RBS Receives Gift to Support the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

Rare Book School has received a gift to establish the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources, a two-year program designed to animate humanities teaching and equip educators (both library/curatorial staff and tenured or tenure-track faculty) to enlarge their students’ historical sensibilities through bibliographically informed instruction with original historical sources. Open to faculty and librarians at liberal arts colleges and small universities in the United States, this fellowship program will teach teachers how to discern and convey the human presences in original textual artifacts, to inculcate wonder in their students through guided contact with original textual artifacts.

The goal of this fellowship program is to re-seed American colleges and small universities with humanities teachers who make maximal use of special collections resources in their undergraduate courses, so that the integration of bibliographical and book-historical sensibilities becomes woven into the fabric of such teaching. Lang Fellows will be encouraged to enlist others on and near their campuses who could help create a community of practice, so that book-historical humanities teaching with original primary sources is not merely a matter of individual style, but rather a central aspect of the local educational culture.

Fellows will receive funding to attend two Rare Book School courses, and will be eligible to receive matching funds each year to help improve their own teaching, create student-learning experiences, build book-historical culture on campus, foster book-related public outreach programs, or organize an event to raise awareness about humanities teaching with original textual artifacts.

Applications for the first cohort of fellows are now open, and will be due on 2 December 2019. See the fellowship webpage for more details on the fellowship program and the application process.