Teaching

2026–2027 Graduate Student Manuscript Skills Workshop

Instructors: Nicholas Herman, Amey Hutchins, Dot Porter, and Lynn Ransom

SIMS Graduate Student Manuscript Skills Workshop

What exactly is parchment? What’s a quire? How do I read this funny script? Where does this book come from? Why do I need to know about collation structure? How was this handwritten artifact made and why does it matter? If you are curious about how you can integrate manuscript sources into your own scholarship, sign up for this free, informal workshop offered by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at Penn Libraries, which will meet monthly throughout the 2026/27 academic year.

If you are looking to enhance your research skills and deepen your knowledge of pre-modern manuscripts, this opportunity is for you. Each session will be hosted by specialists at SIMS (Nicholas Herman, Amey Hutchins, Dot Porter, Lynn Ransom). The goal is to provide graduate students with specific skills needed to study and use pre-modern manuscripts for dissertation research and beyond.

The workshop will meet on select Thursday evenings from 5:00 to 7:00 pm in the Vitale II Lab for Book History and Digital Humanities (6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library). See the schedule below for details.

While the workshop is meant to be an informal gathering, a commitment to attend all sessions is encouraged. It is open to all Penn graduate students and to graduate students at other institutions by request. Please email sims-mss@pobox.upenn.edu with any questions.

Schedule:

Thursday, September 24th: An Introduction to Manuscript Studies

Thursday, October 15th: Book as Technology

Thursday, November 19th: Analyzing Structure

Thursday, December 3rd: Materials and Techniques

Thursday, January 21st: Reading Manuscript Writing

Thursday, February 18th: Illumination

Thursday, March 18th: Online Resources

Thursday, April 15th: Provenance Research

Thursday, May 6th: Future Directions

Instructors: Dot Porter and Nicholas Herman

Are you a medievalist or early modernist? Are you a K-12 teacher with a unit on medieval or renaissance history? Are you a library science instructor who teaches history of the book? Do you teach history of science or mathematics? Do you ever wish that you had access to primary sources, manuscripts and printed books, to illustrate concepts covered in your classes?

Then you may be interested in a Virtual Classroom Visit! Since Spring 2016 we have offered Virtual Classroom Visits, featuring manuscripts and early printed books from our collections, and knowledgeable curators to introduce the items.

What is a Virtual Classroom Visit?

During a Virtual Classroom Visit, a curator at Penn will present books from our collection via Zoom. We can serve both in-person classes (if you have a large monitor or projector on your end), virtual classes (where every student joins individually), or a combination of both.

What kind of books might I show my class?

At Penn, we have a pretty good collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Many of them are in Latin, and include a few Books of Hours, some Bibles, plus a small number of books in Middle English (including a Wycliffite Bible). We also have a very strong collection of secular books – medicine, philosophy, mathematics, astrology, astronomy, and many more – mostly later medieval and early modern, some non-Western, including extensive holdings in Sanskrit. We also have a collection of incunabula, and many other collections of early printed books. To find out more about what manuscripts and early printed books we have, click some of the links above or search and browse Find, our online catalogue (this link specifies as the location “Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts” – you can browse from there, and manuscript records include links to digitized copies when available). We have several book lists used for previous classes, and we’ll work with you to put together a list relevant to your class:

Why should we have a Virtual Classroom Visit, rather than visiting books in our library or viewing scanned books online?

If your library owns items relevant to your class, you need to take your class to your local library! Your librarians will be happy to see you, and there is nothing that compares to the experience of a rare book in real life. For the same reason, if you don’t have access to books at your own library, while it’s not the same as viewing books in real life a Virtual Classroom Visit provides an object-centered view of the book that doesn’t come across in still images. While the resolution of the streaming video isn’t high (so it might be difficult to make out text, especially if it’s quite small), you can really get a sense of the size and “heft” of books, see how they move, even hear them, all things that are more or less obscured by digitization.

Sounds interesting. How do I find out more?

If you are interested in the possibility of a Virtual Classroom Visit, now or in the future, please email curator Dot Porter at dorp@upenn.edu. Be aware that due to time constraints, we are only scheduling one Video Classroom Visit a week so early booking is important. Since we present Coffee With A Codex on Thursdays, we are not booking Virtual Classroom Visits on Thursdays.

You my also be interested in our video orientations or our ongoing series Coffee With A Codex.

Read about the experience that Megan Cook at Colby College had with a Virtual Classroom Visit in 2017.

Undergraduate and Graduate Class Visits (Available Upon Request)

In conjunction with curators from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, visiting classes from the University of Pennsylvania and beyond are routinely welcomed to the 6th floor of Van Pelt Library for special handling sessions. Examples of courses for which manuscript handling sessions have been held are included below. For more information, contact Nicholas Herman (hermanni@upenn.edu) or Lynn Ransom (lransom@upenn.edu).

Art and Money (History of Art, Penn)
Death, Disease, and Demons in the Medieval World (Religious Studies, Penn)
Discovering Medieval Manuscripts (Art History, Bryn Mawr College)
Introduction to Early Medieval Art and Architecture (Art History, Temple University)
Global Middle Ages Literature Course (English, Washington College)
Hearing (in) the Middle Ages (Music, Penn)
Old Church Slavonic: History, Language, Manuscripts (Comparative Literature, Penn)
Renaissance to Contemporary Art (History of Art, Penn)
The Sacred in Medieval Europe (Religious Studies, Penn)

Local High School Visits (Available Upon Request)

In conjunction with curators from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, visiting classes from local high schools can be welcomed to the 6th floor of Van Pelt Library for special manuscript viewing sessions. Examples of manuscript essions tailored to specific classes are included below. For more information, contact Dot Porter (dorp@upenn.edu).

Class visits held recently:

Germantown Friends School (Philadelphia), Medieval Literature Class (manuscript session led by Nicholas Herman and John Pollack)
Kohelet Yeshiva School (Lower Merion), Hebrew language class (manuscript session led by Nicholas Herman and Louis Meiselman)

Local Elementary School Class Visits (Available Upon Request)

Since 2015, SIMS has offered a program for young children to introduce them to the wonders of medieval manuscripts. Dot uses the well-known and beloved children’s book Marguerite Makes a Book by Bruce Robertson (J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999) as the “textbook” to introduce children to the concept of a hand-produced book and get them ready for seeing the real thing. For more information, contact Dot Porter (dorp@upenn.edu).

Class visits held recently:

Penn Children’s Center (4-5 year olds, one class), Introducing Medieval Manuscripts (session taught by Dot Porter)
Southwark Elementary School (second graders, three classes), Introducing Medieval Manuscripts (session taught by Dot Porter)

Penn Courses Taught by SIMS Staff

SIMS Staff teach and co-teach a variety of courses in the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania on a recurring basis, included but not limited to the following. Check departmental rosters for up-to-date information on courses being taught in the current academic year.

ARTH/HSSC 5431: Visualizing Science: Diagrams before Modernity. Instructor: Nicholas Herman (co-taught with Elly Truitt, History and Sociology of Science)
ARTH 343: Manuscript Illumination in Philadelphia-area Collections. Instructor: Nicholas Herman
ARTH 343: Art, Politics, and Power in Late Medieval and Renaissance France. Instructor: Nicholas Herman
ARTH 720: Illuminations: Manuscript/Medium/Message. Instructor: Nicholas Herman (co-taught with David Kim, History of Art)

Rare Book School Courses Taught by SIMS Staff

SIMS staff member Dot Porter frequently teaches courses as part of the Rare Book School (RBS) summer program in-person in Philadelphia and virtually online. For up-to-date information, see the Rare Books School schedule.