Libraries in Exile: 'Old Books, New Homes'
Organised by Michail Leivadiotis and Nicholas Longinotti, Research Area 1: "Competing Communities".
The workshop aims to investigate how geographical displacement of libraries or collections of books shape collective identities and function as community-building mechanism. We see the (forced) mobility of libraries in a context of migration, diaspora and exile as a highly performative gesture of identity negotiation, as a claim of continuity through narratives and allusive materialities.
Under the pressure of politics and violence, collections of books, like humans, cross borders, settle anew and speak new languages. In these circumstances, communities resort to a highly symbolic reduction of texts and books into a cohesive link. Books in search of refuge become a narratological key to tell stories about displaced identities. Libraries reflect a deeper historical construction, a craving after a lost past and a longing for an imagined future of linguistic and cultural communities: the meandering of Petrarca's library; Byzantine libraries seeking refuge in the West; the dispersion of Bibliotheca Corviniana; the confiscation of Bibliotheca Palatina; Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, the Warburg Library and Franz Rosenzweig's private library; the Timbuktu Manuscripts and the Gest Collection; wars, political oppression, linguistic or ethnic minorities crossing borders and carrying books.
Programme
Thursday, 7 December 2023
13:30-14:00 | Arrival and Coffee
14:00-14:15 | Michail Leivadiotis and Nicolas Longinotti (Freie Universität Berlin /EXC 2020): Welcome and Introductory Remarks
14:15-14:50 | Sophie Volpp (University of California, Berkeley): Rare Books in Exile. The 102 Crates of the National Peiping Library
14:50-15:25 | Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin /EXC 2020): Virtual Libraries. On the Rhizomatic Qualities of Dispersed Books
15:25-15:45 | Coffee Break
15:45-16:20 | Sophus Helle (Princeton University): The Many Exiles of Babylonian Literature
16:20-16:55 | Edmund de Waal: "Nothing Is Resolved, Nothing Is Settled." The Afterlife of the Library of Exile
19:00 | Dinner
Friday, 8 December 2023
09:30-10:00 | Arrival and Coffee
10:00-10:35 | Sergius Kodera (Universität Wien/EXC 2020): Umberto Eco’s Biblioteca di Alessandria
10:35-11:10 | Nuria de Castilla (EPHE, PSL, Paris): A Sultan’s Library on the Move
11:10-11:30 | Coffee Break
11:30-12:05 | Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin /EXC 2020): Ruins in Print. Abd Al-Rahman Munif’s Library as Archive, Artwork and Auratic Site of the Modern Middle East
12:05-12:40 | Julia Schneidawind (LMU München): Tunis as a Bibliomigratory Destination. The Collections of Franz Rosenzweig and Henri Bergson at the National Library of Tunisia
12:40-14:30 | Lunch Break
14:30-15:05 | Claire Angotti (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne): Exilés à l’intérieur? Le devenir des manuscrits dans les collections universitaires parisiennes (16e–18e siècles)
15:05-15:40 | Michail Leivadiotis (Freie Universität Berlin /EXC 2020): A Byzantine Diaspora of Books: Mapping the Field
15:40-16:10 | Coffee Break
16:10-16:45 | Bernard Huss (Freie Universität Berlin /EXC 2020): Material and Mental Libraries Around Francesco Petrarch
16:45-17:20 | Nicolas Longinotti (Freie Universität Berlin): Returning From the Exile. Private and Public Libraries – Humanist Communities
17:20-18:00 | Final Remarks and Discussion
18:00 | Refreshment
Time & Location
Dec 07, 2023 - Dec 08, 2023
Freie Universität Berlin
EXC 2020 "Temporal Communities"
Room 00.05
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin