Events & Activities

Nov
6

2024

Archival Conversations (A Two-Part Series): Realities of Archival Diaspora

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

“What happens to our collections when we move?”

The goal of this panel is to highlight the afterlives of archival collections and family ephemera when people experience varying degrees of uprooting or displacement. Panelists will discuss the value and labor behind community archives, family histories, and kinkeeping across generations and continents in the larger shadow of institutions. Curators, archivists, and community members will break down the causes of archival dispersion (e.g., slavery, intentional migration, home foreclosure, urban renewal, &c.) and consider ways in which institutions, if possible, can handle those collections with respect and dignity.

This event is free and open to the public; […]

Nov
5

2024

War of the Dots: A Symposium Exploring Accessibility in Archive and Museum Exhibits

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

In 2022, Washington State University (WSU) began to collaborate with the Washington State School for the Blind (WSSB) to establish a museum highlighting the history of the school. In 2024, the two organizations set up their first collaborative exhibit—a pop-up experience called “War of the Dots.” The goal of the exhibit was to engage blind and low-vision students in the history of tactile print, connecting accessibility challenges of the past with the present day. The presenters of this symposium will reflect on the experience of creating the exhibit while taking into account accessibility for blind and low-vision audiences. Mike Hudson, […]

Nov
4

2024

Archival Conversations (A Two-Part Series): The Ethics of Selling and Acquisitions

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Featuring a mix of dealers, curators, and scholars, this virtual panel will focus on the ethical issues in selling and buying rare books and manuscripts, particularly those produced by and about marginalized communities. The panel’s themes will be shaped by the speakers’ diverse backgrounds and interests. Topics may include provenance research, the impact of rising prices as institutions diversify their collections, responsibilities when handling archival materials with living creators or descendants, and/or sustainable growth in new areas where staff might lack cultural or linguistic expertise.

This event is free and open to the public; however, advanced registration is required here. […]

Oct
24

2024

Required Reading: Author Priyasha Mukhopadhyay in Conversation with Corinna Zeltsman on the Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and interviewer Corinna Zeltsman for a conversation about Mukhopadhyay’s book Required Reading: The Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire (Princeton University Press, August 2024). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event is free and open to the public; […]

Oct
23

2024

Informational Session (2024): M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

Presented by: Rare Book School
Zoom

The M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources is now accepting applications. Prospective applicants attended an informational session via Zoom on 23 October 2024 to learn more about the Lang Fellowship and the application process. This informational session included an opportunity for Q&A with Rare Book School’s Director of Programs & Education Laura Perrings and Admissions Officer Andrew Rivard Hill.

You are invited to watch the recording of the informational session below via our RBS YouTube channel. (Click here to view the slides from the YouTube recording.)

The two-year Lang Fellowship is designed to animate humanities teaching by equipping educators to inculcate wonder in their students by enlarging the students’ understanding of original historical sources. […]

Apr 19
/
Apr 20

2024

Cultivating Chado Abroad: Reflecting on the Transmission of Chado in the United States + What’s in a Name? Beautiful Words in the Way of Tea

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Chado (Japanese tea ceremony or “the Way of the Tea”) is one of the most iconic art forms associated with the traditional cultural heritage of Japan, and deeply intertwined with cultural practices and material culture. Chado strongly emphasizes oral transmission in the traditions and skills passed from teacher to student, and is often viewed as intangible cultural heritage with limited material records, aside from the special collections of tea ceremony equipment.

The Japan House at the University of Illinois-Champaign is hosting a free online event, which will bring together speakers, who each represent different experiences and perspectives. The speakers will discuss their respective approaches to sharing the Way of Tea, […]

Apr
17

2024

Daniel After Babylon: Author Jennie Grillo in Conversation with Paul Dilley on the Additions in the History of Interpretation

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join SoFCB Senior Fellows Jennie Grillo and Paul Dilley for a conversation about Grillo’s book Daniel After Babylon. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 17 April 2024. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

Jennie Grillo is the Tisch Family Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, working in the field of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. […]

Mar
7

2024

Book Anatomy: Author Amy Gore in Conversation with Dan Radus on Body Politics and the Indigenous Materiality of Book History

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join SoFCB Senior Fellows Amy Gore and Dan Radus for a conversation about Gore’s book Book Anatomy: Body Politics and Materiality in Indigenous Book History. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 7 March 2024. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

Amy Gore is an SoFCB Senior Fellow and an Assistant Professor of English at North Dakota State University, […]

Feb
27

2024

Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Author Marissa Nicosia in Conversation with Andrew Bricker on Historical Futures, 1590–1660

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join SoFCB Senior Fellows Marissa Nicosia and Andrew Bricker for a conversation about Nicosia’s book Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 27 February 2024. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

Marissa Nicosia is Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature at The Pennsylvania State University–Abington College and an SoFCB Senior Fellow at Rare Book School. […]

Jan
31

2024

Money Matters in Archives & Special Collections: Managing Budgets

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Rare Book School’s Mellon Fellows for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage invite you to a two-part, virtual workshop series on salary negotiation and managing funds and budgets.

Workshop #2: Managing Budgets
Advanced registration is required; to register, please click here.

Workshop #1: Salary Negotiation (Jan. 25)
For more information and to register, please click here.

The stand-alone workshops are open to all but will be aimed at BIPOC workers and students, providing tools to navigate financial management in your institutions and to advocate for yourselves and your collections. […]

Jan
25

2024

Money Matters in Archives & Special Collections: Salary Negotiation

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Rare Book School’s Mellon Fellows for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage invite you to a two-part, virtual workshop series on salary negotiation and managing funds and budgets.

Workshop #1: Salary Negotiation
Advanced registration is required; to register, please click here.

Workshop #2: Managing Budgets (Jan. 31)
For more information and to register, please click here.

The stand-alone workshops are open to all but will be aimed at BIPOC workers and students, providing tools to navigate financial management in your institutions and to advocate for yourselves and your collections. […]

Jan
11

2024

In Visible Archives: Author Margaret Galvan in Conversation with Alison Fraser on Queer and Feminist Culture in the 1980s

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join principal investigator and SoFCB Senior Fellow Margaret Galvan and interviewer Alison Fraser for a conversation about Galvan’s book In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s (University of Minnesota Press, 2023). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 11 January 2024. […]

Dec
14

2023

Unstable Archives: Principal Investigator Megan Robb in Conversation with Yael Rice

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join principal investigator and SoFCB Senior Fellow Megan Robb and interviewer Yael Rice for a conversation about Robb’s project Unstable Archives, a born-digital archive connected to the life of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel (1758–1822), a Mughal woman who lived with and bore children by the first Company Supervisor of Purnea. Robb worked with the descendants of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel in England to digitize her archive of letters, penmanship notebook, jewelry, miniature painting, and textiles. Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session, moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books and projects in critical bibliography, […]

Dec
5

2023

The Circulating Lifeblood of Ideas: Author Holly Borham in Conversation with Aaron Hyman

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Holly Borham and interviewer Aaron Hyman for a conversation about Borham’s book, The Circulating Lifeblood of Ideas: Leo Steinberg’s Library of Prints (Blanton Museum, 2023). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Beth Yale. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 5 December 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording. […]

Nov
15

2023

Reimagining Christendom: Author Joel Anderson in Conversation with Damian Fleming on Iceland’s Bishops and the Roman Church

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Joel Anderson and interviewer Damian Fleming for a conversation about Anderson’s book Reimagining Christendom: Writing Iceland’s Bishops into the Roman Church, 1200–1350 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on 15 November 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording. […]

Nov
2

2023

Communication, Technology, and Environment in the Indian Ocean World

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
Zoom

Join the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School (SoFCB) for a free virtual symposium, which will explore lithographic printing, and its materials and production processes in a nineteenth-century Malay world (1826–1900).

This event was held on 2 November 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

The eastward diffusion of lithographic technology in the nineteenth century–specifically on a hand press–was not a clean, linear historical process. In Batavia, for instance, the earliest known lithographic hand press was initially imported by Dutch missionaries in 1826. […]

Oct
25

2023

Informational Session (2023): M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

Presented by: Rare Book School
Zoom

The M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources is now accepting applications. Prospective applicants were invited to attend an informational session via Zoom in October 2023 to learn more about the Lang Fellowship and the application process. This informational session included an opportunity for Q&A with Rare Book School’s Director of Programs & Education Laura Perrings and Program Manager Evan Cheney. Scroll down for more information about the Lang Fellowship, including how to apply.

You are invited to watch the recording of the informational session below via our RBS YouTube channel. […]

Oct
13

2023

Immersive Collections Symposium: Diversifying Narratives through Embodied Learning

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
Swarthmore College, McCabe Library (in person only, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania)

Join the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School (SoFCB), Swarthmore Libraries, and the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies for a free, in-person event. Four speakers from diverse backgrounds will describe how they use cutting-edge technology to create Virtual and Augmented Reality applications that showcase understudied collections at their academic institutions.

This event was held on 13 October 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

Synatra Smith is a Black eXpeRience researcher and sits at the intersection of researcher; […]

Oct
12

2023

Archives & Political Processes: A Case Study on the H-3 Freeway History

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom and In Person (Windward Community College Library, 45-720 Keaʻahala Rd, Kāneohe, HI 96744, Library Conference Room 304/305)

How do we understand federal, state, and grassroots political processes in Hawaiʻi? What is the purpose of reflecting on conflicting political views that shape Hawaiʻi’s present? How can archives and libraries play a role in reflecting back on our past to raise broad-based discussion on what we do with these histories in the present and future?

Join this free hybrid symposium of archival and library workers, and community leaders, as we launch a curated online resource on the political processes behind the construction of the H-3 freeway. This event is co-sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, […]

Oct
2

2023

A Conversation with Corinna Zeltsman: The Politics of Print and Paper

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
On Zoom and in person at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1120 Van Hise Hall)

Join the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School (SoFCB) for a hybrid event, during which Corinna Zeltsman, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University, discussed her most recent book, Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (University of California Press, 2021). She also talked about her new research project on the history of paper in Mexico, her experiences with the material and affective properties of archives, and teaching students about archival materials.

This event was held on 2 October 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording. […]

Sep
15

2023

Building Community, Continuing the Legacy: A Rosenwald Schools of Tennessee Symposium

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Appleton Room, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee (in person only)

Join the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School for two in-person panels, as part of a larger symposium at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. This event, which is free and open to the public, will explore the history and legacy of the Rosenwald schools and the communities that built and preserved them.

