2009 Muller Colloquium

Towards a Theory of Creative Collaboration

17-18 April 2009

Sponsored by the Department of French with the generous support of the René Müller Endowment; the University of Virginia Library; The Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture / Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library; The Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences; The Program in Medieval Studies; the University of Virginia Art Museum; the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts; and the Departments of English, Art and History.


Program            Participants            Logistics            Printable Program

 

The purpose of the 2009 Müller Colloquium is to generate discussion about artistic collaboration through examples drawn from medieval and sixteenth-century material/literary/musical culture. From the wealth of scholarship on the collaborative enterprise that shaped medieval literary production to recent research on Louise Labé that argues for seeing the poet as a fictional multi-authored construct, the issue of collaborative authorship pervades recent studies of the pre-modern period. As a catch-all term, collaboration covers the relationship between a poet and bookmaker; composer, scribe, and performers; and fellow writers who produce together new works. If we consider collaboration beyond the confines of individuals working together to take into account “collaborative texts,” that is, texts resulting from multiple participants, how might we enhance our definition of collaboration? For instance, is the dual-authored Roman de la rose an example of a collaborative enterprise? What of print editions that incorporate letters and poems of praise for the author by other writers ? Yet another line of inquiry worth pursuing entails questions regarding unwanted collaboration, as when a patron imperiously dictates the contents of a work or a scribe revises the original. We hope that by thinking of collaboration in its most expansive terms, we can begin over the two-day conference to formulate “collaboratively” a working definition that would address questions such as what constitutes collaboration and who are its players? What are the rules of creative cooperation? Is it bound by time constraints? Can collaboration be antagonistic as well as cooperative? What criteria do we use to designate successful versus failed collaboration?

How would a theory of collaboration influence present definitions of authorship and elucidate discussions on literary circulation and production?

 

 

Program

All lectures will take place in the Auditorium of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture / Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia

April 17

 

8:45-9 Opening remarks

 

9-10:45 Panel: Authority and Its Relinquishment

                  Presider: Lisa Reilly, University of Virginia

 

Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia: Liturgy, Collaboration, and the Culture of Anonymity


Amy Ogden, University of Virginia: The Collaborative Production of Saints’ Lives

 

Sarah Kay, Princeton University: Hierarchy and Collaboration: Re-creating Value in the European Lyric

 

10:45-11 Coffee

 

11-12:30 Adrian Armstrong, University of Manchester

Sympoiesis, Rewriting, Materiality: Pre-Modern Cultural Collaboration in Theory and Practice

 

2:30 - 4:30 Panel: Medium and Method

                         Presider: Corinne Noirot-Maguire, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

 

Lori J. Walters, Florida State University: Collaboration, Authorship, and the Book

 

Mary McKinley: Collaboration and Corruption in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron


Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University: From Parchment to Cyberspace

 

4:30  Reception with music by Zephyrus 

Lower Foyer of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library

 

Zephyrus is a non-profit vocal ensemble based in Charlottesville and dedicated to theperformance of music from the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. Five members of the group will perform a brief program of French chansons from an early published collection of 1535/6, using the tenor partbook recently discovered in the Gordon Collection of the University of Virginia’s Special Collections. Lost to the scholarly community for many years, this partbook is the only known copy, so the performance will include the modern premiere of several pieces.

 

 

April 18

 

10-11:30 Alastair Minnis, Yale University

          Collaborative commentary: Gloss and Image in Medieval Vernacular Exegesis

1:30-3:30 Panel: Intimate Models of Authorship

                  Presider: Elizabeth Fowler, University of Virginia

 

 

Deborah McGrady, University of Virginia: Nostalgia and Collaborative Patronage: The Case of Jean Froissart

 

A. C. Spearing, University of Virginia: Competitive Collaboration, Creative Competition: 'Master Chaucer' and His Pupils

 

Leah Chang, George Washington University: “Une autre luy-mesme”:  Assessing the Gender of Collaboration in Sixteenth-Century French Texts

 

3:30-3:45 Coffee

 

3:45 - 5:00 Concluding roundtable: Amy Ogden, Eric Ramirez-Weaver, Alistair Minnis, Adrian Armstrong, Helen Solterer (Duke University)

 

5:30 Closing Reception at the University of Virginia Art Museum

 

Top

 

Participants

Adrian Armstrong specializes in late medieval French poetry, particularly the rhétoriqueurs; the materiality of poetry in manuscript and print; and textual editing.

Leah Chang's research interests include book history, female authorship, and politics and sexuality in early modern French culture.


Bruce Holsinger works on literary and musical relations in the Middle Ages. His current project explores the role of liturgy in the shaping of early English writing and literary form.

Sarah Kay is co-authoring with Adrian Armstrong Knowing Poetry in France from the Rose to the Rhétoriquers and is also writing a study of quotations from the troubadours.


Deborah McGrady's research interests include reading, authorship, and book history. She is currently writing on literary circulation during the Hundred Years War.


Mary McKinley's interests include Montaigne and Marguerite de Navarre.  She is editing a new translation of the Heptaméron for the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.

Alastair Minnis works on medieval scholasticism and its vernacular intersections. His current major project is a book entitled 'Medieval Edens: Sex, Power and Death in Paradise'.

Stephen Nichols is Co-PI of the Johns Hopkins Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts. He is currently completing a book entitled Seeing Voices: on Reading Troubadour Poetry.


Amy Ogden works on hagiography, poetic strategies and manuscripts. She is collaborating on a translation of Wace’s saints’ Lives and a digital French hagiography project.

After a recent book about the linguistic encoding of subjectivity, Tony Spearing is working on the late-medieval development of writings in and of the first person.

Lori Walters is working on a project bearing the provisional title, Books for Once and Future Queens: Christine de Pizan, Jean Gerson, and the Formation of National Identities.

 

 

Top

 

 

Logistics

 

All lectures and receptions are free and open to the public.

Location

The Harrison Institute is located next to Alderman Library on UVA’s central campus.  For directions to and maps of UVA, click here.

 

Parking

Parking is available in the Central Grounds Parking Lot, which is on Emmet Street, just behind the Harrison Institute.

 

 

 

Top