PROFESSOR IN ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN STUDIES, THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
A number of the articles and chapters listed in Professor Hollis's CV are based on the study of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Old English Prose of Secular Learning (1993) includes extended descriptions of a number of Anglo-Saxo manuscripts, particularly medical codices. She has co-authored, with Michael Wight, a description of manuscripts in Trinity College, Cambridge, published in the Anglo-Saxon Manuscriptsin Microfiche Series (2004). They are currently working on another volume in this series, on computistical manuscripts. The Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche project is edited by A.N. Doane (Wisconsin-Madison) and is funded by the NEH. The research projects of the University of Auckland Centre for Medieval and Early Modern European Studies include the study of pre-1700 Western manuscripts held in New Zealand, for which Professor Hollis is the project leader.
She is currently co-editing (with Alexandra Barratt, Waikato) a collection of essays by New Zealand and overseas scholars on New Zealand's medieval manuscripts. This collection has two principal aims: to lodge the Early European manuscripts in New Zealand within the international discourse of postcolonial heritage, and to place them within the mainstream of manuscript studies by drawing attention to their intrinsic significance and their relationship with manuscripts held in overseas collections. The essays are grouped in two sections. The first section focuses on historical issues-the motives underlying the formation of the collections in the colonial period and subsequent changes in the ways that this heritage has been regarded. The second group of essays comprises new scholarly studies of particular manuscripts, which examine them in relation to the cultural and documentary context in which they were produced. Collaboration with the Manuscrip ts and Early Printed Books Resource Unit in Melbourne opens up further possibilities for the study of early manuscript holdings in NZ and Australia, particularly within the context of a shared colonial heritage.