Teaching the History of the Book
With original contributions from a diverse range of teachers, scholars, and practitioners in literary studies, history, book arts, library science, language studies, and archives, Teaching the History of the Book is the first collection of its kind dedicated to book history pedagogy. Presenting a variety of methods for teaching book history both as its own subject and as an approach to other material, each chapter describes lessons, courses, and programs centered on the latest and best ways of teaching undergraduate and graduate students.
Expansive and instructive, this volume introduces ways of helping students consider how texts were produced, circulated, and received, with chapters that cover effective ways to organize courses devoted to book history, classroom activities that draw on this subject in other courses, and an overview of selected print and digital tools. Contributors, many of whom are leading figures in the field, utilize their own classroom experiences to bring to life some of the rich possibilities for teaching book history in the twenty-first century.
In addition to the volume editors, contributors include Ryan Cordell, Brigitte Fielder, Barbara Hochman, Leslie Howsam, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Clare Mullaney, Kate Ozment, Leah Price, Jonathan Rose, Jonathan Senchyne, Sarah Wadsworth, and others.
‘This well-conceived collection is the first to investigate book history pedagogy itself, and it does so in a generous and inclusive way. It manages to be a comprehensive resource for current pedagogy in book history while also providing ideas and inspiration for future instructors. The editors have done an excellent job in bringing together a wide range of voices and perspectives.’—Shafquat Towheed, coeditor of Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives‘This collection, the first of its kind on the teaching of book history, offers a nicely diverse list of contributors, including major scholars who have been involved in this field for a long time.’—Christine Pawley, author of Organizing Women: Home, Work, and the Institutional Infrastructure of Print in Twentieth-Century America
MATTEO PANGALLO is associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
EMILY B. TODD is dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Eastern Connecticut State University.