Notes: Getting a Handle on Book History What is a book? It is a trickier question than you might think. Though we may at first imagine an object that we hold in our hands, put on a shelf, or shove into a backpack, many of us read computers, phones, and tablets far more often than we do paper. We might then think of books more as extended collections of words. Yet, picture books and comics are books too though relying primarily on their visuals. So it seems that a Book must be something else. In this course, we will investigate how some prospective ideas of the Book came to be and the cultural spaces that these ideas have occupied throughout history—from the Sumerian tablet to the tablet computer. Key concepts will be the interrelation between literacy and orality in societies; the development of scribal, print and digital technologies; and the effect that design and format have on the shape and potential of literature. Readings will cover a wide spectrum of genres and time periods and will include writers such as Sappho, the Beowulf poet(s?), Margery Kempe, Ben Jonson, William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Phillis Wheatley, Jane Austen, William Morris, Jean Toomer, Scott McCloud, and Susanna Clarke. We will supplement these readings with theoretical work from Michelle Levy, Robert Darnton, Marshall McLuhan, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Benedict Anderson, Meredith McGill, Elizabeth McHenry, Leah Price, and Andrew Piper among others.

Notes: PRE-COLLEGE SECTION. Getting a Handle on Book History What is a book? It is a trickier question than you might think. Though we may at first imagine an object that we hold in our hands, put on a shelf, or shove into a backpack, many of us read computers, phones, and tablets far more often than we do paper. We might then think of books more as extended collections of words. Yet, picture books and comics are books too though relying primarily on their visuals. So it seems that a Book must be something else. In this course, we will investigate how some prospective ideas of the Book came to be and the cultural spaces that these ideas have occupied throughout history—from the Sumerian tablet to the tablet computer. Key concepts will be the interrelation between literacy and orality in societies; the development of scribal, print and digital technologies; and the effect that design and format have on the shape and potential of literature. Readings will cover a wide spectrum of genres and time periods and will include writers such as Sappho, the Beowulf poet(s?), Margery Kempe, Ben Jonson, William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Phillis Wheatley, Jane Austen, William Morris, Jean Toomer, Scott McCloud, and Susanna Clarke. We will supplement these readings with theoretical work from Michelle Levy, Robert Darnton, Marshall McLuhan, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Benedict Anderson, Meredith McGill, Elizabeth McHenry, Leah Price, and Andrew Piper among others.