News Archives

Introduction to Islamicate Manuscripts

Length: 10 hours
Format: Online

This course is for students who have not yet had the opportunity to study Islamicate manuscripts. It is an introductory course and will take a broad view of the manuscript arts from the origins of Islam in the seventh century through the early modern period (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), encompassing Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Indian cultures. The course will focus primarily on materials (binding and paper), layout, scripts, and decoration and will be taught through the rich collection of Islamic manuscripts that make up the Manuscripts of the Muslim World project. […]

The History of Books and Printing in Korea

This course will offer a history of books in Korea since 700 CE, with contextual reference to developments in China and Japan, and to parallels in the West. We will cover the conception, production, transmission, and consumption of traditional Korean books, as well as western-style books published in the period of transition to the modern era. Key topics will include but not be limited to: economic factors underlying woodblock printing and type casting; government, religious and commercial publishing; questions of authentication and cataloguing; texts and paratexts; book illustration; libraries and collections; and the history of scholarship on Korean books and manuscripts. […]

The History & Culture of the Tibetan Book

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 6–11 July 2025
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495

This course offers a broad overview of the history and culture of the book in Tibet. Participants will discuss what is meant by “the book” in Tibetan culture and explore how books fit into the larger material, religious, and intellectual cultures of Tibet. The course will focus on major periods and developments in the history of Tibetan manuscript and print cultures, the physical materials and process of making Tibetan books, and the book within Tibetan religious and scholarly culture. […]

Introduction to Islamicate Manuscripts

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 6–11 July 2025
Format: in person, Free Library of Philadelphia
Fee: $1,495

Though the arts of the manuscript book constitute one of the most vital forms of artistic creativity and practice within the Islamic world, they have received relatively little attention within the general field of manuscript studies in Europe and America. This course provides an introduction to the history of Islamicate manuscripts and the constituent arts of calligraphy, illumination, illustration, and binding from the origins of Islam in the seventh century through the early modern period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), […]

Hokusai & Book Illustration

Books figured significantly in the formation of the reputation of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) among his contemporaries and subsequently in Europe and America. He provided illustrations for over 260 titles, encompassing novels, anthologies of Japanese and Chinese poetry, erotica, warrior tales, bilingual editions of Chinese classics, gazetteers, copybooks for aspiring artists, pattern books for artisans, model letter books, dance manuals and picture anthologies. For many decades after his death, publishers kept his books in print and even issued posthumous titles to cash in on his marketability.

This course will consider Hokusai as a publishing phenomenon. His achievement as a book illustrator—and print artist—will be situated squarely in the world of Edo-period publishing. […]

The Art of the Book in Edo & Meiji Japan, 1615–1912

The illustrated woodblock printed books produced in Japan in the Edo and Meiji periods represent a remarkable achievement in terms of their technical perfection, broad range of styles and subject matter, and their beauty. No comparable sustained tradition of artistically significant printed illustrated books existed in China or the West.

The course will combine daily lectures and discussions with hands-on sessions in which students will have the opportunity to examine outstanding examples of some of the most significant books produced in Edo and Meiji Japan. Topics to be covered include: key features of the history of the period; […]

Japanese Prints and Illustrated Books in Context

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 1–6 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Pennsylvania Libraries in Philadelphia, PA
Fee: $1,495

Japanese woodblock prints and illustrated books from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries are celebrated for their high technical and aesthetic achievements. In this course, we will look closely at both formats, putting these into their historical and cultural contexts. We will also think through how these materials were designed for their broad and largely literate audiences. By engaging a wide range of materials, we will consider how the goals for printed materials varied from transferring information to delineating artistic trends. […]

The History of the Book in China

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 8–13 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495

This course will offer a comprehensive history of books in China with reference to relevant developments in Korea and Japan and to parallels in the West. It treats the subject in the broadest sense from the advent of actual books in East Asia during the first millennium BCE until the introduction of virtual books at the end of the twentieth century, but it places special emphasis on traditional Chinese books printed on paper from the ninth to the nineteenth century. […]