All are welcome; however, advanced registration is required. To register (and to learn more information about the larger symposium), please click here.

Session #1: Community Curation and Digitization
2:00–3:00 p.m. […]

May
24

2023

Collective Voices: Online Community Archives on Cuba and Its Diaspora

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Join the Cuban Heritage Collection and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School for a virtual panel discussion with community archivists working to document the diverse experiences of Cuba and its diaspora. Speakers will discuss their efforts to preserve the experiences of LGBTQ and Afro-Cuban communities, as well as documentation of post-revolution material culture on the island. The conversation will be moderated by Amanda T. Moreno (M.S.L.I.S./M.A.), Interim Esperanza Bravo de Varona Chair and Archivist of the Cuban Heritage Collection. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A session. […]

Apr
21

2023

Preserving and Analyzing Digital Texts

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join us for a virtual symposium exploring the materiality and historical value of digital texts, with special attention paid to methods for preservation and analysis.

This event was held on Zoom on 21 April 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

James A. Hodges is Assistant Professor in the San José State University School of Information, where he studies digital archives and preservation with a particular focus on the history of computing. His current book project uses digital forensics to uncover the technical legacy of 1960s counterculture in early multimedia software. […]

Mar
29

2023

Continental England: Author Elizaveta Strakhov in Conversation with Zachary Hines on Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years’ War

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Elizaveta Strakhov and interviewer Zachary Hines for a conversation about Strakhov’s book Continental England: Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years’ War (Ohio State UP, 2022). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held on Zoom on 29 March 2023. […]

Mar 23
/
Mar 24

2023

New Directions in Indigenous Book History

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

After the ten-year anniversary of Phillip Round’s Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663–1880 (2010) and at the 20th anniversary of Louise Erdrich’s Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003), the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) held a two-day virtual symposium, during which national and international scholars offered analyses, reflections, and provocations on the material book’s historical and continuing relation to Indigenous peoples and communities.

We also took the occasion to mark the flourishing—though still nascent—field of scholarship on the materialities of the Indigenous book and the productive interventions such scholarship has made into the traditionally settler-oriented fields of bibliography, […]

Mar
22

2023

Books of Unusual Size: Big Data and Tiny Books

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
University of Utah

Alexa Sand, Professor of Art History at Utah State University, talks about recent research that combines quantitative analysis of manuscript sizes with historical patterns of making and use. In other words, why does the size of manuscripts matter?

This event was held on 22 March 2023. See below for a link to the YouTube recording.

Alexa Sand is Professor of Art History at Utah State University, where she also serves as the Associate Vice President for Research. Her own research addresses the intersection of word and image in later medieval art in France, […]

Mar
13

2023

Reparative Description in Action Workshop

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

Join the Workshop Working Group of Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage for a virtual workshop addressing the importance of repairing archival descriptions through the use of ethical approaches. The practice of reparative description seeks to address harmful practices that not only continue to erase and marginalize the histories of communities of color, but also the existing structures that force users to search through archives with negative search terms. Archivist Stephen R. Curley and librarian Jennifer Garcon, Ph.D., discuss their experiences with metadata remediation. The workshop seeks to educate archivists, librarians, fellows, community members, […]

Feb
9

2023

“Finding Your People” Panel Discussion

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School
Zoom

The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School and the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Special Collections Library invite you to attend a special virtual event, “Finding Your People: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future of Documenting Black Families in Special Collections and Archives.”

The Black family, its structure, representation, and characteristics seem to be a near constant topic of question and conjecture in our society. What role do archives play in these discussions and our understanding of the Black family? This panel discussion will bring together faculty researchers and archival practitioners to discuss the representation of Black families in the archive as well as the history and impact of collecting. […]

Feb
9

2023

RBS Spring Open House

UVA's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

Rare Book School will host a spring open house on Thursday, 9 February 2023, 1:30–3:30 p.m., at UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

The event is free and open to the public. All members of the UVA and Charlottesville communities are invited to attend. The event will be held in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (first floor) located on UVA’s Central Grounds. Attendees can learn about the RBS-UVA Fellowship, Presswork Fellowship, and RBS’s five-day, hands-on courses on book history, as well as print a keepsake on one of our historical presses. […]

Feb
6

2023

2023–24 RBS-UVA Fellowship Informational Session

Presented by: Rare Book School
Zoom

Prospective applicants to the RBS-UVA Fellowship Program are invited to join Rare Book School for an informational session, featuring a discussion with past RBS-UVA Fellows about their work in the program.

The free Zoom session is scheduled for Monday, 6 February 2023, 3-4 p.m. ET. Everyone is welcome to attend, but advance registration is required. Click here to register. Registrants will receive the Zoom link via email by 6 February.

RBS-UVA Fellowship

Thanks to a generous grant made possible by The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of the UVA Alumni Association, Rare Book School invites students at the University of Virginia to apply for a fellowship designed to enhance UVA student research employing special collections, […]

Dec
13

2022

Indigenuity: Author Caroline Wigginton in Conversation with Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez on Native Craftwork and the Art of American Literatures

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Caroline Wigginton and interviewer Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez for a conversation about Wigginton’s book Indigenuity: Native Craftwork and the Art of American Literatures (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

This event was held via Zoom on 13 December 2022. […]

Dec
2

2022

“Who Painted the Lion?” Talking Back in/as Literature

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Manhattan Public Library, 629 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS 66502

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath boldly questions the validity of female gender expectations by asking, “Who painted the lion, tell me who?” She ultimately concludes that men are the ones who construct ideals of female passivity and submissiveness. Taking its title from the Wife of Bath’s query, this symposium explores how we can recover the lives and labors of underrepresented people in print culture.

The symposium, which is free and in person, will take place at the Manhattan Public Library, 629 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS 66502.

Two keynote speakers will address and model how we can give a voice to people usually excluded from our grand cultural narratives:

Dr. […]

Nov 11
/
Nov 13

2022

RBS at the Boston Book Fair

Presented by: RBS
Hynes Convention Center

If you’ll be in Boston for the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (11–13 November), please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 431 (floor plan), with more information about our courses and fellowships.

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Associate Director & Curator of Collections Barbara Heritage, Director of Development Adam Miller, and Director of Communications & Outreach Laura Eidam will all be at the Fair, at the RBS table, and around the show floor. We look forward to seeing many RBS friends in Boston! […]

Nov
4

2022

Building the Book: Makers, Teachers, Collectors

Presented by: RBS
Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022

Registration for attending the symposium in person at the Grolier Club has filled. However, you may click here to register for a live stream of the symposium.

A symposium, free and open to the public, held 4 November 2022 in person at the Grolier Club, as well as online, in conjunction with the exhibition Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press

Co-chaired by Barbara Heritage & Ruth-Ellen St. Onge
Supported by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, […]

Nov
1

2022

Informational Session: M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

Presented by: RBS
Zoom

Rare Book School (RBS) is now offering an exciting fellowship opportunity for those teaching undergraduates about book history: the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources. The Lang Fellowship is a two-year program designed to animate humanities teaching and equip educators at liberal arts colleges and small universities (i.e., 5,000 or fewer undergraduates) in the United States to enlarge their students’ historical sensibilities through bibliographically informed instruction with original historical sources. The deadline to apply is Thursday, 1 December 2022, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Rare Book School invites everyone interested in applying to attend a free informational Zoom session about the program on Tuesday, […]

Oct
25

2022

Eusebius the Evangelist: Author Jeremiah Coogan in Conversation with Joseph A. Howley on Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Jeremiah Coogan and interviewer Joseph A. Howley for a conversation about Coogan’s book Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2022). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. Advance registration is required; […]

Oct
15

2022

Guided Tour of the Asian Books in “Building the Book” & Chinese Calligraphy Demonstration

Presented by: Soren Edgren & Weiguo Yu
Grolier Club (ground-floor gallery), 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022

Join Soren Edgren, an internationally recognized expert on Chinese rare books and member of Rare Book School’s faculty, for a guided tour of the Asian materials in “Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press.” The tour will discuss early Chinese, Japanese, and Korean printing, drawing on rare original materials, as well as replicas of unique historical items. It will conclude with a calligraphy demonstration by Weiguo Yu, a Chinese artist and seal engraver.

Space is limited, […]

Oct
14

2022

In-person tour of the “Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day” exhibition at the Grolier Club

Presented by: Barbara Heritage & Ruth-Ellen St. Onge
Grolier Club (ground-floor gallery), 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022

Join the Grolier Club for an in-person tour of Rare Book School’s exhibition, “Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press,” led by co-curators and RBS staff members Barbara Heritage and Ruth-Ellen St. Onge on Friday, 14 October 2022, 1–2:00 p.m. ET. Space is limited, and advance registration is required to participate in the tour. Click here to register.

The exhibit runs in the Grolier Club’s ground-floor gallery 28 September through 23 December 2022.

Visiting The Grolier Club

47 East 60th Street, […]

Oct
5

2022

Book Collecting in Timbuktu

Presented by: M. C. Lang Fellows in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources
Online via Zoom and in person at Williams College

Everyone is invited to “Book Collecting in Timbuktu,” a free public lecture by Prof. Shamil Jeppie (University of Cape Town) that surveys five centuries of collecting in Timbuktu, a town in the interior of West Africa that has come to symbolize a larger world of learning and book culture in the region. This lecture follows citations in texts written in the town in the sixteenth century, book borrowing and copying, through to a major collector of the early twentieth century who both attempted to conserve the manuscript book tradition and imported printed books to Timbuktu.

Shamil Jeppie is associate professor at the University of Cape Town, […]

Sep
30

2022

“Interesting Stuff! Techniques and Approaches to Research with Paper” Junior Fellow Symposium

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

For centuries, we have relied on paper to share information, to preserve knowledge, and to illustrate the world around us. But paper itself carries its own stories about the production and circulation of art and knowledge. What, then, can we learn when we attend to the materiality of paper? Bringing together artists, conservators, and scholars from a variety of disciplines, Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) invites you to a conversation about the unavoidable, bedeviling, and fascinating fibrous stuff of paper.

This event was held via Zoom on 30 September 2022. […]

May
6

2022

“Diagrams: Materials and Methods” Junior Fellow Symposium

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) and the University of Houston School of Art’s Program in Art History invite you to attend a panel discussion about diagrams, materials, and methods.

