Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History

Beyond Text: Objects and Manuscripts in Sacred Storerooms across Medieval Africa

Dr. Ariel Fein

1210 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave S, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Thursday 6 November 2025 | 7 - 8:30 PM

Voynich Manuscript f. 71r Photo credit: Beinecke

The Centre for Medieval Studies welcomes Lisa Fagin Davis (Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America) to present "The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript", a talk on her recent work using forensic evidence to hypothesize the original sequence of bifolia in the codex. Register for either in-person or virtual attendance.

For more information and to register, visit https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events/lisa-fagin-davis-materiality-voynich-manuscript

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, the Walters Art Museum, 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). Dr. Davis was a member of the EAMMS working group that established initial standards for electronic cataloguing of pre-1600 manuscript material and is currently serving on the Advisory Boards of Digital Scriptorium and of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts. With Melissa Conway, Davis is co-author of the Directory of Pre-1600 Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, published online by the Bibliographical Society of America and as Volume 109:3 of the Papers of the BSA. She regularly teaches an introduction to manuscript studies at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and is the author of "The Manuscript Road Trip," a blog devoted to promoting collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in North America. In 2016, she co-curated the major exhibition "Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections" at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Dr. Davis is currently serving as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America.