Teaching Book History (workshop)

For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.

This was a December 2012 workshop organized by Kathleen Lynch (The Folger Institute), Sarah Werner (The Folger Undergraduate Program), and Owen Williams (The Folger Institute). Speakers included A.E.B. Coldiron (Florida State University), Ian Gadd (Bath Spa University), Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland), Jason Peacey (University College London), and Peter Stallybrass (University of Pennsylvania).

Drawing on the resources of one of the world’s finest collections of early modern books, the Folger Institute and the Folger Undergraduate Program hosted a three-day workshop devoted to teaching book history to undergraduates. It introduced both strategies and tools for teaching the field in a variety of contexts (as a stand-alone course, as part of an introductory survey, as a research seminar). It served as a platform for debating how print culture, physical bibliography, and textual studies might best be integrated into a curriculum; what digital humanities may offer book historians; and how faculty and librarians can teach book history without access to a large collection of rare materials. The workshop gathered up to forty participants for a close examination of the assumptions, materials, methods, and objectives of those courses, who had multiple opportunities to discuss their own teaching practices.