About
The seminar was led by Adam G. Hooks, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and the Center for the Book, with the assistance of superhero librarians Colleen Theisen and Nikki White.
The exhibits here were designed in part by following the instructions on this Special Collections Worksheet.
Here is a description of the course:
The ways in which we encounter, read, and study literary texts have recently and radically shifted, offering us unprecedented opportunities—and an exceptional potential for confusion. The current digital revolution is only the latest in a long series of textual and technological transformations that have often provoked apprehension and enthusiasm in equal measure among writers, readers, and consumers. It has heightened our awareness of the varieties of textual forms, and given us extraordinary tools to make sense of them.
This course offers an introduction to the field of book history, an interdisciplinary area of inquiry interested in all of the forms and modes of literary and textual production, as well as the people responsible for them: writers, readers, publishers, booksellers, and customers, among others. We will focus on the literary culture of the English Renaissance, a period that experienced a seismic shift in textual culture not unlike our own. Texts circulated in an array of material forms, and were used in ways that can seem unfamiliar, and even surprising. We will read foundational historical and theoretical works, alongside canonical and marginal literary texts. We will explore the technologies of manuscript, print, and sound, and the ways these technologies shaped the habits of reading and writing in the age of Shakespeare. We will also learn how textual editing and textual criticism continue to determine and to shape the literature that we read.
Working with literary texts, current scholarship, archival materials, and major online and print reference sources, students will develop the interpretive and research skills that are now necessary for the study of Renaissance literature, while building on and extending their individual interests and strengths. We will be exploring ways to preserve the work we do, and to make it accessible to others. Our class will be supplemented by visits to Special Collections and the Center for the Book; students will be encouraged to develop their own research projects, which could easily lead into thesis projects.