HUM 301 - The Book: Text, Object, and Experience

3 Credit(s)

This course asks students to consider how the form in which a piece of literature appears influences not only the reader’s experience, but also the meaning of the text itself. The class together surveys over a thousand years of the book, thinking about how book technologies have evolved across time. Students trace how books have been produced, sold, and read from the invention of paper to the digital age. Students consider aspects of the material, textual, and experiential book, reading historical arguments and contemporary theory about how books work. The class explores these ideas through workshops, written analysis, and a semester-long exercise in synthesizing collective knowledge. This course includes visits to rare book archives and repositories, as well as hands-on activities in making (and unmaking) books. Students are advised that visits and workshops are opportunities that cannot be made up. This course is required for the Textual Scholarship Certificate, but is open to all students.