Albert Derolez
M-20: Introduction to Western Codicology
17–21 June 2013

 

Detailed Course Evaluation

 

1)    How useful were the pre-course readings? Did you do any additional preparations in advance of the course?

 

1: A good familiarity with the readings provided all the terminology and background information needed. I also had to learn Latin paleography. 2: They were very, very useful. I only wish I’d thought to read something by the professor himself in advance! 3: The readings were an excellent introduction to the subject—I reviewed my Bischoff (transl. Ganz) as additional preparation. 4: I did not appreciate the Shailor book very much. It is a great catalogue, for sure, but I don’t think it works as a teaching book. The Clemens & Graham book is excellent. 5: The pre-course readings provided a good overview. Some additional pre-course readings on paleography would have been useful, since some of that knowledge was presumed. 6: These were helpful background readings. 7: Quite useful, especially if one didn’t have any prior knowledge, which I had. 8: The pre-course readings were very helpful for a basic introduction to codicology, some of which was reinforced in the course. I also reviewed my Latin in advance of this course (though perhaps not enough!). 9: The readings were a helpful introduction.

 

2)    Were the course workbook and other materials distributed in class appropriate and useful (or will they be so in the future, after you return home)?

 

1: Great bibliography and diagrams to show students. 2: I have taken several RBS courses. This one had the best workbook yet, I believe. 3: I will use this workbook for years to come—it is splendid. 4: AD’s own workbook is fantastic and works very well, the progression of the course material worked well. 5: Yes. 6: The workbook is a fantastic resource that I expect to use often in my (volunteer) work in SC. 7: Very useful, but they need additional notes and could do with some restructuring. 8: The workbook was extremely helpful, and I will certainly return to it after I have. There aren’t many codicology textbooks out there, so this was great! 9: Yes! AD did an excellent job constructing the workbook, and I am certain that it will prove useful in the future. 

 

3)    Have you taken one or more RBS courses before? If so, how did this course compare with your previous coursework?

 

2: All RBS courses are great; this one outshone almost all of them. I was blown away. 3–4: No. 5: This is my first RBS course. 6: This is my fourth course. Like the others, it afforded the opportunity to learn from a giant in the field. The course was rich in content, well organized, and well taught. 7–9: No.

 

4)    What aspects of the course content were of the greatest interest or relevance for your purposes?

 

1: The physical making of the book. Knowing what things to look for when you pick up a MS. 2:  The information about how to describe and catalog a manuscript will be very useful. I was most interested, perhaps, in the paleographical tidbits. 3: I was extremely glad to see on the final day a lot of c12 material, which is my chief interest. The classes on the codicological structure and descriptors will serve me very well in my future research. 4: The exercises, both those we did with catalogues and other reference books, and not least the examination we did of the MSS. 5: I was most interested in the post-Gothic MSS that we examined and discussed, but I found all of the hands-on activities extremely useful and engaging. 6: Learning about quire structures, ruling, support, and decoration was incredibly helpful. It provided a technical basis for experiential observations I sometimes made. 7: The entire course! 8: I loved the lectures and exercises on decorated initials, which will help me a lot as I work with illuminated MSS in my doctoral thesis. 9: I was most interested in MS history, bindings, Scripts, and illuminated initials.

 

5)    Did the instructor(s) successfully help you to acquire the information, knowledge, and skills that the course was intended to convey? Was the intellectual level of the course appropriate?

 

1: Yes. Very. 2: Yes! My goodness! I had no idea I could learn so much in one week! 3: This course taught me more than most of my full-semester graduate courses. Wonderfully intensive! 4: Absolutely. 5: Yes: AD was unfailingly helpful, and it was great to watch a scholar of his acumen at work. 6: Yes. Yes. 7: Yes, very much so! The use of hands-on exercises is very good. 8: Yes, AD took a very hands-on approach to the material, so we always worked with the information he provided. I felt that we sometimes moved quite slowly and could have worked with more in less time. 9: Yes. The course was challenging and rigorous; I now feel confident walking into an archive and examining the codicological elements of a codex.

