In celebration of the first three years of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) and the launch of the centre’s open-access journal with its inaugural issue, Monumentalization, there will be a CMTC festival in Trinity Term 2022. Public events include the formal launch of the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures (Wednesday 11th May), and ‘Unravelling Manuscript Cultures’, at once a public reading of extracts of premodern poetry in translation accompanied by live music and a display of select manuscripts from different regions and times (Thursday 12th May).

Wednesday 11 May 2022: Launch of the Journal Manuscript and Text Cultures

Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford, 17:15–19:00 (BST),

• Welcome drinks and music
• Claire Craig, Provost of The Queen’s College: welcome address
• Dirk Meyer, Director of CMTC: brief report
• Adam Schwartz, Director of Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology (JAS)
• Yegor Grebnev, Production editor of MTC
• Drinks and music

Thursday 12 May 2022: Unravelling Manuscript Cultures

Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford, 16:30–19:00 (BST)

Magrath Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford (public display of select manuscripts, curated by Matthew Shaw, Queen’s)

Welcome drinks and music

• Selena Wisnom (Leicester): Erra and Ishum lamenting the destruction of Babylon
• Tara Hathaway (Queen’s): Readings of Rāmāyaṇa
• Adam Schwartz JAS (Hong Kong) and Dirk Meyer (Queen’s): Songs of the States:Shi from the Anhui University manuscripts
• Henrike Lähnemann (St Edmund Hall): Latin and Low German Easter prayer book of the Cistercian nuns of Medingen Abbey
• (Short play:) The of Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, by Tony Harrison
• Drinks and music

Please sign up to the event using this link: https://forms.gle/FUm3HxpZ4husYMLL7

You can choose to join us in person or online, for both days or just one.

Image: Hands of God writing the world, from the Oxford Medingen Psalter Bodleian Library, MS. Don. e. 248, fol. 43v.