News Archives

Remembering John T. Casteen III, Bibliophile and UVA President Emeritus

It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of John T. Casteen III on 18 March 2025, after a brief illness. A scholar of medieval literature and an advocate for public education, Casteen served with great distinction as the seventh president of the University of Virginia. Over the course of two decades (1990–2010), he guided UVA to greater national prominence, significantly expanded programs and facilities on Grounds, and led the University through two enormously successful capital campaigns. 

A visionary leader, Casteen brought Rare Book School to UVA from Columbia University in 1992, hiring RBS Founding Director Terry Belanger as University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections and giving the School a new home in Alderman Library (now known as Shannon Library). […]

RBS General and Buice Scholarship Awards for 2025 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the 2025 recipients of its General Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students. Congratulations to these recipients! […]

Breaking Bread and Building Catalogs: How an RBS Course Led to a Years-Long Bibliographical Collaboration

On a summer day in 2017, Szilvia Szmuk-Tanenbaum and Jay Moschella sat down to discuss Spanish plays over lunch at a Korean restaurant near the grounds of the University of Virginia. 

The two were in Charlottesville for the week, attending Stephen Tabor’s Rare Book School (RBS) course G-45 Analytical Bibliography. For Szmuk-Tanenbaum, a longtime RBS supporter, one of the School’s great strengths is the way it brings people together, not in a commercially minded way, but rather for “something much more familiar and casual and friendly,” fostered through shared meals and breaks with other RBS students.  […]

RBS Fellowship to Offer Prize for Winning Essay on Bibliographical Scholarship

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) is pleased to announce its annual Essay Prize for 2025, to be awarded to a scholarly article that exemplifies the Society’s mission of advancing the study of texts, images, and artifacts as material objects through capacious, interdisciplinary scholarship. The $500 prize seeks to recognize innovative scholarship that brings together multiple fields of study and that strives to be accessible to the bibliographical community at large.

Articles published in any format (journal, edited collection, book chapter, digital platform), in any field, and of any time period are eligible for consideration. […]

New RBS Course on Censorship Added to Summer 2025 Schedule

Rare Book School is excited to announce a newly added course to its Summer 2025 schedule. H-205 Censorship from the Inquisition to the Present will run 3–8 August 2025 at the University of Chicago. The first-round deadline to apply for H-205 is Friday, 7 March 2025. 

H-205, taught by the University of Chicago’s Ada Palmer, will examine the histories of censorship and information control, with a focus on books and on changes in information technologies. Many sessions will specifically explore censorship in early modern Europe, including the Inquisition and its practices, the impact of the printing press, […]

Endowed Scholarship and Matching-Gift Challenge, Totaling $2 Million, to Honor RBS Founding Director Terry Belanger

Rare Book School is proud to announce that it has received a $1 million commitment from bibliophiles, collectors, and RBS supporters Cathy and Glen Miranker to honor the legacy of our founding director and long-time course instructor Terry Belanger by increasing scholarship access for RBS students.

To maximize the Miranker Family’s generosity, we are endeavoring to raise an additional $1 million for the Terry Belanger Endowed Scholarship before 30 September 2026, coinciding with the year of Terry’s 85th birthday. Each dollar raised toward this amount will be matched dollar for dollar, doubling the impact of each gift received. […]

Rare Book School Summer Course Applications Now Open

Rare Book School (RBS) is now accepting applications for its summer 2025 courses. This year’s schedule features more than 40 classes, including online courses and  in-person offerings at two new partner institutions: the University of Michigan and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library (also RBS’s first international courses).

Rare Book School’s summer 2025 in-person courses in Charlottesville will be offered in the University of Virginia’s recently renovated Edgar Shannon Library. Other in-person courses will run in Chapel Hill (NC), Chicago, New Haven (CT), Philadelphia, Princeton (NJ), and Upperville (VA). […]

RBS Announces Summer 2025 Course Schedule

Rare Book School is pleased to share its summer 2025 course schedule! The list of more than 40 in-person and online courses can be found at rarebookschool.org/schedule.

This summer’s course schedule includes classes at two new partner institutions: the University of Michigan and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library (also RBS’s first international courses). […]

Announcing a Special Preview of Summer 2025 Courses

Including Our First-Ever International Classes

Rare Book School is thrilled to provide a sneak peek of our summer 2025 course schedule (so far), which includes classes at two new partner institutions: the University of Michigan and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library (also our first international courses).

The complete summer course schedule will be announced later this month, and applications will open in January 2025. We encourage you to check back on our website for updates. […]

RBS Receives Largest Donation in School’s History

$3.1 Million Gift Endows Permanent Curator Position

Glen (left) and Cathy Miranker (right) view the teaching collections with RBS Miranker Family Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives Barbara Heritage (center). Photo by Stephanie Gross, 2024.

