Lecture: Hanna Gentili

Abstract
How should a philosophical text look like? What practices historically affected the way in which we read and study philosophy? This talk delves into manuscript and early print traditions of Hebrew philosophy, exploring how layout design, editorial choices, and visual hierarchies guided intellectual engagement. By examining the structuring of philosophical texts, the positioning of commentaries and the presence of different layers, we will uncover various ways by which layout design had a meaningful impact on the production, transmission and study of philosophy. Focusing on textbooks and study materials, we will investigate the diverse contexts in which these works were produced and transmitted-from carefully designed manuscripts to notebooks that embody personal and collective learning practices. Situating Hebrew philosophical manuscripts within the broader landscape of Jewish written cultures, our analysis will also draw comparisons with early print practices, revealing how materiality, editing and layout design have shaped the transmission of knowledge.

Hanna Gentili (Ph.D, Warburg Institute) is a historian of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Her research focuses on the consolidation and circulation of the Hebrew philosophical corpus in manuscript and early print. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Hamburg where she is working on Averroes' natural philosophy in Hebrew and Latin within the ERC Project HEPMASITE. Before joining the University of Hamburg, she worked at the crossroads of philosophy and kabbalah in the Digital Humanities project Ilanot and in 2023 she was the curator of the Hebrew collections at the British Library.