09/08/2026
We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 22nd annual Marco Manuscript Workshop, which will take place January 29-30, 2027, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The Workshop is organized by Duncan Hardy (History), Charles Kuper (Classics), and R. D. Perry (English) and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Following last year’s theme, “Destruction & Preservation,” which focused on the damage that occurs as manuscripts pass through history and what might be done about it, this year’s theme, “What’s Missing?,” considers what was never there in the first place but might have been. We are accustomed to considering manuscript fragmentation and miscellaneity. Even given the ubiquity of those conditions, though, one often comes to expect certain material to circulate with other material. Sometimes that expectation comes from internal evidence within the works themselves, as when one would expect entire literary works to remain whole in different manuscript contexts. Sometimes that expectation comes from habit or tradition, the tendency of certain works to circulate alongside other works. These expectations are as often frustrated as they are fulfilled: rather than an illumination program, one finds empty space; rather than a full quire, one finds something ripped out; rather than all of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one finds a tale or two; rather than a continuation of Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval, one finds it ending abruptly; rather than a moralization of an allegory, one finds just another story; rather than another year in an annal, one finds blank space, or perhaps even more distressingly, a poem. This workshop focuses on how we understand these lacunae as they exist materially. What’s missing? How do our expectations develop and how can we manage them? What do we make of earlier responses to these missing materials? Examples might include books that have sustained damage and have lost what they once had, and books that never had that material in the first place, or even books that we would expect to have one thing but instead have something else; responses, both medieval and modern, that in some way try to get a handle on our frustrated expectations on what could or should be in a text; the expectations, again both medieval and modern, that are developed by working with manuscripts, the conditions that produce these expectations and how we become attached to them. As always, we welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined, or on any other aspect of manuscripts, epigraphy, and the history of writing.
The workshop is open to scholars and students in any field who are engaged in manuscript studies, textual editing, or epigraphy. Individual sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text(s) and context(s), 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 like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer 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 problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation. This year, we’re also pleased to welcome Jessica Brantley (Yale) as our respondent.
The deadline for applications is November 1, 2026. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page abstract of their project via email to the Marco Institute at [email protected].
The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. Further details will be available later in the year; please visit tiny.utk.edu/msw27 or contact the Marco Institute at [email protected] for more information.