Simplified, schematic, abstract. Diagrammatic representation offers an attenuated impression of the physical world. Yet diagrams are themselves physical artifacts—manufactured objects with a material history that has informed their production, use, and interpretation. Bringing together scholars and artists whose work engages the material history of the diagram, this panel explores the tension between abstraction and materiality at the heart of every diagrammatic practice. […]

Apr
12

2022

Libel and Lampoon: Author Andrew Bricker in Conversation with Marissa Nicosia on Satire in the English Courts, 1670–1792

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Join author Andrew Bricker and interviewer Marissa Nicosia for a conversation about Bricker’s book Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670–1792 (Oxford University Press, 2022). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. Advance registration is required; to register, […]

Mar
23

2022

“Resistance: Reflections on Power and Solidarity in BIPOC Archives” Panel Discussion

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School: Outreach Working Group
Zoom

The Outreach Working Group of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School invites you to attend a panel discussion on BIPOC stories of resistance from archives across the United States. The discussion will highlight communities featured in a zine titled RESISTANCE: reflections on power and solidarity in BIPOC archives, created by the group’s members.

This virtual panel discussion is free and open to the public. Everyone is welcome to attend, but advance registration is required. Click here to register. Registration closes at 9 a.m. […]

Mar
22

2022

“Advocating for Ourselves: Working in Underrepresented and Multicultural Archives and Libraries” Book Launch and Panel Discussion

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School: Advocacy Working Group
Zoom

The Advocacy Working Group of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School is hosting a panel discussion and launch of a peer-reviewed, open-source book, Advocating for Ourselves: Working in Underrepresented and Multicultural Archives and Libraries. Advocating for Ourselves is a practical guide that aims to develop and improve the advocacy skills of those working in the cultural heritage sector. The book includes resources on topics such as developing collections and exhibits for and about underrepresented communities, organizing community outreach, establishing post-custodial archival methods, becoming mentors, […]

Mar
19

2022

“Bibliography on Baker Street” Workshop

Presented by: Barbara Heritage, Glen Miranker & Laura Perrings
Grolier Club of New York

Rare Book School is pleased to announce a workshop being held in conjunction with Glen Miranker’s exhibition of his Sherlockian collection at the Grolier Club of New York, Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects. RBS staff members Barbara Heritage and Laura Perrings are leading the workshop, which is titled “Bibliography on Baker Street.” Drawing on moments such as the watermark detection scene in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” the workshop is designed around a Holmes-like scenario and a series of antiquarian items allowing participants to use bibliographical methods to piece together evidence historical (and criminal!) in nature.

The workshop is free of charge and limited to twelve participants. […]

Mar
3

2022

RBS-UVA Fellowship Programs: Informational Session

Presented by: Rare Book School
Zoom

Prospective applicants to the RBS-UVA Fellowship Program and RBS-UVA Presswork Fellowship Program are invited to join Rare Book School for an informational session about both opportunities, featuring a discussion with past RBS-UVA Fellows about their work in the program. The session is scheduled for Thursday, 3 March 2022, 3–4:00 p.m. ET via Zoom.

Everyone is welcome to attend, but advance registration is required. Click here to register, and expect more information, including the Zoom link, via email closer to Thursday, 3 March.

RBS-UVA Fellowship

Thanks to a generous grant made possible by The Jefferson Trust, […]

Dec
1

2021

M. C. Lang Fellowship: Informational Session

Presented by: RBS Director of Programs & Education
Zoom

The M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources is now accepting applications for its third cohort (2022–23). This two-year program is designed to animate humanities teaching by equipping educators to inculcate wonder in their students by enlarging the students’ understanding of original historical sources. Lang Fellows take two RBS courses (with free tuition and a $1,500 stipend for travel, room, and board), and learn how to use special collections resources to teach undergraduates to understand and interpret textual historical objects as evidence of the people and culture that produced them and those that have encountered them since. […]

Nov
16

2021

Ink under the Fingernails: Author Corinna Zeltsman in Conversation with Alex Hidalgo on Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

A presentation followed by Q&A scheduled for Tuesday, 16 November 2021, 5:00–6:00 p.m. ET, via Zoom

Join Corinna Zeltsman and Alex Hidalgo for a conversation about Zeltsman’s book (University of California Press, 2021). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

Corinna Zeltsman is assistant professor of history at Georgia Southern University. […]

Nov
11

2021

Reading In and Out of Order in the Roman Mediterranean (SoFCB Junior Fellow Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Jeremiah Coogan (Oxford University), Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB), is hosting a panel discussion and workshop, “Reading In and Out of Order in the Roman Mediterranean.” This event will bring together scholars of classics, early Judaism, and early Christianity to explore what it meant to read “in order” in the Roman Mediterranean.

Readers in the early centuries C.E. used a variety of conceptual strategies (e.g., pedagogy, sortilege, lectionaries) and material technologies (e.g., sectioning, tables of contents, cross-references) to orient encounters with written texts. These practices invite us to interrogate broader ideas of “order”—of language, […]

Oct
15

2021

Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography: Junior Fellows Program Informational Session

Presented by: SoFCB fellows and RBS staff
Zoom

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography will shortly begin inviting applications to its fifth cohort (2022–2024), which will be selected in early 2022. This program offers unique professional development opportunities for early career, United States-based scholars working across disciplines to advance the study of texts, images, and artifacts as material objects.

As part of the program, selected fellows will receive:

tuition waivers for two Rare Book School courses
seminars on critical bibliography
an opportunity to participate in one bibliographical field school
funding to organize a symposium at their home institution

Prospective applicants are invited to attend the SoFCB Informational Session via Zoom on 15 October 2021, […]

Oct
11

2021

The Power of the Brush: Author Hwisang Cho in Conversation with Ben Nourse on Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

A presentation followed by Q&A scheduled for Monday, 11 October 2021, 12–1:00 p.m. ET, via Zoom

Owing to Zoom’s restrictions, this live-only event is limited to the first 300 people who register.

Join author Hwisang Cho and RBS faculty member Ben Nourse for a conversation about Cho’s book The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020). Following this conversation, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session moderated by Holly Borham. This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, […]

Sep
20

2021

Special Issue Launch: “Religion and Material Texts in the Americas” (SoFCB Senior Symposium)

Presented by: Sonia Hazard, Senior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

Sonia Hazard, Senior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB), SoFCB Council member, and guest editor of a special issue of Material Religion on “Religion and Material Texts in the Americas,” is hosting a celebration and presentation of the issue, with Q&A, via Zoom on Monday, 20 September 2021, 1:00–2:45 PM EDT. The event is sponsored by the Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Center for the Study of Visual and Material Cultures of Religion, and the Florida State University Department of Religion. […]

Aug
31

2021

RBS-Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellowship Informational Session

Presented by: Marian Toledo Candelaria, Program Manager, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage, along with several Cultural Heritage Fellows
Zoom

The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School is now inviting applications to its third and final cohort (2022–2024), which will be selected in early 2022 (with applications opening 1 September 2021). This program offers unique professional development opportunities for early- to mid-career professionals currently working in a special collections library, an archive, or at other cultural heritage institutions located in the United States.

As part of the program, selected fellows will receive:

tuition waivers for three Rare Book School courses;
funding to attend the annual conference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries in the first year of the fellowship;

[…]

Mar
5

2021

Rare Book School Summer 2021 Q&A

Presented by: Laura Perrings, Director of Programs & Laura Eidam, Program Manager
Zoom

A 60-minute Q&A session scheduled for Friday, 5 March 2021,12:00–1:00 p.m. ET, via Zoom.

Owing to Zoom’s restrictions, this event is limited to the first 300 people who register. The event will be recorded and made available for viewing on the RBS YouTube channel.

Do you have questions about how to apply for courses, how to redeem your scholarship or fellowship for more than one course, or what to expect this summer from Rare Book School? If so, please join Laura Perrings and Laura Eidam (Director of Programs & Education and Program Manager respectively) for a live Q&A session on Zoom. […]

Feb
5

2021

Fluxus Forms: Author Natilee Harren in Conversation with Elizabeth Eager on Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

A 40-minute presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q&A which was held Friday, 5 February 2021, 3:00–4:00 p.m. ET, via Zoom.

Join Natilee Harren and Elizabeth Eager for a conversation about Harren’s book Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network (University of Chicago Press, 2020). This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, and is sponsored by Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB).

Natilee Harren is a scholar of modern and contemporary art history and theory, […]

Nov
18

2020

Forbidden Knowledge: Author Hannah Marcus in Conversation with Nick Wilding on Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
Zoom

A 40-minute presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q&A scheduled for Wednesday, 18 November 2020, 3:00–4:00 p.m. ET, via Zoom.

Owing to Zoom’s restrictions, this event is limited to the first 300 people who register. The event will be recorded and made available for viewing on the RBS YouTube channel.

Join author Hannah Marcus and RBS faculty member Nick Wilding for a conversation about Marcus’s book Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2020). This event is part of a series celebrating new books in critical bibliography, […]

May 18
/
Nov 20

2020

RBS Online

Presented by: Rare Book School
Please visit RBS Online to learn how to register for our various events.

RBS Online is now offering a varied series of free digital programs centered on bibliography and the history of the book. These programs will focus on the study of textual artifacts and their crucial role in shaping understandings of cultural heritage and informing humanistic research. The offerings include five series: a Course-Related Content Series offered by RBS faculty members that will be available to students who were enrolled at RBS this summer in some cases and, in others, open to wider audiences; a Panel Discussion Series, featuring RBS faculty members and colleagues from the broader book community; […]

Mar 5
/
Mar 8

2020

RBS at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair

Presented by: Rare Book School
Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY

If you’ll be in New York for the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (5-8 March 2020), please be sure to keep an eye out for Rare Book School staff. RBS’s Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Associate Director & Curator of Collections Barbara Heritage, Assistant Curator of Collections Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, Director of Programs & Education Laura Perrings, and Program Manager Laura Eidam will all be at the Fair around the show floor. We look forward to seeing many RBS friends in New York! […]

Feb
6

2020

Rare Book School Spring Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

RBS-UVA Presswork Fellows will host a spring open house on Thursday, 6 February 2020, 10–1 pm. All members of the Charlottesville community are invited to attend this information reception to learn about the RBS-UVA Fellowships, Presswork Fellowships, and RBS’s five-day, hands-on courses on book history. The event will be held in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (first floor) located on UVA’s Central Grounds. Light refreshments will be served, and participants can print a keepsake on one of our historical presses.

