{"id":161,"date":"2023-08-04T13:16:57","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T20:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/decameronline\/?page_id=161"},"modified":"2023-11-27T16:51:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T00:51:01","slug":"home-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/decameronline\/home-page\/","title":{"rendered":"A Collaborative Writing Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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THIS 2020-2022 POP-UP WRITING PROJECT HAS BEEN ARCHIVED HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n 2021-22: Our working group has a new name…\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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…Books, Texts, and Images! Naming matters, and we now are calling our working group, “Books, Texts, and Images.” We encourage anyone interested in written and wordless communication \u2014past\/present, scholarly\/public, material\/virtual\u2014as well as transmissions of knowledge via tangible\/immaterial means, and communities of production\/interpretation to join us in our 2021-22 events.<\/p>\n

We are jumpstarting this year’s events with an online discussion of the new film, \u201cWhat We Left Behind,\u201d\u00a0this Friday, September 3, 2021 at 5pm<\/strong>.\u00a0 The film, a documentary about fragments of state-funded Afghan filmmaking between 1978 and 1991, is available for\u00a0streaming here<\/a>\u00a0only through Thursday, Sept 2<\/strong>.\u00a0 The first ten viewers who provide receipts for the viewing be reimbursed. View the film on your own; registration for our discussion\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0 Please help us spread the word, and hope to see you virtually then!<\/p>\n

We have a full slate of “Working Progress” Talks listed on the Schedule<\/a> at left, and will be posting further events, visits, and activities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 “Books, Texts, and Images” Working Group, USC Levan Institute for the Humanities<\/p>\n

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\n The Quarantine Question\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Read The Quarantine Question<\/strong>, <\/em>a\u00a0\u00a0collaborative writing project<\/a> by twenty-plus art historians, artists, historians, curators, musicologists, and cultural critics, that offers a mosaic of perspectives on what one contributor refers to as\u00a0l’\u00e9poque covidienne.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n\n \n <\/svg>\n Spring 2022: THE LONG 11th DAY\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n \n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n Fall 2021: THE TENTH DAY … \n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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DECIMA GIORNATA. \u00a0Boccaccio, Giovanni, Girolamo Squarciafico, Giovanni De’ Gregori, Gregorio De’ Gregori, and Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection.\u00a0Decamerone, o ver Cento novelle del Boccaccio<\/cite>. Venice, Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, 20 June, 1492. f. 120 recto. \u00a0Pdf. https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/item\/47043548\/.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Boccaccio\u2019s Decameron set the stage for our virtual pop-up project \u201cDECAMERONline,\u201d begun in March 2020 just after the unexpected closing of campus life — and indeed in-person, bare-faced social life in general.\u00a0 In the time since we moved to almost exclusively online interactions, members of our working group have shared\u00a0our research<\/a>\u00a0and writing, our thoughts and\u00a0our stories<\/a>\u00a0regularly, just as the Decameron\u2019s protagonists did during their sojourn away from plague-ridden Florence.\u00a0 After ten days and 100 stories, Boccaccio\u2019s ten young Florentines returned to their city, refreshed and recharged by their communal time away.\u00a0 Now we are returning to campus<\/a>, to full classrooms and open libraries and in-person exhibitions.\u00a0 Now we seek to bring the best of what we have been doing for the past year and a half together with the excitement of meeting again.\u00a0 Here are some of our reflections on our tenth day, our return to life together:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is hard to believe that one of the very first meetings of our group occurred in February 2020: a Friday afternoon \u201cWriting Time\u201d in a classroom in Taper Hall. Part of the impetus for founding our group was to discuss ways of building and sustaining community in a world of rapidly evolving digital technologies. Back then, we were thinking of physical books and physical libraries, talking about the experience of being in Special Collections, and I was eagerly planning a visit with my undergraduate seminar to go to Doheny later in the spring to see rare books. Back then we knew we lived in a hybrid world\u2014at once physical and virtual\u2014but little did we know the resonance that the term \u201chybrid\u201d would take on in the coming months. These were themes we were discussing in what now seems like the rarified world of scholarship, and while at this point it almost seems superfluous to admit it\u2014little did we know that, from March 2020 onwards, they would soon become the themes that would dominate both the biggest moments and most quotidian realities of our lives. If there was one silver lining in the dark and difficult days that followed, it was watching our very definition of community expand when it was no longer bounded by time or space (or the strange combination of both in that modern construct of the time-zone!). I\u2019ve woken up at ungodly hours to be \u201cin\u201d Europe for conferences, attended friends\u2019 PhD defenses heartened to see 70 people in the Zoom room from all over the world, and reconnected with people whom I knew at various phases of my life but who live far from Los Angeles. Through it all I\u2019ve been working on the theme of time (a book on the concept of historical periodization as it developed in early modern Europe), and it\u2019s been at once disorienting and enlightening to pursue the topic as our own definitions of space and time have changed so drastically. Presenting my work to our group last April was a moment for which I\u2019m most grateful, as was hearing everyone else present and share their own research throughout the year, and I hope that\u2014in whatever form of future-time we will enter\u2014we keep expanding community exponentially, beyond the walls of universities, cities, and time-zones alike.<\/p>\n