 

6)    What did you like best about the course?

 

1: AD was extremely patient and kind. He was the best thing about the course. 2: AD! His genius—which I was expecting—was matched by his warmth and his pedagogical skill, which I did not anticipate. He is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. I hope he teaches for many years to come. 3: The professor, the access to handling MSS, the activities and the active learning. 4: Everything here contributes to a great experience: the ambience of UVA, the staff, the organization, AD. 5: The chance for supervised (e.g., able to ask questions) interaction with codicological specimens. 6: Having AD show us a variety of MSS, making observations about them, and then letting us look at them individually. 7: The hands-on exercises combined with AD’s expert knowledge make for a very good learning environment. 8: The hands-on approach — we didn’t just learn about MSS, we also touched and inspected them. Also, AD’s clear passion for the material. And all the friends I made! 9: The LoC; AD’s method of ‘demonstration, then individual examination.’

 

7)    How could the course have been improved?

 

2: It’s so hard to think of a way! I do wish we had spent some time with RBS’s set of ruled and pricked blank quires. Apart from that—perfect. 3: If we had received the workbook by mail in advance, I would have been able to navigate it more easily and surely. 5: If PowerPoint or electronic images were used instead of slides, these could be distributed to students. Having the examples we used available after RBS would help me apply what I have learned. 6: A course syllabus at the beginning would have helped me organize, mentally, the information coming at me. 7: As far as I know there were only two international course participants. You might want to market more abroad and also think about this when deciding on scholarships. 8: I felt that we could have spent more time on paleography—while I know that this is a codicology course, and there is a separate one for paleography, there would have been time for a little more review of script (which AD had to summarize for us anyway). Everything we did depended on it. 9: The course was perfect. Though I would have loved to work on some Middle of Old English MSS, the focus on Latin was extremely helpful for my research.

 

8)    Did you learn what the course description/advertisement indicated you would learn? Additional comments optional. Y/N

 

1–2: Yes. 3: Yes. I will review my notes repeatedly in hopes that it will all sink in! 4: Yes. 5: Yes. A clearer articulation of expectation for Latin knowledge and paleographic experience would have been useful. 6–8: Yes. 9: Yes. Absolutely.

 

9)    Did you learn what you wanted in the course? Additional comments optional. Y/N

 

1: Yes. 2: Yes. And much more! 3: Yes. I wouldn’t object to more c12 material, as it was an essentially transitional age. 4–5: Yes. 6: Yes. I would have liked to learn more about geographic marker of a codicological type. 7: Yes. 8: Yes. Perhaps future courses could speak more about how the calendars function (in roman numerals, &c.) in books of hours? 9: Yes, but I would have liked some additional information about pre-c13 MSS and MSS from England/in Middle and Old English!

 

10)  How do you intend to use or apply the knowledge or skills learned in this course?

 

1: To build a unit for a high school course on codicology. 2: I will use it primarily to catalog and describe the MSS at my home institution. 3: My publication of descriptions of a text for which I have discovered 66 MSS—more than previously known—will be better for my having had this class! Perhaps also bits can be taught better to my students. 4: 1) For my own research (i.e., to describe and analyze better the MSS used for my critical edition) 2) for teaching. 5: In my own research and in the undergraduate medieval literature classroom. 6: As I continue my project to catalog my university’s MS collection. 7: Directly to my thesis work and in the long run, hopefully by teaching similar things myself. 8: I will use them in my dissertation as I frequently work with MSS—it is imperative to know how a MS was compiled before I make any definitive textual conclusions. 9: The course will be especially useful in thinking about the dissertation and ways in which to apply bibliography, codicology, and paleography to my research. I also plan to re-examine several MSS that I believe require further codicological examination and check out some new ones in the course of my future work.

 

11)  If your course left its classroom, was the time devoted to this purpose well spent?