This event is sponsored by the Jefferson Trust, an initiative of UVA’s Alumni Association. […]

Dec
7

2019

Presswork Holiday Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, South Gallery

As UVA’s fall semester draws to a close, RBS-UVA Presswork Fellows will host a holiday open house on Saturday, 7 December 2019, from 2–4 pm. The event will celebrate the history of hand-press printing, and will make use of the historical replica printing presses in the South Gallery of the Mary and David Harrison Institute/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library located on UVA’s Central Grounds. All are welcome to join us for seasonally inspired refreshments, and to come and print a keepsake of a wintry poem on the common press, as well as a snowflake impression on the rolling press. […]

Nov 15
/
Nov 17

2019

RBS at the Boston Book Fair

Presented by: RBS
Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA

If you’ll be in Boston for the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (15–17 November), please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 613 (floor plan), with printed copies of our summer 2020 schedule, &c.

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Associate Director & Curator of Collections Barbara Heritage, Assistant Curator of Collections Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, Director of Communications & Outreach Jeremy Dibbell, Director of Programs & Education Laura Perrings, and Program Manager Laura Eidam will all be at the Fair, […]

Nov 11
/
Nov 12

2019

RBS Seminar: Exploring Ephemera (10–12 November)

Presented by: Catharine Dann Roeber, Jeanne Solensky, Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire, Emily Guthrie, Jesse R. Erickson, Rebecca Johnson Melvin, and Mark Samuels Lasner
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware Library, Museums & Press

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-day seminar at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware Library on Monday and Tuesday 11–12 November 2019, preceded by a group dinner on Sunday, 10 November.

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators, collectors, and librarians of all kinds who care for, research, and teach with ephemera collections, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend the seminar is $500.

As space is limited, signup for the seminar will be handled on a first-come, […]

Oct
23

2019

RBS Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

All are welcome at Rare Book School’s fall open house, scheduled for Wednesday, 23 October 2019.

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy hot cider and light snacks and conversation with the RBS staff for this final public event in our current suite in Alderman Library

We hope to see you there! […]

Oct
4

2019

Off Script: Global Books and Textual Technologies (SoFCB Program)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography; Hightower Fund, Emory College of Arts and Sciences; Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library; The Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry; Emory Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures; Emory Korean Studies Program; Emory East Asian Studies Program; Emory Department of English; Emory Department of Art History; Emory Department of History; Georgia State University Department of History
Stuart A. Rose Library, Emory University

This one-day symposium in Emory University’s Woodruff Library brings innovative research in global book history to Atlanta. The event aims to foster the intellectual community of scholars working on book-related research in the Southeast, a region which, despite strong institutional holdings in a range of fields and areas, has generally been underrepresented in book history. Invited speakers will share current research and model pedagogical applications of critical bibliography in the global history of printing and the book. For further information, contact symposium co-organizers Hwisang Cho (hwisang.cho@emory.edu), Nick Wilding (nwilding@gsu.edu), or Corinna Zeltsman (czeltsman@georgiasouthern.edu).

Symposium schedule:

12:00–12:15 p.m. […]

Sep
25

2019

Binders in a Bind: Making Books in an Age of Print (SoFCB Program)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Bean Distinguished Lecturer Series, and the Saint Anselm College Dean Speakers' Fund
Perini Lecture Hall, Saint Anselm College

A lecture by Aaron Pratt, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books & Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

While the advent of the European printing press in the 1450s mechanized book production in Europe, bookbinding remained a static, handcrafted technology long after the transition from manuscript to print. In the study of early print technology in the West, scholars tend to neglect bookbinding practices when telling the story of the transition from manuscript to print. This lecture will discuss how bookbinding technologies gradually adapted to print culture in early modern England, […]

Apr 23
/
Apr 24

2019

Muslims & Manuscripts (SoFCB Program)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Princeton University Department of Art & Archaeology, Department of Religion, Department of Near Eastern Studies
Princeton University

Tuesday, 23 April, 6:30 p.m.
The Message & the Messengers: Artistic Illustrations of the Qur’an and the Prophets in Islamic Manuscripts
Betts Auditorium, Architecture Building, Princeton University

Dr. Tehseen Thaver, Assistant Professor of Religion, Princeton University
Dr. Christiane Gruber, Professor and Associate Chair, History of Art, University of Michigan

Listen to an audio recording of this session.

featuring Firestone Library’s collection

Wednesday, 24 April, 5:00 p.m.
The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts & […]

Apr
20

2019

Presswork Earth Week Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, South Gallery

To celebrate Earth Week, come join Presswork fellows and local printers to print an Earth Week-themed broadside that you can share or give to your friends and family. All are welcome to “fly” the common press—a wooden replica of an eighteenth-century printing press—in the South Gallery of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

Food and drink will be served. Individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are welcome to participate and learn more about the history of printing.

The event is sponsored by the Jefferson Trust, an initiative of UVA’s Alumni Association. […]

Apr 12
/
Apr 13

2019

The Futures of Handwriting (SoFCB Conference)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections, The Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society, the Department of Comparative Humanities and the Department of English at the University of Louisville, and in collaboration with The Filson Historical Society
University of Louisville

The reintroduction of cursive into elementary classrooms; the persistence of the stylus in digital reading practices and technologies; the dependence in law and history on handwritten documentary evidence; the changing modes through which consent is inscribed and recorded in official documents and elsewhere; the presence of the “handwritten” in poems, artist’s books and digital typeface plugins; the adoption of handwriting practices by recovery communities; the declarations of nostalgia for personal connection signified by the handwritten letter. These are just a few of the uses of handwriting that mark a time of digital media shift. But what is new or transformative regarding this “old” media practice? […]

Mar
25

2019

Making & Teaching: Printing Technologies at Work (Presswork Symposium)

Presented by: Rare Book School, UVA Library, the McIntire Department of Art, and Virginia Humanities
Rare Book School (118 Alderman Library) & the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

A public symposium jointly sponsored by Rare Book School, UVA Library, the McIntire Department of Art, and Virginia Humanities as part of Presswork, a project funded by The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of UVA’s Alumni Association.

The history of the book is, in many ways, the history of technology—a study of the invention and development of special tools, machines, techniques, and crafts for manufacturing texts. Yet few people ever have the chance to try their own hand at using a printing press, or ever see how printing type is cast and made.

Rare Book School invites members of the University and surrounding community to participate in a symposium, […]

Mar
15

2019

Classical Quotation (SoFCB Workshop)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
MIT Building 2, Room 102

An afternoon of presentations and discussion on topics related to quotation and the classical tradition, including excerpting, annotating, commonplacing, and commentary, both in and of ancient Greek and Latin texts, from antiquity to today. Featuring Joel Christensen (Brandeis), Hannah Čulik-Baird (BU), Stephanie Frampton (MIT), and Leah Whittington (Harvard), with responses from Ann Blair (Harvard) and Hannah Marcus (Harvard). All are welcome. […]

Mar
5

2019

Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature (SoFCB Lecture)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Book Studies at Wellesley, the Friends of the Wellesley University Library, the Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and Wellesley Departments of French and History
Library Lecture Room, Clapp Library, Wellesley College

A Lecture by Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor Emeritus and University Librarian Emeritus, Harvard University

The difficulty with the history of censorship is that it looks so simple: it pits oppression against freedom of expression. But if one looks harder, it appears more complicated—and full of surprises. How did censors actually do their work? How did they understand it? And how did it fit into the surrounding social and political context? By studying the day-to-day operations of censors under three authoritarian regimes—Bourbon France in the eighteenth century, British India in the nineteenth century, and Communist East Germany in the twentieth century—it is possible to rethink our understanding of censorship in general. […]

Feb
7

2019

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Dec 12
/
Dec 14

2018

RBS Seminar: Digital Sustainability for Cultural Collections (12–14 December 2018)

Presented by: Nancy Y. McGovern & Kari R. Smith
MIT Libraries, Building NE36, Room 6002 at 105 Broadway (Cambridge, MA)

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-and-a-half-day seminar at the MIT Libraries in Cambridge, MA (map) on Wednesday-Friday, 12–14 December 2018.

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators and librarians of all kinds who are or may become responsible for the long-term management of digital content, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend is $500.

As space is limited, signup for the seminar will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. The registration deadline will be 28 November, […]

Dec
8

2018

Presswork Winter Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, South Gallery

As UVA celebrates the change of season and the end of the fall semester, come join Presswork fellows and local printers to print a keepsake pamphlet that you can share or give to your friends and family. All are welcome to “fly” the common press and “steer” the rolling press—each wooden replicas of eighteenth-century printing presses—in the South Gallery of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

Festive food and drink will be served. Individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are welcome to participate and learn more about the history of printing.

The event is sponsored by the Jefferson Trust, […]

Oct
30

2018

RBS Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

All are welcome at Rare Book School’s fall open house, scheduled for Tuesday, 30 October 2018.

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
Print a letterpress keepsake
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy snacks and conversation with the RBS staff

We hope to see you there! […]

Sep
26

2018

Comic Books and Free Lunch!

Presented by: Ruth-Ellen St. Onge & Devon Shannahan
Dome Room, UVA Rotunda & 118 Alderman Library

Please join exhibition curators Ruth-Ellen St. Onge and Devon Shannahan in the Rotunda Dome Room at 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday 26 September for a special tour of the RBS exhibition Comics in Circuit. This collaborative exhibition considers the materiality of comic books and graphic novels while tracing how they travel from creators to publishers to readers and beyond.

The tour will be followed by a free lunch in the Rare Book School suite from 1:00 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Attendees will have a chance to receive a special comics-related grab bag stocked with items from Charlottesville’s premier independent comic book store, […]

Sep 9
/
Sep 11

2018

RBS Seminar: Exploring Ephemera

Presented by: Catharine Dann Roeber, Jeanne Solensky, Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire, Emily Guthrie, Jesse R. Erickson, Rebecca Johnson Melvin, and Mark Samuels Lasner
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware Library, Museums & Press

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-day seminar at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware on Monday and Tuesday 10–11 September 2018, preceded by a group dinner on Sunday, 9 September.

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators, collectors, and librarians of all kinds who care for, research, and teach with ephemera collections, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend the seminar is $500.

As space is limited, signup for the seminar will be handled on a first-come, […]

Sep
7

2018

Archives, Memory & Identity: A Public Symposium

Presented by: Rare Book School, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the UVA Library
Auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, UVA

During a time when “alternative facts” are regularly discussed and disputed in the mainstream media, archive-based evidence has become increasingly valued for its ability to document the histories and perspectives of diverse peoples, cultures, and movements. We invite you to join Rare Book School and the UVA Library for “Archives, Memory & Identity,” a public, one-day symposium that will bring together archivists, librarians, curators, digital humanists, academics, artists, and activists working on a range of cross-disciplinary, culturally sensitive projects that challenge traditional models for creating and stewarding visual and textual artifacts.

