#manuscript-studies

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History
fromNature
2 days ago

How DNA forensics is transforming studies of ancient manuscripts

Tim Stinson's curiosity about DNA in ancient manuscripts led to the emergence of a new field in manuscript studies.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 day ago

Ghostwriting Is Good, Actually

Ghostwriting, when done by humans, can provide valuable support to authors and help share unique perspectives.
Intellectual property law
fromNature
1 week ago

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Artificial intelligence is generating non-existent academic references, leading to hallucinated citations in scholarly publications.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 days ago

New Medieval Books: The Life of St. Othmar - Medievalists.net

The Life of St. Othmar recounts the life, imprisonment, and miracles of Othmar, the first abbot of the Abbey of St. Gall.
Philosophy
fromMail Online
1 week ago

Bible analysis uncovers clues showing scripture was written by God

A network of over 63,000 connections in the Bible suggests intricate links that some believe indicate divine authorship.
fromwww.dw.com
1 week ago
Digital life

The pleasure of books in the digital age

The debate over digital archiving versus physical books highlights the unique engagement and sensory experience that books provide in a digital age.
Higher education
fromFortune
1 week ago

What if I told you the 'AI slop' debate was over 100 years old? It used to be about 'ghostwriting' | Fortune

Vanderbilt University faced backlash for using ChatGPT to draft a message about community after a campus shooting.
fromSearch Engine Roundtable
2 weeks ago

Block of Citations Tested Beneath AI Overview Summary

The format has ginormous link cards at the bottom of the AI summary, which include a thumbnail of no apparent value, the site name, favicon, description, and title.
Typography
Arts
fromArtnet News
2 weeks ago

Who Created the Book of Kells? A Master Craftsman Takes on the Mystery

New evidence suggests the Book of Kells may originate from Portmahomack, challenging the long-held theory of its creation at Iona.
fromwww.thehistoryblog.com
2 days ago

30 previously unknown verses by Empedocles found on papyrus

The discovery of a few pages from an original edition of Hugo's work would then be a momentous event. This is precisely what specialists in Empedocles are experiencing today.
History
UX design
fromYannglt
2 weeks ago

AI and the Rosetta Stone

AI enhances the translation between design and engineering, increasing speed while challenging the preservation of meaning.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 week ago

New Medieval Books: Light on Darkness - Medievalists.net

Liturgy is central to Western cultural history, rich in artistic expression and emotional depth, influencing society for over a thousand years.
fromMedievalists.net
1 week ago

New Medieval Books: Basics of Bloomery Iron Smelting - Medievalists.net

This manuscript is intended to fill the gap between 'the doer and the thinker', and so should be expected to be an overview, especially as applies to the fine details of current archaeology.
History
#archimedes-palimpsest
Philosophy
fromBig Think
4 weeks ago

The 3 types of reading (and the 2 you'll pick)

Reading exists on a spectrum from scanning to deep engagement, with most digital readers employing surface-level scanning that misses textual depth and nuance.
OMG science
fromNature
1 month ago

Daily briefing: Galileo's notes discovered in the margins of an ancient book

Tectonic plates moved 3.3 billion years ago with higher oxygen levels; Galileo's annotations discovered in 400-year-old Ptolemy text; rotator cuff degeneration common in older adults regardless of symptoms.
fromFuturism
1 month ago

Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors

Grammarly is now offering 'expert review' of your work by living and dead academics. Without anyone's explicit permission it's creating little LLMs based on their scraped work and using their names and reputation.
Roam Research
Books
fromHarvard Gazette
1 month ago

That's a book? - Harvard Gazette

Italo Calvino used tarot card decks as a computational system to generate interconnected narratives, predating modern AI by decades and demonstrating how structured systems can create complex literary works.
History
fromMedievalists.net
3 weeks ago

Medieval Chess Reveals a More Diverse Middle Ages, Study Finds - Medievalists.net

Medieval chess functioned as a rare intellectual arena where people from different cultures and races engaged as equals, challenging assumptions about rigid medieval social hierarchies.
History
fromMedievalists.net
3 weeks ago

New Medieval Books: Widow City - Medievalists.net

Late medieval Italian widows mourned their spouses and navigated their lives through religious or secular paths, evolving from allegorical subjects to prominent authors who reshaped public discourse on widowed identity.
Higher education
fromInsideHook
1 month ago

Are the Humanities Poised for an Academic Comeback?

