Fwd: Registration now open for the 18th Annual Schoenberg Symposium
Evyn Kropf
A reminder that the 18th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age is happening next week. All are welcome, in person or online!
Interpreting the Ancients
November 20-22, 2025
In the medieval and early modern world, philosophers and poets often expressed that they stood on the shoulders of antiquity’s giants. The knowledge, erudition, and artistry of the ancients–transmitted and reinterpreted through the medium of the codex and other handwritten formats–profoundly influenced the ways in which the mysteries of the natural and spiritual worlds were understood and experienced. Many also understood their work as continuing beyond and improving upon their predecessors’ achievements. Writing in the 16th century, for example, Niccolò Machiavelli shared in a letter to a friend that he always found himself welcome in the company of ancients, “those classical writers whose books he continuously interrogated,” in a manner of continuous dialogue among peers. For the premodern period, manuscript books were indeed the vehicles by which ancient knowledge was transmitted, received, studied, and interrogated for generations of scholars and students.
Coinciding with the exhibition Reinventing Aristotle, on view this fall at Penn Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, this year's symposium centers on the unceasing conversations with antiquity held across the pages of manuscripts, before and after the age of print. Embracing a transnational perspective, speakers will explore how the material media of transmission influenced the reception of ancient authors and contributed to their reinterpretation, reinvention, and rediscovery over the centuries.
All are invited to attend. The symposium will be held in person at the Kislak Center and the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, with an option to join virtually. More information, including registration and program details, can be found here: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/lawrence-j-schoenberg/interpreting-ancients.
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Lynn Ransom, Ph.D.
Curator of Programs, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Project Director, The New Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts
Co-Editor, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Acting Executive Director, Digital Scriptorium
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries
3420 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206