The topic of the “book” can be opened in many ways. This seminar studies the book’s plangent materiality, as well as its intellectual claims on timelessness. By using books as portals into time and place, we’ll engage with changes to the book as a social sign. How has the book generated visual and readerly processes? Why has it been burned, defaced, and censored? How does the dynamic paratext of a book, from illustrations through doodles, shape and witness readers then and now? We’ll practice what we discuss, too, engaging with tablets, papyrus, ink, and pens to build our own books.