AI-driven interdisciplinary courses combining humanities and artificial intelligence offer a potential pathway to revitalize humanities programs facing institutional cuts and declining enrollment.
Books
fromianVisits
1 month ago

New exhibition explores how early printing developed into readable books

William Caxton revolutionized English book printing in the late 15th century, transforming books from elite luxury items into affordable, widely accessible products through rapid technological advancement.
fromMedievalists.net
3 weeks ago

New Medieval Books: Approaching Records of the Household and Wardrobe - Medievalists.net

The Household and Wardrobe Accounts are English records that document the daily needs of the king and his family. This book serves as a guide to these sources, showing how they can be used and what valuable insights they offer into medieval government.
History
Philosophy
fromApaonline
1 month ago

The Humanities Challenge: Expanding the Circle of Philosophy

Philosophy offers transformative insights and vision into human life, and public humanities must evolve beyond traditional academic formats to make philosophy accessible to broader audiences through innovative, engaging methods.
#medieval-history
Science
fromNature
1 month ago

Why every scientist needs a librarian

Academic libraries have transformed into dynamic research hubs offering expert librarianship, technologies, coding, maker spaces, and data support that accelerate scientific research.
Writing
fromNature
2 months ago

Three tips for scientific writing: a guide for graduate students

Break large writing projects into specific, actionable tasks, use prompts, structure, and accountability to reduce blank-page dread and sustain progress.
History
fromWorld History Encyclopedia
4 weeks ago

From Clay to Culture: The Power of Written Language

Cuneiform, invented in Sumer around 3500 BCE, was the first script, enabling civilizations to record human thought and preserve all aspects of human experience through written communication.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Silence of the Gods - Medievalists.net

Europe's last pagan peoples underwent Christian conversion from the 14th to 20th centuries while maintaining their indigenous religious traditions despite political pressure to adopt Christianity.
Science
fromNature
2 months ago

Daily briefing: Scientists delve into the smells of history

Researchers recreate historical smells and use imaging, AI, and biomedical advances to probe heritage, ancient human timelines, medical rescue devices, and rare-disease genetics.
fromJezebel
1 month ago

The Time I Learned Greek Scholars Are Canonically Hotter Than Roman Scholars

It started with a book launch in 2021. I'd been living in London as a social media journalist when I asked my then-publication's culture editor to send me to one of these exclusive-sounding events, as 1) I'd never been and 2) I just really wanted to be a person who "has a book launch to go to." Thankfully, there was one that exact day-and he put my name on the list for the release of Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome. Huzzah.
Books
Writing
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The 'Hopeless Labor' of Writing

AI chatbots and delivery robots threaten traditional writing by offering frictionless ease, undermining the pedagogical value of sustained effort and arduous composition.
#medieval-manuscripts
fromOpen Culture
2 months ago

Cats in Medieval Manuscripts & Paintings

Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er (1471-1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.
Arts
fromblog.apaonline.org
2 months ago

How to Handle the Death of the Essay

If you don't know it, Ecclesiastes is a collection of Old Testament verses in which the eponymous title character discourses on the apparent meaninglessness of pleasure, accomplishment, wealth, politics, and life itself in the face of the infinitude of the universe and the absolute perfection of God. It is the source of many of our most cliched phrases, such as there is a time for everything and there is nothing new under the sun.
Philosophy
fromOpen Culture
2 months ago

The Rohonc Codex: Hungary's Mysterious Manuscript That No One Can Read

Image by Klaus Schmeh, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons Mag­yar, which is spo­ken and writ­ten in Hun­gary, ranks among the hard­est Euro­pean lan­guages to learn. (The U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute puts it in the sec­ond-to-high­est lev­el, accom­pa­nied by the dread­ed aster­isk label­ing it as "usu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult than oth­er lan­guages in the same cat­e­go­ry.") But once you mas­ter its vow­el har­mo­ny sys­tem, its def­i­nite and indef­i­nite con­ju­ga­tion, and its eigh­teen gram­mat­i­cal cas­es, among oth­er noto­ri­ous fea­tures, you can final­ly enjoy the work of writ­ers like Nobel Lau­re­ates Imre Kertész and Lás­zló Krasz­na­horkai in the orig­i­nal. Alas, no degree of mas­tery will be much help if you want to under­stand a much old­er - and, in its way, much more noto­ri­ous - Hun­gar­i­an text, the Rohonc Codex.
Books
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Project Explores the Craft of Writing in the Medieval Nordic World - Medievalists.net