Featuring panel discussions on access, storytelling, and community outreach, […]

Jun
12

2018

“Comics in Circuit” Gallery Tour

Presented by: Ruth-Ellen St. Onge
Dome Room, UVA Rotunda

Join Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, Associate Curator of Collections at RBS, in the Dome Room of the UVA Rotunda for a talk and tour to mark the grand opening of the collaborative exhibition Comics in Circuit. An ice cream social will follow in the RBS Suite (118 Alderman Library). […]

May
22

2018

Women in a Golden Age of Artists’ Books (Roundtable)

Presented by: Center for Book Arts; Rare Book School; the New York City Chapter of the American Printing History Association; Small Editions Artist's Books; and Theta Chapter, Beta Phi Mu Honor Society, Pratt Institute School of Information
Center for Book Arts (28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor)

Three women who were pivotal in the development of offset-printed artists’ books discuss the past, present, and future of the unique visual form and transformative medium.

Apr 7
/
Apr 8

2018

RBS at the Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair

Presented by: Virginia Antiquarian Booksellers Association
Virginia Museum of History and Culture (Virginia Historical Society), Richmond

Join the Virginia Antiquarian Booksellers Association for the Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair! Rare Book School staff will be at the welcome table throughout the weekend, and we have partnered with VABA to organize several talks and demos on Saturday. […]

Feb
7

2018

RBS Open House & RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

All are welcome at Rare Book School’s winter open house, scheduled for Wednesday, 7 February 2018!

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
Print a letterpress keepsake
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy refreshments and conversation with the RBS staff

We hope to see you there! […]

Dec 11
/
Dec 12

2017

RBS Seminar: Digital Sustainability for Cultural Collections

Presented by: Nancy Y. McGovern & Kari R. Smith
MIT Libraries (Building 14, Room 132)

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-day seminar at the MIT Libraries (14N-132) in Cambridge, MA (map) on Monday and Tuesday, 11–12 December 2017 (just prior to the IEEE workshop Computational Archival Science: digital records in the age of big data).

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators and librarians of all kinds who are or may become responsible for the long-term management of digital content, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend the seminar is $500. […]

Nov
1

2017

RBS Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

All are welcome at Rare Book School’s fall open house, scheduled for Wednesday, 1 November 2017. Please join us as we celebrate 25 years of RBS at UVA!

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
Print a letterpress keepsake
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy coffee, donuts, and conversation with the RBS staff

We hope to see you there! […]

Oct
25

2017

Protest on the Page: Print as an Affordance for Revolutionary Spirits (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Department of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College
Boncheck College House, Franklin & Marshall College

Considering two early-twentieth century instances of print culture on the northwest coast, this lecture explores the ways the printed page can serve as an affordance for cycles of public and political appeal and remembrance. Juxtaposing the anti-colonial uses of a missionary printing press by Nisga’a printers with the marginalia in an Archbishop’s library of texts on psychic research, I show the changing meanings of the revolutionary spirit in a land of contested sovereignties.

Pamela Klassen is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She currently holds the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, […]

Oct 12
/
Oct 15

2017

Bibliography Among the Disciplines Conference

Presented by: Rare Book School and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Philadelphia, PA

Bibliography Among the Disciplines, a four-day international conference to be held in Philadelphia from 12 to 15 October 2017, will bring together scholarly professionals who are poised to address current problems pertaining to the study of textual artifacts that cross scholarly, pedagogical, professional, and curatorial domains. The conference will explore theories and methods common to the object-oriented disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology, but new to bibliography. The Bibliography Among the Disciplines program, supported by Rare Book School and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to promote focused cross-disciplinary exchange and future scholarly collaborations.

See the conference website for full schedule information and additional details. […]

Oct
10

2017

How to Get Modern with Scientific Images: Fritz Kahn, Pictured Knowledge and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity, 1916 to 1950 (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, UVA Departments of History, Art, English, and German
University of Virginia

[…]

Oct
6

2017

Writing Across Cultures in the Early Modern World (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the University of California Santa Cruz Institute for Humanities Research
University of California Santa Cruz, Humanities 1, Room 210

In the past decade, historians and literary scholars have become increasingly interested in the global circulation of the written word. Much of this scholarship has focused on the movement of printed books. Other projects, such as Stanford’s Mapping the Republic of Letters initiative, have traced epistolary networks that spanned continents and oceans. But what about the cross-cultural movement of textual artifacts that weren’t books or letters? This symposium will explore the limits of book history. At what point does an object shade into being a textual artifact? How can we make space for a less Eurocentric book history by following the itineraries of objects, […]

Sep
29

2017

Descriptive Cataloging of Japanese Prints in the Twenty-First Century (RBS-Mellon Workshop)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Portland Art Museum
Portland Art Museum

This workshop focuses on standards and best practices for descriptive terminology and cataloguing. Bringing together specialists of Japanese art with extensive experience in researching prints and books, we will consider how we describe, catalogue, and present these materials in American museums.

Although collections-information systems have become much more nimble over the past decades, a number of historical factors—including the adoption of different database systems (often by the same museum), the emphasis on Western art in the development of databases, and uneven cataloguing of Japanese print collections—can still impede research and scholarly collaboration. Directed toward spirited discussions among specialists, […]

Sep
28

2017

Reading Photographically Illustrated Texts (RBS-Mellon Workshop & Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, The Bancroft Library, the Jay D. McEvoy, Jr. Chair in American Art, and the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley
Bancroft Library and 308A Doe Library, UC Berkeley

“Alexander Gardner, Sketch Book, and the Transatlantic Sphere of Reform”
Dr. Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums
(5:00 p.m., 308A Doe Library, UC Berkeley).

A Workshop Drawing on Photography Books in The Bancroft Library’s Collections
Dr. Christine Hult-Lewis, Reva and David Logan Curatorial Assistant, The Bancroft Library
(10:00 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m., The Bancroft Library).

See the event website for additional details. […]

Sep 22
/
Sep 23

2017

Valuing the Premodern Fragment (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Dean's Office of the Klinger College of Arts and Sciences, Marquette University
Marquette University

This symposium will examine the different kinds of value that pre-1800 textual fragments possess, accrue and/or produce in and through their fragmentary nature. It will also examine the intellectual value with which we imbue the fragment, when we argue that it is or is not representative of a historical record, when we debate whether it testifies to extreme scarcity or extreme abundance, when we argue whether it does, fails to, or should perform the work of memorializing a “lost” moment.

Featuring manuscript historians and art historians from outside Marquette as well as members of Marquette’s own English, Theology, […]

Aug
31

2017

Cognition and the Hand: “Handy Books” in the History of Knowledge, the Book, and the Book Arts (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the University of Iowa Center for the Book, University of Iowa Special Collections, and Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa

2:00–3:15 p.m. “Distributed Cognition in Ancient Science” (Courtney Roby, Cornell University)
Room 2032 Main Library

3:30–4:45 p.m. “Art, Science, and the Mind in the Moveable Book Response and Roundtable Discussion” featuring Courtney Roby, Susan W. Cook (University of Iowa) & Kimberly A. Maher (University of Iowa)
Room 2032 Main Library

5:30–6:30 p.m. Handy Books Reception
K.K. Merker Gallery, North Hall

Handy Books is held in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name. An international array of artists have contributed new works of book art drawing upon ‘handy’ books held in University of Iowa Special Collections and Hardin Library for the Health Sciences as inspiration. […]

Jun
13

2017

Exhibition Tour with Katherine McNamara

Presented by: Katherine McNamara
Dome Room, UVA Rotunda

Even online publishing relies on physical archives. Join digital publisher Katherine McNamara, founding editor of Archipelago and Artist’s Proof Editions, in the Dome Room of the UVA Rotunda for a tour of an exhibition drawn from her archives: An Archipelago of Readers, Forming a Literary Culture in Digital Media. Incorporating a range of materials—from hard drives and CD-ROMs to original artworks, literary manuscripts, and publishers’ proofs—McNamara explores the tension between the physical and digital documents that constitute a digital publisher’s archive. A reception will follow in 118 Alderman Library. […]

Jun 1
/
Jun 2

2017

MATERIA: New Approaches to Material Text in the Roman World (RBS-Mellon Workshop)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Dean of the School of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT, in collaboration with the Institute for Digital Archaeology and the History of the Book at Harvard University
Houghton Library, Harvard University (1 June); MIT Building 2-105 (2 June)

MATERIA: New Approaches to Material Text in the Roman World is a day-long workshop presenting new research in the area of the ancient book in the Roman World, broadly conceived. This event brings together six speakers from across the country who work on different aspects of the intersection of classical text and material culture to present work in progress. Each speaker will have a significant block of time to present his/her findings, with ample time for questions and feedback from the audience and fellow panelists. Audience members are encouraged to come for the full day, throughout which refreshments will be provided. […]

May 4
/
May 5

2017

Paper Technologies: The Materiality of Empire & State Formation in Latin America (RBS-Mellon Conference)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Wesleyan University Department of History, the Wesleyan University Center for the Americas, the Wesleyan University Program in Latin American Studies, the Beinecke Library, and the Yale University Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies
Wesleyan University and Yale University

This two-day conference at Wesleyan and Yale Universities examines the material dimensions of empire and state formation in Latin America. It works to understand the political, legal, and cultural processes of empire and state formation in relation to concrete quotidian practices of inscription. Through the creation of artifacts such as printed books, manuscripts, passports, and other kinds of technologies, Iberian empires and post-colonial states took on tangible forms as they worked to regulate social relations on the ground. At the same time, subjects actively shaped empire and state making by engaging with paper in pursuit of their own hopes and dreams. […]

May
3

2017

Knowledge, Storage, and the History of Compression (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Critical Media Practice, Harvard University; Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University; History of the Book Seminar, Harvard University; Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
Room 133, Barker Center, Harvard University

Does compression have a history?

Alongside a cognitive challenge of “too much to know,” information overload poses a physical challenge of “too much to store.” Indeed, the possibilities of “big data” today are predicated on technologies that compress data into ever “smaller” sizes. On the one hand, major libraries such as the NYPL, coping with spatial shortage, have increasingly emphasized the provision of digital resources—shifting physical collections offsite, and in the process sparking heated debates with researchers. On the other hand, the possibilities of digital compression have given rise to a new imagination of the universal library. In the twenty-first century, […]

Apr
28

2017

Buddhist Book Cultures Symposium (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the University of Denver Department of Religious Studies, and the Marsico Visiting Scholars Program
Sturm 286, University of Denver

Please join the University of Denver Department of Religious Studies on Friday, 28 April for our Buddhist Book Cultures Symposium from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. in Sturm 286.

