3:00 to 6:00 pm

Smith Warehouse, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4

A roundtable discussion featuring Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America), Dr. Christopher Nugent (Williams College), and Dr. Akiko Walley (University of Oregon).

This roundtable will consider how manuscript fragments inform our collective understanding of the social and cultural attitudes toward the formation—and deformation—of written texts as objects within culture-specific markets, asking: Can we equally apply the term ‘fragment’ in every context? What codicological or palaeographical aspects of Chinese or Japanese ‘fragments’ distinguish them from their European counterparts? What broad conclusions can we draw from these comparisons?