dimensional architecture
2 pm, Seminar Room A, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

3 February, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Dr Bart Wallet (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) ‘Towards a Dutch Jewish Library: Language Politics and the Amsterdam Jewish Book, 1795-1848’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

Friday 6 February 2022
Dr Oren Margolis (Somerville College) ’Printing, Sculpture and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’
5:30 pm, Convocation House
Bodleian Library

Display: Aldus Manutius: The Struggle and the Dream, in the Proscholium, Bodleian Library, 8 Jan-22 Feb 2015

7 February 2022
Symposium, ‘The Printed Achievement of Aldus Manutius’
The Codrington Library, All Souls College, 9:15 - 1 pm. Convened by Ian Maclean and Oren Margolis. See programme.
For more information online: ’Manutius Network 2015’

10 February, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Dr Lucia Raspe (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main) ‘A Sephardic Minhagim (Book of Customs) from Amsterdam’ from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

11 February, Research Materials Work-in-Progress Group
Kate Sargan (DPhil. student, Regent’s Park College), crosses in the margins of Anglo-Norman vernacular manuscripts
2 pm, Seminar Room A, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

17 February, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Dr Avriel Bar-Levav (Open University, Israel) ‘The meaning of order: Siftei Yeshenim (Amsterdam 1680), the first printed Hebrew bibliography and its cultural implications’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

MONDAY 23 February, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Dr Theo Dunkelgrün (University of Cambridge) ‘Samuel de Casseres (d.1660) and the Spanish and Hebrew Bibles of Amsterdam 1661’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

25 February, Research Materials Work-in-Progress Group
Rachel Burns (PhD. student, UCL), the presentation of Old English metre on the page
2 pm, Seminar Room A, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

3 March, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Professor Marion Aptroot (Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf) ‘Yiddish ephemera printed in Amsterdam’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

10 March, Friends of the Bodleian Lecture
Anne Lawrence (Senior Library Assistant, Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries
‘Women worth their salt’: a history of the employment of women at the Bodleian Library
1 pm, Convocation House
Booking is required; please see the online form

10 March, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies
Dr Javier Castaño (Spanish National Research Council) ‘Laying the foundation for a New Tradition: A Baroque reading of Hispano-Jewish classics’
from 2-4pm, in the Weston Library

Thursday, 12 March 2022
20th Annual D. F. McKenzie Lecture
Professor Sheldon Pollock (Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies , Columbia University), ‘Editing in India: The First 1500 years’
5pm, Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, St Cross Building.

The 2015 Lyell Lectures in Bibliography

The Reach of Bibliography: Looking Beyond Letterpress in Eighteenth-Century Texts
Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Director, Rare Book School, University of Virginia

28 April: ‘Engraved Throughout: Pine’s Horace (1733) as a Bibliographical Object’. Register here.
30 April: ‘True Colours: A Natural History of Louis Renard’s Poissons (1719)’. Register here.
5 May: ‘Proliferating Images: Diagrams of the Slave Ship Brookes (1789)’. Register here.
7 May: ‘Singular Multiples: Comprehending the General Evening Post (1754–86)’. Register here.
12 May: ‘Naming Names: Underwriting Patronage in Tonson’s Cæsar (1712)’. Register here.
14 May: ‘Abridging Histories: Capt. James Cook and the Voyages of Reading (1784–)’. Register here.
All at 5 pm, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library (entrance from Broad Street, Oxford).

Free to attend but registration is essential, please register online here.
Professor Suarez will lead library seminars examining the items referred to in his lectures, each Wednesday and Friday, 2:15 - 3:30, in Weeks 1-3 of Trinity Term. To attend these seminars, please email [email protected] 

Monday 27 April 2015, OBS Lecture
Stan Nelson (Smithsonian Institution)
‘Exploring the type founder’s hand mould: structure and skill’
Story Museum, Pembroke Street, at 5.15 p.m.

Wednesday 6 May 2015, CSB Seminar
Kabe Wilson ‘Of One Woman or So’: Virginia Woolf Remixed
Taking a copy of A Room of One’s Own, multimedia artist Kabe Wilson proceeded to cut out each of the 37971 words in Woolf’s text, re-arranging them and gluing them down to create a new work, the novella, ‘Of One Woman or So’.
Set in modern-day Cambridge, Wilson’s work engages with the themes of its source text, telling the story of a young woman’s radical challenge to the literary conservatism of her university. This vast anagrammatical project is at once a playful celebration of Woolf’s canonical work, and a contemporary critique of it. ‘Of One Woman or So’ reflects on the shifting attitudes to race, sex, class, and the role and power of literature in the years since A Room of One’s Own was first published.
Wilson will be here to discuss the work and its method of composition, as well as its extraordinary format, a 4x13ft sheet onto which each word is individually pasted.
5:30 - 7 pm, Weston Library, Visiting Scholars’ Centre, Level 2. Those without Bodleian or University cards are required to register for this event: email [email protected]

Monday 11 May 2015, OBS Lecture
Nicola Wilson (University of Reading)
‘The Book Society Ltd and mid-twentieth-century literary culture’
Taylor Institution at 5.15 pm

Monday 18 May 2015, OBS Lecture
Jason Scott-Warren (University of Cambridge)
‘The archaeology of an Elizabethan library: reading Richard Stonley (ca. 1520–1600)’
Taylor Institution at 5.15 pm

Wednesday 3 June 2021
Ken Jacobson, ‘Carrying off the palaces: John Ruskin’s lost daguerrotypes’
5:15 pm, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library
Registration is required, link here.

10 June 2021
Manuscript Collaboration Colloquium
This half-day colloquium will consider the practicalities and working methods of book artisans who produced medieval books collaboratively. Covering a range of periods and disciplines, speakers will explore the practicalities, purpose and thought processes behind this particular working method, by approaching collaboration from palaeographical, codicological and art historical angles.
Organising committee: Sarah Laseke (Leiden), Eleanor Giraud (Oxford), Jaakko Tahkokallio (KCL)
To register, please visit http://collaborationms.weebly.com/
2 pm - 6 pm, Lincoln College, Oxford

Monday 15 June 2015, OBS Lecture
Will Poole (University of Oxford)
‘John Fell’s ‘New Year’ books’
Taylor Institution at 5.15 pm

Wednesday 17 June 2015, OBS Annual General Meeting
Ian Maclean (University of Oxford)
The market in learned books (law and medicine) at the beginning of the eighteenth century
McKenna Room, Christ Church
Meeting to begin at 4:30 p.m.; lecture to follow at 5:15 after a brief interval for tea.