“Fragmentology” has emerged as one of the dominant subjects in the broader manuscript studies field, as digital technologies have facilitated the identification, location, and reaggregation of widely dispersed individual folios originally from the same common manuscript. The reconstruction of broken manuscripts raises questions across the spectrum of medieval book studies, including codicology, paleography, art historical and textual research, historical provenance, modern consumerism, and the contested and shifting value of manuscript fragments as either objects of connoisseurship or scholarship. Collecting fragments is a highly contentious topic, and this session addressed it from institutional, private, commercial, and scholarly perspectives.
This event’s panelists were Sumayya Ahmed, Tom Bredehoft, Lisa Fagin Davis, Rose A. McCandless, and Jim Sims. Eric Johnson moderated the session.
