Speaker: Lisa Fagin Davis. Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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Have you ever wondered how so many European medieval objects and manuscripts found their way into American collections? Who were the people collecting these objects and what motivated them? Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, is a specialist on European manuscripts and will share with us the fascinating history of how American collectors, some of whom were wealthy eccentrics or used dubious means, amassed libraries of medieval texts that continue to attract scholars around the globe to their study. She will also touch on the ethical implications of collecting objects from another country.

Lisa Fagin Davis received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 1993. She has catalogued medieval manuscript collections at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Boston Public Library, and several private collections. Her publications include: the Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Vol. IV (with R. G. Babcock and P. Rusche, Tempe, 2004); The Gottschalk Antiphonary (Cambridge University Press, 2000); numerous articles in the fields of manuscript studies and codicology; and the monograph, La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in fifteenth-century France (a translation, critical edition and detailed study of a fifteenth-century French world chronicle, published by Brepols Publishers in 2015).