1:30–3:30 Panel 1: Buddhist Manuscript Cultures Across Asia, 9th–13th Centuries

Jinah Kim, Harvard University – Books on Pedestals: Buddhist Manuscripts & Their Function & Use in Medieval South Asia
Rae Erin Dachille, University of Arizona – Text as Image: Art History, Paleography, & the Material World of a Dunhuang Manuscript
Bryan Lowe, Vanderbilt University – Inscribing Orality: Performance & Production of a Homiletic Manuscript from 9th-Century Japan

3:15–4:45 Panel 2: Woodblocks, […]

Apr
21

2017

Object Lessons: Manuscript and the Print Devolution (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the University of Texas at Austin Department of English
Sinclair Suite, Texas Union 3.128, University of Texas at Austin

An oft-repeated narrative of epochal change posits that the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century was one that fundamentally—and immediately—propelled the medieval world into modernity. Scholarship on fifteenth-century manuscript production and the economies of the late-medieval book trade, however, reveals a complex and vibrant manuscript culture—networks of scribes, illuminators, and workshops, booksellers and readers—that did not simply cease to exist after the advent of print. The arrival of William Caxton’s press to England in 1476 would have introduced scales of production previously unknown in the country, but continuities in the format, decoration, and materials associated with book manufacture suggest that the production of handwritten documents need not have diminished. […]

Apr
21

2017

Eccentric Readings in East Asia (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Institute for Advanced Studies
West Lecture Hall, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University

Why did some people produce idiosyncratic texts that defied the norms of reading and writing of their period? How did these practices change social actors’ relationship to political or religious authorities? What information can we obtain from the nontextual elements of documents, and in what ways does this kind of information help us better understand the meanings of texts?

By exploring the important and rich textual tradition of East Asia, this half-day symposium hopes to expand our understanding of the relationship between written culture and sociocultural power. By focusing on material and nontextual aspects of premodern East Asian texts, […]

Apr
20

2017

The Medieval Bible in the Polarized World of American Religion (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Duke University Divinity School
0014 Westbrook Building, Duke Divinity School

The Duke Divinity School and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School sponsor a public lecture, “The Medieval Bible in the Polarized World of American Religion,” by Frans van Liere, Professor of History and Director of the Medieval Studies Program at Calvin College.

See the event website for additional details. […]

Apr 20
/
Apr 22

2017

Protestantism and the Materiality of Texts (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Princeton University Department of Art and Archaeology
Princeton University

See the event website for full schedule details. […]

Apr 20
/
Apr 22

2017

Protestantism and the Materiality of Texts (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Duke Graduate Program in Religion; Barney Jones Endowment of the Duke Department of Religious Studies; Princeton Graduate School; Princeton Center for the Study of Religion
Princeton University

From the days of the early reformers through the twenty-first century, Protestants have made voracious use of printed books and other media to spread a religion of the Word. For its vaunted emphasis on texts, Protestantism remains associated with words, thought, and private reading, as opposed to things, practices, and communal devotion. However, as scholars across the disciplines have demonstrated, texts are never only containers for words. Whether handwritten, printed, or typed on a screen, words and their meanings are entwined with material forms and embodied practices at every stage of their production, circulation, and reception.

The material bases of both Protestantism and textual media have been key sites of inquiry in the larger material turn in the humanities. […]

Apr 20
/
Apr 22

2017

Triangle Book History Symposium (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center (et al.)

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the National Humanities Center, the first Triangle Book History Symposium will take place on 20–22 April 2017 in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. The symposium brings together a diverse community of scholars and practitioners to share perspectives on the history of the book, broadly conceived. Through shared discussion and site visits to some of the unique collections and studios in the Triangle, the symposium aims to broaden the disciplinary interests of book history and to facilitate new collaborations among its participants, including from the National Humanities Center, […]

Apr
12

2017

Strange Alliances: Demons, Exorcists, and the Fight against Unbelief in Eighteenth-Century Italy (RBS-Mellon Lecture & Roundtable)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Bancroft Library; U.C. Berkeley Department of Italian Studies; U.C. Berkeley Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
370 Dwinelle Hall, U.C. Berkeley

Federico Barbierato of the University of Verona will deliver a lecture, “Strange Alliances: Demons, Exorcists, and the Fight against Unbelief in Eighteenth-Century Italy.”

Join us for Dr. Barbierato’s lecture, followed by a round table discussion with U.C. Berkeley faculty:

Thomas Dandelet, History
Diego Pirillo, Italian Studies
Jonathan Sheehan, History

See the event webpage for additional information. […]

Apr 6
/
Apr 7

2017

Bible Craft: Making and Remaking Scripture in Early Britain and America (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; the University of Arkansas Department of English; the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences; the University of Arkansas Honors College; the University of Arkansas' Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program and the Indigenous Studies Program
University of Arkansas

Featuring a keynote lecture on Thursday, 6 April at 5:15 p.m. by Frans van Liere of Calvin College, “The Bible as Book – The Bible as Text.”

A symposium will follow on Friday, 7 April.

See the event webpage for full schedule and additional information. […]

Apr
6

2017

Europe: A Literary History, 1559–1648 (RBS-Mellon Lecture & Roundtable)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Bancroft Library; U.C. Berkeley Departments of Italian Studies, English, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Spanish & Portuguese; U.C. Berkeley Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
370 Dwinelle Hall, U.C. Berkeley

Warren Boutcher, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, will deliver a lecture, “Europe: A Literary History (1559–1648).”

Join us for Dr. Boutcher’s lecture, followed by a round table discussion with U.C. Berkeley faculty:

Ivonne de Valle, Spanish & Portuguese
Timothy Hampton, French and Comparative Literature
Victoria Kahn, English and Comparative Literature
Ignacio Navarrete, Spanish & Portuguese
Diego Pirillo, Italian Studies

See the event webpage for additional details. […]

Mar 31
/
Apr 1

2017

Objects of Study: Paper, Ink, and the Material Turn (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts; Provost's Interdisciplinary Arts Grant, University of Pennsylvania; McNeil Center for Early American Studies; Penn Program in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory; Penn Visual Studies Program; Penn Humanities Forum; Department of the History of Art, U.C. Berkeley
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum (Friday); Kislak Center for Special Collections Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, University of Pennsylvania (Saturday)

The goal of this symposium is to dissect the interpretive aims of “materiality studies” through a focused lens of works on paper. In recent years, “materiality” has become a buzzword across the humanities, and an impressive range of methods, investigative starting points, and analytic goals have come to rest under the term’s mantle. But in grouping this diverse array of approaches under a single heading, does each method’s unique potential risk becoming flattened and obscured? An illustrated book might just as easily inspire a reconsideration of workshop practices as it could a chemical investigation of ink formulae; are social history and chemistry, […]

Mar
30

2017

The Never-ending Popularity of Njáls Saga: The Manuscript Evidence (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, University of Maine Humanities Center
Little Hall, Room 130, University of Maine

Campus lecture by Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir (Research Associate Professor, Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, University of Iceland), an expert on the study of medieval manuscripts from the University of Iceland, who will speak on “The Never-ending Popularity of Njáls Saga: The Manuscript Evidence” as part of the University of Maine Humanities Center’s 2016–17 symposium Saga and Story: An Interdisciplinary Exploration from the Vikings to Our Time.

Listen to an audio recording of this lecture.

See the event website for more information. […]

Mar
24

2017

(Dis)entangling Global Early Modernities, 1300–1800 (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Harvard Asia Center, Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard Center for African Studies, Harvard History Department, Harvard Early Modern History Workshop, Harvard Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard Center for History and Economics, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South, Harvard University

This conference proposes a new concept—“(dis)entanglement”—in order to provide alternative narratives of the early modern world, 1300–1800. Recent scholarship has emphasized the integrative nature of economic, material, and religious developments. In contrast, we will examine what the “global” could mean in intellectual and cultural interactions in terms of both integration and disintegration across multiple continents and oceans. Our conference participants will explore how the notion of “(dis)entanglement” allows us to evoke a polycentric early modern world that is simultaneously connecting and disconnecting.

See the event website for full schedule and additional details. […]

Mar
23

2017

Shaping Eyre: A Conversation about (Re)reading Brontë in the 21st Century

Presented by: Virginia Festival of the Book, Rare Book School & UVA Libraries
Dome Room, UVA Rotunda

Why are modern day readers still responsive to Jane Eyre, and how do their readings influence the life of the text? Linden Kent Memorial Professor Karen Chase (Brontë scholar and author of Eros & Psyche) leads a discussion with author Patricia Park (Re Jane) and rare book curator Barbara Heritage (“Shaping Eyre”) about the enduring influence of Charlotte Brontë’s nineteenth-century novel, Jane Eyre. The discussion, to be held in the Dome Room of UVA’s renovated Rotunda (4:00–5:00 p.m.) will be followed by a book signing and an opportunity to explore the rare artifacts in the accompanying RBS exhibition, […]

Mar
4

2017

Canons & Contingence: Art Histories of the Book in England and America (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; UMass Amherst Graduate School; UMass Amherst History of Art and Architecture Department; UMass Amherst College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Faculty Support Conference Grant; Mount Holyoke College Art History Department; Smith College, Office of the Provost and the Art Department; Amherst College Archives & Special Collections; Five College Lecture Fund
Integrative Learning Center, Room S240, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Recent scholarship in bibliography and the history of the book has attended to the ways in which bibliographic media resist, defy, and elude uniformity, even under the greatest technological pressures to conform. Whether through variables in the production process or through the vagaries of transmission and consumption, each manuscript or printed book carries with it the traces of a unique history.

