Curator of Manuscripts and Ancient Handwriting Expert Presents Lecture at Lafayette
Heather Wolfe, curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., presents “Tangled Texts in Early Modern England,” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9 in the Gendebien Room of Skillman Library at Lafayette College. Her talk is the 2014 Paul and June Schlueter Lecture in the Art of the Book. It is free and open to the public.
Wolfe will explore the interplay between manuscript and print in Renaissance England, when texts were intentionally mixed and remixed and infinitely customizable. An avid proponent of the importance of the “material” text, she hopes to show that readers and writers were (and still are) extremely flexible about a text’s physical form, using a mixture of technologies to make reading an accessible, personal, and meaningful experience.
Wolfe is also a distinguished paleographer. She has served as Director of the Mellon Summer Institute in English Paleography at both the Huntington Library and the Folger Library and as Director of the Folder Institute’s Early Modern English Paleography program. She has taught paleography, the study of ancient writing systems and the deciphering of historical manuscripts, at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and at the New Zealand Rare Book School at the University of Dunedin.
An accomplished speaker, she has been heard on NPR and her paleography expertise has helped solve mysteries on the television series “History Detectives” and “Mystery at the Museum.”
The event is sponsored by the Schlueter Lecture Series with support from Skillman Library and the Friends of Skillman Library.
The Schlueter Lecture Series was established in 2007 by Drs. Paul and June Schlueter in support of Skillman Library’s Special Collections. The donors intended that the lecture series cover a range of topics associated with the history, culture, production, conservation, and collection of books of all time periods and in all formats.
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Photo: Heather Wolfe, courtesy of Lafayette College
Kathleen Parrish
Associate Director of Media Relations
Lafayette College
Communications Division
Easton, PA 18042
parrishk@lafayette.edu
www.lafayette.edu