Marco Manuscript Workshop - Call For Proposals

Marco Manuscript Workshop - Call For Proposals

"Unruly Letters & Unbound Texts"

The Fourth Marco Manuscript Workshop will be held Friday and
Saturday, February 5 and 6, 2010, at the University of Tennessee
in Knoxville; the workshop is organized by Professors Maura K.
Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English).

Last year's workshop focused on "textual trauma" -- instances of
violence, deliberate or otherwise, against texts. This year our
focus will be on texts and manuscripts that cross or confound the
boundaries scholars have tried to place around them, that do not
fit neatly into the genres or categories of modern scholarship,
or that pose peculiar difficulties of definition, categorization
or reading. These might include: macaronic and multilingual
texts, prosi-metric and metri-prosaic texts, glosses and
commentaries, diagrams and tables, ciphers and strange alphabets,
incongruous or appropriated forms and textual designs,
interpolations and conflations, marginal commentaries that
overwhelm their texts, miscellanies and composite manuscripts,
and manuscripts in the age of print. We welcome presentations on
any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and students at any rank and in
any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies,
or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to
each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text
and its context, discuss their approach to working with their
material, and exchange ideas and information with other
participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to
be more a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to
share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their
successes and frustrations, to offer both practical advice and
theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing
better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We
particularly invite the presentation of works in progress,
unusual manuscript problems, practical difficulties, and new or
experimental models for studying or representing manuscript
texts. Presenters will receive a stipend of $500 for their
participation.

The deadline for applications is October 1, 2009. Applicants are
asked to submit a current CV and a two-page letter describing
their project to Roy M. Liuzza, Department of English, University
of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430, or via
email to rliuzza@utk.edu .

The workshop is also open to scholars and students who do not
wish to present work but are interested in sharing a lively
weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. More
information will be available by contacting Roy Liuzza
mailto:rliuzza@utk.edu .