Mar 2
/
Mar 3

2017

Cartographic Materialities: Mapping the Pre-Modern World (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; and at the University of California, Berkeley: Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies; The Townsend Center for the Humanities; the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; the History of the Book Working Group; the Mobilities and Materialities Working Group; the Department of French; the Department of English; the James D. Hart Chair; the Ida Mae and William J. Eggers, Jr. Chair; and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Thursday, 2 March
3:30–5 p.m.
Cartographic Objects Workshop at the Bancroft Library (David Faulds)
Please RSVP to jraisch@berkeley.edu

Friday, 3 March
1:15–2:45 p.m. – Graduate Student Panel, 308A Doe Library

Keith Budner (Comparative Literature) – “From Geography to Chorography: Representing Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Strabo in Two Spanish Renaissance Maps”

Jason Rozumalski (History) – “Kaleidoscopes of Time and Place: Images of places as events in sixteenth-century England”

Grace Harpster (Art History) – “Pastoral Maps: Devotional and Administrative Itineraries in Rural Sixteenth-Century Milan”

Moderator: Diego Pirillo (Italian)

3:00–5:00 p.m. […]

Feb
9

2017

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Feb
8

2017

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Jan
30

2017

Paper in Asia (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Art History Department, Dartmouth College Library, and Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College
Current Periodicals Room, Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College

In association with the exhibition “Paper: A Material of Empire and Revolution in South Asia” on view in Dartmouth’s Baker-Berry Library through January 2017, we have invited scholars who touch on how paper as a material intertwines with the information that it carries.

Dec
2

2016

Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Premodern Eurasia (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the University of Iowa
Iowa Theater (166 IMU), University of Iowa

This symposium featured the following talks:

“From Bookroll to Codex” William Johnson (Classical Studies, Duke University)

“Beyond Scrolls and Codices: Manuscript Formats on the Eastern Silk Road” Susan Whitfield (International Dunhuang Project, British Library)

“Fatimid State Documents, Serial Recyclers and the Cairo Geniza” Marina Rustow (Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Princeton University) [Rescheduled for 27 April 2017]

“Papyrus as an Ancient Writing Material: Its Structure, Production and Classification” Myriam Krutzsch (Aegyptisches Museum, Berlin)

“The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra of AD 868: A Conservation Approach That Goes Back to the Original” […]

Nov
22

2016

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Nov
2

2016

Material Knowledge: Science and the Hand Press (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Georgia State University Department of History
Troy Moore Library, Room 2343, Georgia State University

Material Knowledge: Science and the Hand Press

Wednesday 2 November 2016

Troy Moore Library, Room 2343, 25 Park Place NE, Atlanta, GA 30303

Schedule:

9:00 a.m. Welcome

9:30–11:00 a.m.

Hanna Marcus, Harvard University, “Expurgated Medical Books: The Materiality of Prohibited Knowledge”

Daniel Margocsy, Cambridge University, “Vesalius in America: Collecting De humani corporis fabrica in the modern age”

11:00–11:30 a.m. Coffee Break

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Robert Batchelor, Georgia Southern University “Games in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Popular Numeracy and Printed Ephemera in Early Modern East Asia and Europe”

Richard Keatley, […]

Oct
28

2016

Book, Archive, Museum: A Bibliographical Symposium (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the PSU Abingdon Division of Arts and Humanities
Penn State Abingdon

See the event poster for full details. […]

Oct 28
/
Oct 30

2016

RBS at the Boston Book Fair

Presented by: RBS
Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA

If you’ll be in Boston for the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (28–30 October), please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 628 (floor plan), with printed copies of our spring/summer 2017 schedule, a slideshow of images from 2016 RBS classes, and more.

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Associate Director & Curator of Collections Barbara Heritage, Assistant Curator of Collections Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, Development Director Megan Gildea, and Director of Communications & Outreach Jeremy Dibbell will all be at the Fair, […]

Oct
27

2016

ABAA-RBS Seminar Series

Presented by: The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) and Rare Book School
North Bennet Street School, Boston MA

Rare Book School and the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) are co-sponsoring a one-day seminar series at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, MA (map) on Thursday, 27 October 2016 (just prior to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair). These seminars have been designed to be of interest to book collectors and booksellers, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend the seminar series is $500.

As space is limited, signup for the seminar series will be handled on a first-come, […]

Oct
17

2016

Medieval Books (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, IPFW Program in Medieval Studies, Department of English and Linguistics, Department of History, Chapman Distinguished Professor of English, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Liberal Arts Building, Room 35A, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne

Professor Carissa Harris of Temple University presents “Obscenity, Censorship, and Creativity in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts” on Monday, 17 October at noon.

See the event website for additional details.

Sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, IPFW Program in Medieval Studies, Department of English and Linguistics, Department of History, Chapman Distinguished Professor of English, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs […]

Oct
5

2016

Why Pardons Fail (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives, the Oregon Humanities Center, the Robert D. Clark Honors College
Browsing Room, Knight Library, University of Oregon

This talk, organized by the Oregon Rare Books Initiative, was given by Cynthia Herrup, Professor Emerita of History and John R. Hubbard Chair in British History Emerita at USC Dornsife.

Whenever a presidency draws to its end, we Americans brace for the announcement of the president’s final pardons. We brace and then we complain: should George W. Bush have commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby? Was it right for Bill Clinton to pardon financier Marc Rich? Had Gerald Ford promised in advance to pardon Richard Nixon? Pardons are meant to do good—to evoke mercy and to provide a necessary remedy to the sometimes overly harsh application of the law, […]

Sep
30

2016

Shakespeare, The Book (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and Trinity University
Special Collections, Coates Library, Trinity University

As the apposition in the title hopefully hints, this symposium is committed to the central claim that Shakespeare, as we identify and teach him today, has been fundamentally shaped by the book trade and its customers. Print publishers and retail booksellers have marketed and sold Shakespeare’s writing, printers have undertaken the physical and intellectual labor of transforming manuscripts into print forms that are recognizable as books, and readers have been left after all of this to buy, engage with, and preserve—or ignore and discard—the editions that have been made available to them. Individuals connected to the early theater industry in London appear to have supplied manuscripts to begin this process, […]

Sep 30
/
Oct 1

2016

The Materiality of Scientific Knowledge: Image-Text-Book (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania Humanities Forum; Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania

This two day symposium will explore the material factors—specifically, the conditions of writing, printing, and illustration—that underwrite the exchange and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Throughout the long history of scientific investigation, concepts and theories were formulated, shared, legitimated, and disseminated in manuscript and printed texts, as well as paintings, drawings, and engravings. Most scholarship in this area has focused on either the text or the images in scientific manuscripts and printed books, or has explored the relationship between text and image from the perspective of a single field or historical period. This symposium will bring scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines (history of science, […]

Sep 23
/
Sep 24

2016

States of the Book (RBS-Mellon Conference)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the West Point Association of Graduates
United States Military Academy at West Point

A conference considering the relation of the material text to the formation and function of states and state-like structures. An investigation of the methods and effects of state and institutional manipulation of textual materialities to create, control, or shape responses from the oral ancient to contemporary digital.

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. will deliver the keynote address.

See the event registration page for details about attending this conference, or for the full schedule. […]

Sep
15

2016

RBS Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

All are welcome at Rare Book School’s fall open house, scheduled for Thursday, 15 September 2016 as part of the Human/Ties program at UVA to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
Print a letterpress keepsake
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy coffee, donuts, and conversation with the RBS staff

We hope to see you there! […]

Sep
10

2016

Graphic Design in the Digital Future Lessons from the Renaissance Book (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Book Studies at Wellsley, the Program in Medieval-Renaissance Studies, and the Departments of English and History at Wellesley College
Margaret Clapp Library Lecture Room, Wellesley College

Our media landscape is changing radically. New technologies offer new ways of reading and new modes of presenting texts—but how completely can we really break with old paradigms? Do the design principles of the printed book have a place in our digital future? To find an answer, this conference compares our ongoing technological revolution with an earlier one: the invention of the printed book itself in Renaissance Europe. Lectures, workshops, and discussion by historians and practitioners of printing, web design, and typography will enable the audience to apply lessons from the Renaissance to the design challenges of the present.

Speakers and workshop leaders include Simran Thadani, […]

Jun
16

2016

MATERIA: New Approaches to Material Text in the Roman World (RBS-Mellon Workshop)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and Columbia University’s Lenfest Junior Faculty Development Fund
Butler Library Room 523, Columbia University

MATERIA: New Approaches to Material Text in the Roman World is a day-long workshop presenting new research in the area of the ancient book in the Roman World, broadly conceived. This event brings together six speakers from across the country who work on different aspects of the intersection of classical text and material culture to present work in progress. Each speaker will have a significant block of time to present his/her findings, with ample time for questions and feedback from the audience and fellow panelists. Audience members are encouraged to come for the day, throughout which refreshments will be provided. […]

May
5

2016

A Phenomenology of the Reading Room: Data, Post-Criticism, and the British American Print Shop (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the University of Mississippi Department of English
Bondurant 204C, University of Mississippi at Oxford

At 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, 5 May 2016, Matthew P. Brown, Associate Professor in the Center for the Book and the English Department at the University of Iowa, will deliver the keynote lecture for the “Early American Materialities” symposium: “A Phenomenology of the Reading Room: Data, Post-Criticism, and the British American Print Shop.”

Apr
22

2016

Creating an Early Modern Database for Galileo’s Library (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and CMEMS
History Building Room 307, Stanford University

Can a digital database recreate the ways in which Galileo Galileo organized and used his modest collection of books? Late Renaissance readers did not organize or access their books according to the same descriptors upon which digital tools typically rely: authors’ names, publication dates, titles, or single genre labels. Since Galileo compared unpleasant reading to perusing a cabinet of curiosities and delightful reading to visiting a museum gallery, this presentation suggests ways in which an appropriate database for his library should become more than the infrastructure for an archive for books. Examples drawn from the poetry, plays, and philosophical treatises that Galileo read will show the ways in which digital humanities tools can create other ways to identify texts in order to assemble a database that represents process via its organization of content. […]

Apr
8

2016

Mellon Symposium on Manuscripts and Rare Books (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, University of Arkansas Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, Department of English, University of Arkansas Honors College
Gearhart Hall, Honors Study Hall, University of Arkansas

Event schedule:

9:40–10:30 a.m. Damian J. Fleming: “Looking for Hebrew in all the Wrong Places.”

10:45–11:35 a.m. Carrisa Harris: “Obscenity, Censorship, and Creativity in Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts.”

11:50 a.m–12:40 p.m. Joseph A. Howley: “Long Table’s Journey into Nights: How Ancient Books, Medieval Manuscripts, and Early Printing Invented the Table of Contents.”

2:00–2:50 p.m. Virginia Blanton & Nathan Oyler: “Unlocking the Mysteries of a Medieval Chant Book with Multispectral Imaging.”

