The 2025 Annual Meeting
The BSA Officers and members of the Council warmly invite you to attend the Society’s Annual Meeting on 24 January 2025! Scroll down for complete program details. Register by 15 January 2025.
Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-fihrist (Baghdad, 987-1000). Chester Beatty Library.
About the Annual Meeting ↑
The BSA Annual Meeting features the New Scholars Program, a keynote lecture, and for the first time, synchronous panel presentations in the morning. Details about the New Scholars program will be shared in November 2024.
Registration for the Annual Meeting is required, opening November 2024.
Ahmed El Shamsy, Professor of Islamic thought at the University of Chicago.
The 2025 Keynote by Dr. Ahmed El Shamsy ↑
Bibliography after Empire: Documenting and Classifying Knowledge in the Tenth-Century Muslim World
In the late tenth century, a Baghdadi bookseller by the name of Ibn al-Nadim embarked on the ambitious mission of compiling a comprehensive and systematic inventory of all books ever written in or translated into Arabic. By that time, the vast Islamic empire that had once stretched from Iberia to India had fragmented, but the shared cultural and intellectual space defined by the lingua franca of Arabic continued to flourish. What Ibn al-Nadim sought to produce, then, was a complete record of the knowledge available in his time. In his extensive introduction and his catalog of more than eight thousand books, Ibn al-Nadim offers us a glimpse into a knowledge economy that was still expanding even though the empire that had launched it no longer existed.
About the speaker: Ahmed El Shamsy is a professor of Islamic thought at the University of Chicago. He studies the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. His research addresses themes such as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law. He has published two books, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (2013) and Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (2020). He is now writing a book about the emergence and early history of Sunni Islam.
Detailed Program Schedule ↑
We warmly invite you to attend the full day’s events on 24 January. This year the program will start at 10 am with three synchronous panel presentations. The Editors of PBSA will host a brown-bag lunch session starting at noon, with the New Scholars program beginning at 1 pm.
Lunch for all attendees will be provided at no additional charge.
Details about the morning sessions and the New Scholars Program speakers will be announced in November 2024.
Schedule of Events, Friday, 24 January
10 to 11:30 am, Activating Bibliographical Histories and Practices: synchronous panel and workshop sessions
11:30 am to 1 pm, lunch
12 to 1pm, PBSA brown bag session, “The Bibliographical Note Now & Then”
1 to 2:30 pm, New Scholars Program
2:30 to 3 pm, Coffee Break
3 to 5 pm, Keynote Lecture and brief business meeting
5 to 6:30 pm, Reception & Small Editions Pop-Up
New in 2025: Morning Sessions from 10 to 11:30 am ↑
The BSA Events Planning Sub-Committee invited our community of bookmakers and sellers, collectors, conservators, curators, educators, librarians, scholars, and students to submit proposals for a session centered on the myriad ways we activate bibliographical histories and practices. We are pleased to present the following panels during the morning session of the upcoming annual meeting.
Find a list of sessions schedule from 10 to 11:30 am below; full panel descriptions and speaker bios can be found in the News section of the website.
Book History on a Budget: A Maker-Centered Approach
Lindsay DiCuirci, Jillian J. Sayre, & Sophia WestfallBridging the Gap: From Close-Looking to Structural Thinking
Gina Hurley & Aaron T. PrattLook, Think, Wonder: An Adaptable Framework for Teaching with Primary Sources
Erin Chiparo & Sarah McElroy Mitchell
Attendees will be asked to select one panel when they register for the meeting; doing so helps us ensure that we place panels in spaces large enough to accommodate the audience.
Small Editions Pop-Up ↑
Attendees are invited to visit the Small Editions pop-up during the 2025 Annual Meeting Reception!
Small Editions is a book studio and artist book publisher based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, New York) that offers services in book design, print consulting, and limited edition binding. Our studio also hosts educational workshops on different print and publishing-related topics throughout the year. With the funds earned from our commercial and educational endeavors, we fund an artists’ book publishing program that collaborates with 2-4 multidisciplinary artists per year.
Small Editions’ publishing projects aim to center the book as a form of art, rather than a vehicle for art. Projects begin from a thoughtful engagement with source content, and are informed by our ongoing research and experimentation in print, materiality, and fabrication. We often combine traditional print and binding methods with unconventional materials and modern fabrication methods to push the bounds of the book as contemporary art.
Gi (Ginny) Huo. All I Wanted Was to Get Into Heaven (Small Editions, 2021).
About the Meeting Venue: Location & Access ↑
The meeting will be held at Convene, 75 Rockefeller Center in New York City. Registration is required for attendance; all registrants will receive a QR code by email the evening before and the morning of the event for access to the event space. Should you have any concerns about security protocols in the building, please feel welcome to contact the BSA office by email at any time.
About our in-person program
This year’s program will be presented to our in-person audience only, with recordings of the New Scholars talks, the keynote lecture, and the business meeting made available on YouTube in February 2025. Sign up for our email newsletter to be the first to know when recordings have been released!
Health safety protocols
Masking is encouraged but not required.
In alignment with our host venue’s policy, we strongly recommend staying up to date on vaccinations at all times. Proof of vaccination will not be required for entry.
The 2025 Annual Meeting is now fully registered! Complete the form below to join the waitlist. BSA staff will confirm attendance with registered guests on 8 January 2025 and begin filling open seats between 8 and 14 January. Thank you for your patience while we work to make sure that every seat will be filled!
2025 BSA Bibliography Week Sponsors ↑
Thank you to the sponsors who make our event possible!
200 Years of Blooks at Center for Book Arts Sponsor: McKittrick Rare Books
Morning Panel Sponsor - Bridging the Gap: Penn State University Press
Lunch Sponsor: Anonymous individual
New Scholars Program Sponsor: Bluemango Rare Books & Manuscripts
Snack Break Sponsor: Patrick Olson Rare Books
Keynote Lecture Sponsor: The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA)
Reception Sponsor: Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploration, and Navigation at the University of Miami Libraries
Folio Sponsors:
Quarto Sponsors: