“Collecting the Medieval Book in America” is a conference, featuring a keynote lecture by Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, and a panel discussion with library curators, faculty, and antiquarian booksellers.
Panelists include:
- Brian Brege, Associate Professor, History, Syracuse University
- Anna Siebach-Larsen, Director of the Rossell Hope Robbins Library and Koller-Collins Center for English Studies, University of Rochester
- Juilee Decker, Director of the Museum Studies program, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Irene Malfatto, Independent Scholar and Bookseller at Bruce McKittrick Rare Books (Philadelphia)
- Moderators: Samantha Herrick, Associate Professor, History, Syracuse University and Irina Savinetskaya, Curator of Early to Pre-20th Century, Special Collections Research Center
A keynote lecture with Q&A was delivered by Lisa Fagin Davis titled “Since the Census: A Century of Manuscript Collecting in North America.”
“All Western European medieval manuscripts on this continent had to travel thousands of miles to get here. Bringing together experts from academia, libraries, museums, and antiquarian bookselling, the interdisciplinary conference Collecting the Medieval Book in America explores who has been collecting Western medieval manuscripts on this continent and why, and what the past and current collecting practices reveal about the broader perceptions of the Middle Ages in North America,” said Irina Savinetskaya.
The conference was hosted by the Special Collections Research Center in conjunction with the SCRC Spring 2025 exhibition, “The Making of the Medieval Book” and was organized by “Curating the Middle Ages,” a CNY Humanities Working Group. The event was co-sponsored by CNY Humanities Corridor and the Bibliographical Society of America, with additional support from Department of History, Department of Art History and the Global Premodern Studies Faculty Working Group.