 

2: Yes. Seeing so many MSS at the LoC could have been dizzying, but instead it was orienting. Again, AD is astounding. 3: LoC trip—wonderful. 4: The trip was well worth doing! I would not have liked to be without it. However, the bus was 30 minutes late and the driver had too poor knowledge of DC to find his way (despite the GPS). This made the journey unnecessarily long. The welcome we had at LoC was fantastic and we were allowed to examine the MSS closely. 5: The LoC visit was excellent, and enriched the course as a whole. 6: Yes, once we got there. 7: Yes, the LoC trip was very good, but the logistics not as good. 8: Once we arrived at the LoC, our time there was wonderful. But we got caught in traffic both on the way there and on the way back. Some reorganization of this schedule would be welcome, if possible! 9: Yes. The LoC visit was well worth the trip, and our day there was extremely productive and interesting.

 

12)  If you attended the evening events (e.g., RBS Lecture, Video Night, RBS Forum, Booksellers’ Night) were they worth attending?

 

2: The lectures were fantastic this week! Sharon Mintz (SM) and Jerome McGann (JM) were both wonderful. 3: Yes, SM’s lecture was excellent. 4: I attended the lectures and the Video Night. All were fine events. 5: I enjoyed both lectures very much. 6: I attended one lecture (Esther Scrolls) and found it interesting. Ditto the movie on making an MS. 7: I attended the lectures and they were well worth attending. 8: The lectures were good! 9: The lectures, though not in my area of interest, were well-done and engaging.

 

13)  We are always concerned about the physical well-being both of the RBS teaching collections and of materials owned by UVA’s Special Collections. If relevant, what suggestions do you have for the improved classroom handling of such materials used in your course this week?

 

1: More, more, more! 2: More. 3: None—we are so grateful! 5: N/A. 9: The supervision and handling suggestions were helpful.

 

14)  Did you (or your institution) get your money’s worth? Would you recommend this course to others?

 

1: Yes. 2: Yes, and yes! 3: Yes, I would have paid more. 4: YES, and YES. 5: Yes, and yes. 6: Yes. Yes. 7: Yes. 8: I would recommend the course to others because AD is a wonderful, kind, funny, generous, and brilliant man, and it was a true privilege to work under him! 9: Absolutely; every scholar should learn from AD. He is absolutely wonderful, and quite a brilliant and generous teacher.

 

15)  Any final or summary thoughts, or advice for other persons considering taking this course in a future year? (If you have further praise/concerns, please speak with Amanda Nelsen or Michael Suarez.)

 

2: Do it! 3: It would be helpful if Safe Ride could serve RBS students when returning from outings late at night. 5: Thanks! 6: It is unfortunate that this class and the Shailor Advanced MS class were the same week. I would like to have been in two places at once! 8: You should probably know your Latin paleography. 9: Although it might have been mentioned in the description, the course focused primarily on Latin and continental MSS.  I think only two of the approximately 60 MSS we examined were English (and those were in Latin as well).

 

Aggregate Statistics

 

Number of respondents: 9

 

Leave

Institution gave me leave: 3 (33%)

N/A: self-employed, retired, or had summers off: 6 (67%)

 

Tuition

Institution paid tuition: 5 (56%)

I paid tuition myself: 2 (22%)

N/A: self-employed, retired, or scholarship: 2 (22%)

 

Housing

Institution paid housing: 4 (45%)

I paid for my own housing: 3 (34%)

N/A: stayed with friends or lived at home: 2 (21%)

 

Travel

Institution paid travel: 4 (45%)

I paid my own travel: 3 (34%)

N/A: lived nearby: 2 (21%)

 

Which one category most closely defines what you do for a living, or why you are at RBS? (Please check only one category)

 

Ph.D. (humanities): 3 (35%)
High school teacher: 1 (11%)
College, assistant professor: 1 (11%)
College, full or associate professor: 1 (11%)
University, assistant professor: 1 (11%)
Work in a museum or cultural institution: 1 (11%)

 

How did you hear about this course?

RBS website: 2 (22%)
Work colleague: 1 (11%)
Word of mouth: 2 (22%)
RBS faculty or staff recommendation: 1 (11%)
Previously attended Summer Lecture Series: 1 (11%)
Fellow scholar: 1 (11%)
Friend in graduate studies at UVA: 1 (11%)