Course Description
Discover the long cultural history and rich future of books and publishing, from illuminated manuscripts to hand-set letterpress codices to algorithmic digital printing.
Athena Title
Book History
Prerequisite
Two 2000-level ENGL courses or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 3000-level ENGL course) or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 2000-level CMLT course) or ENGL 3540
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- In this course, students will understand how the idea of “a book” changes over time as they organize and synthesize evidence to reveal insightful patterns, differences, or similarities among historical book forms.
- In this course, students will understand the technologies through which books are produced and the impact of these technologies on meaning.
- In this course, students will identify and apply appropriate methodologies and/or theoretical frameworks for interpreting the relationships among books, readers, technologies of production, and social meaning.
- In this course, students will critically analyze the development of written technologies in their social, cultural, political and/or literary contexts.
- In this course, students will develop, support, and effectively express ideas and arguments about book history in written and oral form using language with clarity and precision.
- In this course, students will consider, engage, analyze and evaluate arguments about the history of the book, including opposing viewpoints or arguments.
- In this course, students will develop fundamental archival research skills, including identifying and applying the appropriate methodologies, critical frameworks, and pragmatic stills for analyzing original books and documents.
Topical Outline
- This course will equip students with a sense of historical changes and continuities in the production, circulation, and forms of writing technologies. It focuses on aspects of the history of the book as it developed from the earliest writing systems through contemporary electronic media. Tools and approaches will be drawn from traditional book history and bibliography, paleography, contemporary theories of media production and consumption, and the study of material culture. The choice of historical period(s) and sequence of topics will vary from instructor to instructor and semester to semester. In all cases, students will learn to assess the affordances of different writing technologies, to historicize their development and use, and to incorporate such considerations into their critical toolkit.
- Courses focused on the early history of the book’s development may consider the evolution of early writing systems, the transition from the papyrus scroll and cuneiform tablet to the bound codex, and/or the handwritten manuscript to the printing press.
- Courses focused on the technological shifts in book production may attend to the technologies of parchment and paper production, the affordances of ink and quill in manuscript production, the development and technological changes in the printing press, the development of lithography and offset printing, and the digital publishing revolution.
- Courses focused on the reception of books and publishing systems may foreground the social and aesthetic uses of books and inscriptive media, such as the relationship of literature to its material forms, Elizabethan bibles chained to church pulpits, or twenty-first-century sculptural artists’ books that barely resemble traditional codices or bound books at all.
Institutional Competencies
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