CHARM is built around a large-scale survey of material connected to three major writing centres-Turku, Naantali, and Viipuri-in the 15th century. By comparing charters and book fragments together, the researchers aim to map how writing practices were adopted, modified, and localised, and what that meant for society and administration in a region that was then part of the Swedish realm.
History
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

C'mon, Professors, Assign the Hard Reading

Assigning whole novels in literature classes restores deep reading, rebuilds attention, and enables students to engage meaningfully despite technological distractions.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Joshua O'Driscoll Named Head of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan - Medievalists.net

Dr. Joshua O'Driscoll appointed as Melvin R. Seiden Curator and Department Head of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, overseeing one of the world's most significant illuminated manuscript collections.
Books
fromBig Think
2 months ago

5 literary conspiracy theories - debunked

Literary conspiracy theories question authorship, use pseudonyms, and misattribute works, sometimes entertaining but often distorting historical understanding.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

The Survival of Roman Education in Early Medieval Britain - Medievalists.net

Roman cultural practices persisted in Britain for generations after AD 410, with aristocrats maintaining traditional education and Christian learning similar to their Gallic counterparts.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Is listening to an audiobook as good as reading?

Audiobooks and comics are legitimate, effective forms of reading that expand access, boost literacy, and contribute significantly to the publishing industry.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Encyclopedia Highlights Medieval Women's Writing Around the World - Medievalists.net

A new encyclopedia centers women's medieval writing globally across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia from 500-1500 CE, challenging traditional literary history that dismissed or erased women's voices.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

A Biography Without 'The Boring Bits'

Sophia Stewart poses a choice that many biographers struggle with: "what to do with the boring bits."
Books
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript - Medievalists.net

This is a book about a book: the small, cropped, somewhat ragged but brightly illustrated volume now known formally, and rather forbiddingly, as British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. The fame and beauty of its four Middle English poems have given it sobriquets beyond the shelfmark, however, which are more familiar and intimate: it is also the Gawain-Manuscript or, as I will call it, the Pearl-Manuscript.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Rules of a Medieval Library - Medievalists.net

When universities began to emerge in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they soon became important centres of knowledge. Their libraries could hold hundreds of books, and many of the most valuable volumes were kept under close control - sometimes even chained to desks. We have few details about how medieval university libraries operated, but a revealing set of rubric headings survives from the University of Angers in western France.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Reading in Byzantium: Literacy, Books, and a World of Texts - Medievalists.net

Byzantine reading was communal and performative, woven into religious, educational, and administrative life while preserving classical learning within a Christian intellectual framework.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Impossible Recovery - Medievalists.net

Julian of Norwich's illness and visions show how sickness and revelation intertwine, shaping personal recovery and the subsequent expression and theorization of experience.
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

10 Medieval Studies' Articles Published Last Month - Medievalists.net

In this paper we investigate whether infant and childhood feeding practices influenced the imbalanced adult sex ratio reported in medieval Europe from historical and osteological evidence. First, we examine hypotheses for the observed imbalanced sex ratios in Europe and the evidence presented to support these hypotheses. We then use stable isotope analysis (δ13C and δ15N) of incremental dentine in 64 first molars from adults at three medieval sites (Aulla, Badia Pozzeveri, and Montescudaio) in north-western Tuscany (11th-15th c. CE).
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Interconnected Traditions - Medievalists.net

This open-access book brings together more than thirty essays on languages and the ways they develop, interact, and influence one another. Its main focus is the Middle East, where Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic long existed side by side and often overlapped in everyday use, scholarship, and culture. In line with Geoffrey (Khan)'s commitment to the maximally accessible dissemination of research, this Festschrift has been published in both open-access digital editions and affordable printed formats.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Previously Unknown Medieval Chronicle Discovered - Medievalists.net

A previously unknown 8th-century Maronite chronicle (dated 712–13 CE) offers early Christian perspective on Arab-Islamic expansion and Late Antique religious-political change.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

10 Medieval Studies' Articles Published Last Month - Medievalists.net

Local populations in Anatolia used spolia to assert cultural continuity with the ancient and Byzantine past, challenging exclusive Western claims to that heritage.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: The Forsaken 14th Century - Medievalists.net

In this volume, the authors aim to provide a truly global overview of the 14 century, with each region given approximately the same space. It is obviously impossible to cover every event in every country of the world in a single volume, just as you would not be able to visit every city in every country if you traveled around the world for a year.
History
#old-high-german
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: The Horse in History - Medievalists.net

