CALL FOR PAPERS
Two-day conference on INNOVATIVE INTERPRETATION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Jerwood Centre, The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, Cumbria, England
3rd and 4th March 2011
One of the key issues facing literary museums and manuscript collections is how to make manuscripts interesting in themselves so that they engage a wider audience. Too often manuscripts are displayed as flat and passive conveyors of text, supplemented by transcriptions and long explanations used to illustrate points, but not interesting in themselves.
The Wordsworth Trust has been experimenting with using manuscripts as three-dimensional objects, exploring what we can learn from them as objects, over and above the text contained on them, and how that meaning can then be effectively communicated to people who are not specialists. The challenge is to inspire visitors to manuscript collections to notice and observe what is happening in a manuscript and prompt them to come to their own conclusions. First of all, though, we need to be clear what the manuscripts themselves have to tell us as objects, as ‘things in themselves’.
The purpose of this two-day conference is to bring together and showcase the best and most exciting innovative work on manuscript interpretation, which will inspire new approaches and standards of best practice in museums and collections. It will explore the potential of manuscripts to excite, inform and inspire us, using different types of literary manuscripts over the centuries. Papers are invited on ground-breaking approaches to:
• The investigation of manuscripts
• The physicality and appearance of manuscripts
• Manuscripts as stories in themselves
• How to communicate meaning of 3D manuscripts through interpretation
• How the use of technology can supplement understanding of the original manuscript without replacing it or making it redundant
• How we can emotionally engage people directly with the real manuscripts.
The first day of the conference will focus on what we can learn from engaging with manuscripts closely as objects and the stories they have to tell. The second day will explore innovative and practical ways of bringing this learning to a wider audience (some of which the Wordsworth Trust hopes to trial in a small experimental exhibition in late 2011).
Papers are invited on manuscripts of all periods and provenances: the only proviso is that the work must be innovative and exciting, and breaks new ground!
How to propose a paper
Conference papers will be 20 minutes long, plus 5 minutes for questions, comments and discussion after each paper (there will be time for more extensive general discussion at the end of each day). Please email an abstract of not more than 100 words, with your name and affiliation, to Jane Connolly ([log in to unmask]). Proposals must arrive no later than 5 p.m. on Friday 14th January 2011. We will respond as soon as possible thereafter to let you know if your paper has been accepted.
The conference steering group comprises: Jeff Cowton, MBE, Curator, The Wordsworth Trust; David McClay, Senior Curator of the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland; Nat Edwards, Director of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum; and Professor Piotr Bienkowski, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester.
Contributors whose papers are accepted will have their conference fees waived. A further announcement will be sent out once the draft conference programme is available, together with details of the schedule, conference fee, accommodation and subsistence.
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For any queries and further details, please email Jane Connolly, Assistant to the Curator at the Wordsworth Trust, on [log in to unmask]
The conference is part of a project at the Wordsworth Trust funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council through the Designation Development Fund.
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