An Introduction to Islamic Manuscript Culture

This free workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to Islamic manuscripts and manuscript culture, using the extensive holdings of the Special Collections at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. It is intended for advanced students and scholars with backgrounds in Islamic studies and/or manuscript studies. Sessions will be devoted to such topics as parchment and paper, bindings and structures, quires and codices, scripts and hands (paleography), and historical and paratextual elements. Participants will learn to produce accurate basic descriptions of Islamic manuscripts. Limited funding may be available to offer some participants coming from outside the Los Angeles metropolitan area $150–200 travel grants. Applicants will be notified if they have been selected for a travel grant approximately one month in advance of the workshop.

Evyn Kropf is Librarian for Middle East Studies and Religious Studies and Curator of the Islamic Manuscripts Collection at the University of Michigan. She obtained her
bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2003) and her master’s degree in Information Science with a
specialization in Library and Information Services from Michigan (2009). She has studied Arabic language, historiography, and topics further related to Islamic manuscript culture. As cataloguer for the "Collaboration in Cataloging: Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan’s project (2009-2012), she led the descriptive effort which realized the detailed cataloguing of 904 codex manuscripts from the Library’s Islamic Manuscripts Collection. Her research interests include Islamic codicology and manuscript culture, reading and collecting practices, and the use of pictograms and other visual content in Sufistic cultures of knowledge transmission, as well as manuscript cataloguing and digital mediation of cultural heritage.

Please apply using the following link: https://ucla.in/2UMJTXw

Note that space is limited and that completing the form does not guarantee acceptance to the workshop.

For more information contact: cnes@international.ucla.edu