Eleven studies examine horse equipment, training, folklore, and material culture across time and Europe, emphasizing archaeological evidence and diverse methodological approaches.
History
fromwww.thehistoryblog.com
2 months ago

Roman wooden writing tablets from Belgium deciphered

Deciphered writing on Roman wooden wax tablets from Tongeren reveals new personal names and rare high-ranking officials, enriching knowledge of the city’s Roman-period inhabitants.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Crusade Against the Turks as a Means of Reforming the Church - Medievalists.net

This project will focus on the Camaldolese hermits' proposal for achieving what they considered to be the most crucial task in the repair of the church, eliminating Islam and all Muslims. Our study will begin with an examination of the recipient of the Libellus, Giovanni de' Medici, who would become Pope Leo X. Next will be an exploration into the backgrounds of Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini,
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Ipomedon - Medievalists.net

A twelfth-century Anglo-French romance about Ipomedon, an incognito prince tested by adventures, tournaments, and ironic narration exploring chivalry, humour, and social values.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Medieval Case for Islam's Superiority - Medievalists.net

An eighth-century Abbasid letter to the Byzantine emperor defends Islam, critiques Christian misunderstandings, and reflects Abbasid-Byzantine diplomacy and Baghdad's intellectual life.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

The Survival of Esoteric Academic Fields, with Jana Matuszak and Petra Goedegebuure - Medievalists.net

A conversation with Jana Matuszak, a Sumerologist, and Petra Goedegebuure, a Hittitologist, about the prospects for the survival of smaller academic disciplines that require specialized language skills. What critical mass of experts is needed? How can these fields be combined with others?
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: The Rose, the Bastard and the Saint King - Medievalists.net

The 1471 Lancastrian siege of London aimed to free captive Henry VI; a Kent rebellion prompted Edward IV to order Henry's execution to secure authority.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Celtic Magic - Medievalists.net

Ancient and medieval Celtic-speaking peoples maintained distinctive magical beliefs and practices whose evidence appears in inscriptions, classical accounts, medieval manuscripts, charms, and medical recipes.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Blessed Mary and the Monks of England - Medievalists.net

English Benedictine and Cistercian monks (1000–1215) shaped medieval Mariology by deepening Marian devotion, theological reflection, and using Mary as a model for Christian life.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Open-Access Book Maps a Medieval Kingdom of the Isles - Medievalists.net

Finlaggan served as the ceremonial, administrative, and judicial centre of the medieval Lordship of the Isles and contained a 12th–13th-century royal castle.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Demon Spirit - Medievalists.net

Abū Nuwās's poetry is sheer joy: it never fails to delight, surprise, and excite. His diwan, his collected poems, encompasses the principal early Abbasid poetic genres: panegyrics ( madīḥ), renunciant poems ( zuhdiyyāt), lampoons ( hijāʾ), hunting poems ( ṭardiyyāt), wine poems ( khamriyyāt), love poems ( ghazaliyyāt) to males ( mudhakkarāt) and females ( muʾannathāt), and transgressive verse ( mujūn).
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Medieval manuscript lost in World War II returns to Poland - Medievalists.net

A 12th-century Cistercian manuscript looted during World War II has been returned from Yale University to the Republic of Poland.
History
fromOpen Culture
1 month ago

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discover the Secrets of the Bible's Oldest and Strangest Texts

Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest known biblical manuscripts, diverse texts (biblical, apocryphal, sectarian, unknown) that complicated but did not completely upend understanding of Christianity.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Italian Renaissance - Medievalists.net

Italian women between 1450 and 1650 played influential roles across politics, literature, art, music, science, and religion, leaving lasting cultural and intellectual legacies.
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Online Course: Medieval Gender and Sexuality - Medievalists.net

Eleanor Janega is one of the most well-known historians of the Middle Ages, widely recognised as the host and co-creator of several history series on HistoryHit TV and the podcast Going Medieval. She is also a prolific writer and public educator, bringing medieval history to a broad audience through her engaging books, articles, and media appearances. With a keen focus on medieval society, gender, and power structures, Janega challenges popular misconceptions and makes the past accessible with wit and scholarly depth.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Military Education in Early Medieval Europe: Learning from Books - Medievalists.net

Early medieval military leaders learned warfare from books—Roman manuals, handbooks, and case studies—informing campaigns, sieges, and logistical planning.
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