Teaching Text Technologies and Critical Bibliography Among the Disciplines: Objects of Study is a richly illustrated volume consisting of 23 methods-based chapters discussing innovative and often experimental approaches to hands-on teaching with material texts. Featuring 47 contributors whose work ranges from digital humanities, librarianship, curation, and conservation to architecture, culinary history, fine art, literary history, and the history of science, the collection builds on new work in the areas of text technologies and critical bibliography—emerging scholarly approaches being embraced in the humanities. The book features established experts in bibliography, the history of the book, manuscript studies, and textual editing, as well as educators and students who are applying new critical bibliographical methods (e.g., Black bibliography) to their pedagogy. The result is a dynamic cross-disciplinary, cross-generational exchange modeling inclusive pedagogies with textual artifacts and illuminating how object-oriented teaching can harness the insights of diverse branches of practice and learning.
Table of Contents:
List of Contributors
Foreword
Michael F. Suarez, S.J.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Barbara Heritage and Donna A. C. Sy
Part 1: Some Reflections on Pedagogical Practices with Material Texts: Past to Present
1. Stuff: An Overview
Terry Belanger
2. Teaching Bibliography with Original Printed Things
David L. Vander Meulen
3. Reflections on Teaching the History of Bookbinding
Jan Storm van Leeuwen
4. Research Locally, Think Historically: Incorporating Material Texts into the Undergraduate History Methods Classroom
Elizabeth Yale
Part 2: Hybrid Methods & Frameworks for Introducing Bibliography to New Audiences
5. Stealth Bibliography: Or, How to Teach Material Texts in Any College Class
Claire J. C. Eager
6. “A Rare Opportunity in a Language Class”: Bridging Object-Oriented and Second Language Pedagogy
Rachel Stein
7. The Ghost of Blithfield Hall: A Paleographical and Pedagogical Puzzle
Julie A. Fisher, Sara F. Powell, and Heather Wolfe
Part 3: Inclusive Instruction with Textual Artifacts
8. Rare Books, Beyond the Bronx: On Tour with the CUNY Rare Book Scholars
Olivia Loksing Moy, with Eric Holzenberg, Mark Samuels Lasner, and Heather Weintraub
9. The Ephemeral Langston Hughes
Laura E. Helton, Theresa Hessey, and Curtis Small, Jr.
10. Yak Brains, Poisonous Trees, and the Eyes of the Goddess: Himalayan Bookmaking between Worlds
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa
Part 4: Books in the Community: Broader Publics & Outreach
11. Farm to Book: Intellectual Terroir, Civic Humanities, and the Craft of the Book
Tilke Elkins, Vera Keller, and Marilyn Mohr
12. Teaching Bibliography with Cookbooks in the Continuing Education Setting
Sarah Peters Kernan
13. AB to Z: Artists’ Books and Zines, Special Collections Library Instruction, and Community Engagement
Diane Dias De Fazio, Emily Martin, and Jay Sylvestre
14. Austen in Public
Juliette Wells
Part 5: Tools & Approaches for Bibliographical Analysis
15. ‘Materials to Work Withal’: Practical Bibliography as a Pedagogical Model
Cait Coker and Todd Samuelson
16. Teaching Collational Format with VisColl
Alberto Campagnolo and Dot Porter
17. A Potions Lesson: Experiential Learning and the Historical Turn
Alex Hidalgo
Part 6: Project-Based Learning with Special Collections
18. Hiding in Plain Sight: The UCSB-Howard Collaboration and the Ballitore Collection
Cecily A. Duffie, Rachael Scarborough King, Danielle Knox, and John Henry Merritt
19. Crossing Borders—From Slavery to Abolition (1670–1875): A Collaborative Student Exhibit at the Haverford College Libraries
Sarah M. Horowitz and Sarah Watson
20. Reading Handwriting: Building Tools for Undergraduates in Liberal Arts Schools
Carlson C. Given, Christopher Hager, Emma C. Sternberg, Eric C. Stoykovich, and Hilary E. Wyss
Part 7: Objects of Study: Forms of Text, Forms of Knowing
21. Bibliographical Architectures
Kyle Dugdale
22. Pace, Scale, Touch: On Artists’ Books as Learning Experiences
Matthew P. Brown, Katharine Lark DeLamater, and Andrew David King
23. Teaching with Sacred Texts: Spiritual Practice as a Form of Knowledge
Barbara Heritage and Ruth-Ellen St. Onge
Afterword
Alexia Hudson-Ward
Works Cited
Index
About the Author :
Barbara Heritage is the Miranker Family Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.
Donna A. C. Sy is a past Administrative Director of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography—a program that she created with Barbara Heritage and Michael F. Suarez, S.J.
Review :
"Objects of Study showcases a wonderful explosion of innovative pedagogy and research focused on studying texts as material objects. This well-illustrated volume was developed out of a 2017 conference supported by Rare Book School and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand the purview of bibliography beyond the well-known canon. The 47 contributors model and illustrate inclusiveness and collaboration in sharing their experiences of teaching and practicing the study of books and book history across an exciting range of times, places, and techniques of text-making."
Ann Blair, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard University
“Of making many books there is no end,” the Bible informs us. Rare Book School at the University of Virginia attests to that enduring truth. No educational institution has done more to foster teaching and scholarship about books as material texts embedded in cultural history. . . . Objects of Study offers at once an introduction to the challenges and joys in this field of inquiry and fascinating lessons for the practitioner about how to teach this important and varied subject matter to others.
Robert A. Gross, author of The Minutemen and Their World
"Like all books, this book is—literally—a gathering. More than most, it is an intersectional gathering, bringing together not only “disciplines” but also objects, places, and people, all bound by a common interest in the material conditions of meaning and making. It is (to borrow the locution of the opening chapter) great stuff."
Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor and Co-Founder, BookLab, University of Maryland
"The book is surely the most humane prosthetic device ever devised by advanced human societies. So reading this wonderful collection is both an uplifting and humbling experience. Here is a widely ranging set of essays by a learned company of scholars and educators whose meticulous care for books is an index of their greater care, for the people who produce and maintain and use them. Generosity is the leit motiv for what these admirable people do, stories of human beings at their working and caring best."
Jerome McGann, Emeritus University Professor, University of Virginia
"This wide-ranging collection offers timely and practical pedagogical ideas that will be of immediate use not only in book history courses but in almost any literature or history course that could usefully incorporate hands-on making or analysis of books. . . . whether at a research university or a community college, its incorporation of other languages, of non-Western materials, and of genres ranging from cookbooks to devotional texts will make it of interest to instructors across a variety of fields."
Leah Price, Director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book and Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of English