(Oct. 1, 2024 – Charlottesville, VA) Rare Book School has received a groundbreaking $3.1 million donation to endow a full-time curatorial chair for the School’s teaching collection and exhibitions program. It is the largest single gift in Rare Book School’s 41-year history.

The contribution secures the continued educational use, growth, conservation, and exhibition of the RBS teaching collection of more than 100,000 items and represents a powerful vote of confidence in the School’s unique approach to instruction, […]

RBS Scholarship and Fellowship Applications Now Available

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is now accepting applications for its 2024 scholarship and fellowship cycle. […]

RBS Announces Matching-Gift Challenge and Raffle Prizes

Having concluded its summer courses earlier this month, Rare Book School is excited to reveal this year’s record-breaking matching-gift challenge. Thanks to the RBS Board of Directors, all gifts made to the Annual Fund before September 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $150,000. Individuals who make a gift to the Annual Fund help provide year-round programs for all students of the book. […]

Videos of All RBS Summer 2024 Lectures Now Available

Rare Book School proudly presents the video recordings of all eight talks from our Summer 2024 Lecture Series. The complete list, with links, is below.

Audio recordings of the lectures will be posted soon. In the meantime, please enjoy these and other videos on the RBS YouTube channel!

Archive of the People: The Johnson Publishing Company
Watch on YouTube
LeRonn Brooks
Curator of the African American Art History Initiative, Getty Research Institute

Scholarly Editing and the Challenges of Attribution
Watch on YouTube
Stephen Karian
Professor and Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of English, […]

You’re Invited to RBS’s Final Summer Lecture on July 31

Please join Rare Book School for our final lecture of the summer, happening this Wednesday (July 31) at 5:30 p.m. in the University of Virginia’s Special Collections Library Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public, and is followed by a reception in UVA’s Edgar Shannon Library, Room 230. Videos from our previous summer lectures are now available on the RBS YouTube page.

Wednesday, July 31
Auditorium, UVA Special Collections
Collecting Daily Life in Early American Manuscripts
Ashley Cataldo, […]

UVA Special Collections’ Krystal Appiah Joins RBS Board of Directors

Rare Book School (RBS) welcomes to its Board of Directors Krystal Appiah, who is Head of Collection Development at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, where she also serves as Curator for Virginia and African American collections. Appiah’s previous positions include Curator of African American History at The Library Company of Philadelphia and Research Archivist for the Maryland State Archives’ Legacy of Slavery in Maryland program. In 2019, she was co-investigator, with Brenda Gunn, of the Ithaka S+R study Supporting Teaching with Primary Sources, […]

RBS Unveils Summer 2024 Lecture Series

Rare Book School is thrilled to announce the lineup for this summer’s lecture series at the University of Virginia.

All lectures are free and open to the public. Unless noted, these talks will take place at 5:30 p.m. ET. Lectures are 30–40 minutes in length with approximately 10 minutes for Q&A, and will be followed by a reception. RSVPs are not required. Lecture recordings will be made available by fall 2024.

For questions, please call 434-924-8851 or email contactRBS@virginia.edu. For information on past lectures, visit www.rarebookschool.org/lectures. Past lectures are also available via SoundCloud and YouTube. […]

Summer COVID Policy

Rare Book School Guidelines and Recommendations Regarding COVID-19

Rare Book School is very excited to welcome back to Charlottesville—and to our partner institutions in Chicago, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Princeton, and Upperville, VA—the faculty, students, and lecturers who form the RBS community. In order to protect the health and well-being of this wonderful community of like-minded learners, we ask all those attending in-person courses and programs this summer to adhere to some basic public health precautions recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health experts at each course location.

Please keep reading for full details, […]

Will Noel: A Tribute

With an abiding sense of gratitude, Rare Book School remembers our much beloved colleague and faculty member Will Noel, who died on April 29 of injuries, after being struck by a van in Edinburgh on April 10. Profoundly saddened by this tragic loss, we nonetheless remember with great admiration Will’s consummate wit, his spirited intelligence, and his pioneering work—all generously shared with so many. Again and again, Will’s largesse enlarged the bookish community and made it better.

Honored by the White House in 2013 as a “Champion of Change” because of his advocacy for and creation of accessible information and open data, […]

Announcing the 2024–26 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) at Rare Book School is pleased to welcome its 2024–26 cohort of Junior Fellows. Many congratulations to all the new Junior Fellows; we look forward to seeing you at RBS! […]

RBS at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair

Rare Book School will be at the 64th annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs from Thursday, April 4 to Sunday, April 7.

Barbara Heritage (RBS Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives) and Adam Miller (RBS Director of Development) will be “on the ground” at the Park Avenue Armory, so if you see them, be sure to say hello! […]