3:05–4:20 p.m. David F. Johnson: “Visualizing the Paleography of Punctuation: Forensic Philology and the Interventions of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester.” […]

Apr 3
/
Apr 4

2016

The Lives of Religious Books (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Duke University Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Duke University Center for Jewish Studies
Holsti-Anderson Room, Rubenstein Library, Duke University

Duke Divinity School Professor Jennie Grillo has organized a symposium featuring David Stern of Harvard University and Dagmar Riedel of Columbia University as well as a number of local scholars presenting their research on histories of religious books in various traditions.

Stern is the Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard, and Riedel is an associate research scholar at Columbia.

Grillo, assistant professor of Old Testament, organized the event as part of a Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School. It was also co-sponsored by an Intellectual Community Planning Grant from Duke University awarded to Grillo, […]

Apr
1

2016

Varieties of Textual Experience: A Symposium on the Material Text Across the Disciplines (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Colby College English Department
Miller Library, Colby College

This one-day symposium will bring together scholars from across the humanities to discuss the role of the material text in their research and scholarly practice. The bibliographic scholar D.F. McKenzie famously asserted that the form of a text inevitably shapes its meaning; from contemporary internet cultures to medieval manuscripts, how do we account for this in the specific archives, media, and disciplinary contexts in which we conduct our work?

This event has been generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Colby English Department. […]

Mar 30
/
Mar 31

2016

Medieval Books: A Symposium (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Program in Medieval Studies, Department of English and Linguistics, Department of History, Chapman Distinguished Professor of English, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne

The keynote address, “Why Books Matter,” will be delivered by Elaine Treharne, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. Thursday, 31 March at 5 p.m., Neff Hall, Room 101 (Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne).

Additional panel sessions will be held on Wednesday, 30 March and Thursday, 31 March. See the event website for full details. All events are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Program in Medieval Studies, […]

Mar
16

2016

Writing the Nation: Correspondence and Collaboration in Early Modern British Science (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Oregon Rare Books Initiative, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Oregon Humanities Center, and University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives
Paulson Reading Room, Knight Library, University of Oregon

Oregon Rare Books Initiative presents Elizabeth Yale (Center for the Book, University of Iowa):

From the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence to this year’s vote on Britain’s exit from the European Union (“Brexit,” in the press), the question of what Britain is—and will be—has been in the news. This talk explores that question from the perspective of the seventeenth century sciences of the land—natural history and antiquarian studies, which, in tracing the human and natural history of Britain, sought to hold up a mirror that showed Britons themselves. Linking themselves together through correspondence and travel, naturalists in England, […]

Feb
4

2016

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Feb
3

2016

RBS-UVA Fellowship Information Reception

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

University of Virginia undergraduate and graduate students are invited to attend an informal information reception about the RBS-UVA Fellowship program. Light refreshments will be served. […]

Dec 2
/
Dec 3

2015

Of Books & Men: Archives, Artifacts, and Inquiry (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Berea College Art and Art History Program, the Berea College English Program, Hutchins Library, and the Berea College Dean’s Office
Berea College

This symposium will bring three scholars to the Berea College campus. Each of their work intersects with history of the book and humanistic inquiry in different ways. The symposium has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Art and Art History Program, the English Program, Hutchins Library, and the Dean’s Office.

The symposium is structured around presentations by visiting scholars in classes and presentations by students in ARH 286 on books from the Curio Collection. The schedule is below.

Wednesday, December 2

12:40–2:30 p.m.—Scott Manning Stevens (Syracuse) Presentation to Combined ENG 310 Renegades and Romance & […]

Nov
19

2015

RBS Open House

Presented by: Rare Book School
118 Alderman Library

You are cordially invited to join the RBS staff for our fall open house to:

Learn about Rare Book School’s courses and programs, including fellowship opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students
Find out how you can use your faculty/staff UVA education benefit to cover RBS course tuition
Pick up a copy of the 2016 summer course schedule
Print a letterpress keepsake
View a selection of materials from our world-class teaching collection
Enjoy light snacks and refreshments

We hope to see you there! […]

Nov
11

2015

ABAA-RBS Seminar Series

Presented by: The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) and Rare Book School
North Bennet Street School, Boston MA

Rare Book School and the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) are co-sponsoring a joint one-day seminar series at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, MA on Wednesday, 11 November 2015 (just prior to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair). These seminars have been designed to be of interest to book collectors and booksellers, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered.

Oct
17

2015

Material Methodologies in Latin American & Iberian Studies (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
Columbia University

This conference will bring together a group of advanced graduate students to share their doctoral research and the diverse ways in which they take materiality into account in their studies of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula across disciplines.

Oct 16
/
Oct 17

2015

Scientific Books and their Makers (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the University of Iowa Center for the Book, the University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Departments of History and English
University of Iowa

In the preface to Micrographia (1665), one of the first visual studies of the microscopic world, the experimental philosopher Robert Hooke argued that knowledge of nature was rooted in human vision, especially as augmented by tools like the recently-invented microscope, and human craft, which built the microscope and made images of the new worlds that it revealed. Hooke suggested that without such instruments, humans were ill-equipped to apprehend the true nature of reality, hidden just beyond the edge of sight. The microscope challenged the primacy of human vision—augmenting it, but also threatening to override it.

In early modern Europe, […]

Sep
25

2015

Agents of Contact: Books and Print between Cultures in the Early Modern Period (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities and Arts at CCNY, the Division of Humanities and Arts of CCNY, and the CCNY English Department.
City College of New York

This one-day symposium will present research on the impact of books and print on intellectual contact (broadly construed) within Europe as well as between European and non-European cultures.

The symposium is intended to encourage cross-disciplinary conversation, and is therefore defined by a conceptual framework rather than a strict thematic focus. Its title is anhommage to Elizabeth Eisenstein’s seminal book, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, which helped to establish the study of print culture as an area of study in its own right, one that has contributed to – and helped to transform – research in intellectual history, […]

Sep 18
/
Sep 19

2015

Books and Print between Cultures, 1500–1900 (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; the Dean of Faculty, the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations (the Tagliabue and Hall Funds), the Department of Art and the History of Art, and the Program in European Studies at Amherst College; and the Book Studies Concentration at Smith College.
Amherst College

Books and Print between Cultures investigates the role that books (printed books and manuscripts, including maps, scrolls, etc.), prints, and their associated technologies played in mediating and instantiating cultural difference in the early modern period. It approaches these materials as intermediary (“between”), but also as “flows,” a term borrowed from social-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, to underscore the fluid and yet chaotic manner in which books and prints proliferated and were circulated, reconfigured, and reconstituted around the globe. Rather than considering books and prints through a strictly semiotic or iconographic lens—i.e., as assemblages of signs and symbols, texts and images—this symposium foregrounds the materiality of these objects qua objects. […]

Aug
27

2015

How Materiality Shapes the Law: from Manuscripts to Digitization (RBS-Mellon Program)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School
Boalt Hall, Berkeley School of Law

Public Reception: 4:00–4:30 p.m. 295 Boalt Hall (Warren Room)

Public Panel Event: 4:30–6:00 p.m. Boalt Hall 170 (Koret Room)

Gero Dolezalek (Aberdeen) “Why Did Early Modern Scots Hand-Write Legal Literature Instead of Printing It?”

Paul Halliday (University of Virginia) “Precedents Are Things: Clerical Authority and the Judge’s Voice in the Eighteenth Century”

Robert Berring, Jr. (Boalt) “Rethinking Legal Authority in the Digital Age”

(Gero Dolezalek will teach a legal paleography workshop on 28 August 2015).

Contact: RBS-Mellon Fellow and Robbins Collection Associate Research Fellow, Lena Salaymeh (lenas@berkeley.edu)

Please RSVP if you plan to attend. […]

Jun
2

2015

Archival Afterlives: Life, Death, and Knowledge-Making in Early Modern British Scientific and Medical Archives (RBS-Mellon Conference)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Brill Academic Publishing, the British Society for the History of Science, the University of Iowa, the University of Lincoln, the University of Oregon, and the Royal Society.
The Royal Society, London

This international conference explores the posthumous fortunes of scientific and medical archives in early modern Britain. If early modern natural philosophers claimed all knowledge as their province, theirs was a paper empire. This conference analyses how did these (often) disorderly collections of paper come to be ‘the archives of the Scientific Revolution’. To what extent did the histories unearthed serve as an index of the cultural position of scientific activity since the early modern period? Exploring the posthumous scientific and medical archive also lets us consider the genealogies of scientific influence, and the creation and management of scientific genius as a posthumous project. […]

Apr
24

2015

After Print: Manuscripts in the Eighteenth Century (RBS-Mellon Conference)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the UCSB Early Modern Center
McCune Conference Room, 6220 HSSB, University of California, Santa Barbara

This conference will bring together junior and senior scholars to explore the continued vitality of manuscript publication and circulation in the eighteenth century. Scholars now often take for granted that the eighteenth century constituted an established “print culture,” whether that culture was inherent in the technology or forged by its users. By the age of Addison and Pope, this narrative contends, the spread of print and lapse of licensing had rendered superfluous a manuscript world of scurrilous libels, courtly poetry, and weekly newsletters.

But a growing body of research is arguing for the ongoing importance of manuscript production and publication into the Romantic period, […]

Apr
17

2015

What is a Book? A Symposium on Bibliographic Research (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, with additional support from Denison Library and the Scripps College English Department
Holbein Room, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College

Humanities research requires the study of books, but we often confront the limits of this category. This symposium will bring together area scholars, librarians, and students enrolled in the Scripps College course ENGL 197 to consider the question: What is a book?

Organized by RBS-Mellon Fellow Marissa Nicosia (Scripps College, English) and featuring (among others) RBS-Mellon Fellows Glenda Goodman and Rachael Scarborough King. See the event website for additional details.

This event is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, with additional support from Denison Library and the Scripps College English Department. […]

Apr 9
/
Apr 10

2015

Materialities of American Texts and Visual Cultures (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, The Bibliographical Society of America, and the American Printing History Association
Columbia University

From current historical work on material and visual cultures, to anthropological research on the social life of things and new approaches to seeing and reading in historical scholarship, the study of the physical evidence of culture has become a pressing issue. This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together conservators, curators, and scholars of art history, literary studies, book history and bibliography to reflect on the historical relation between materials, objects, and practices and different forms of visual and textual production in nineteenth-century America.

Apr 2
/
Apr 3

2015

Bureaucracy and the Organization of Knowledge (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the University of North Texas English Department, History Department, College of Arts and Sciences, and Honors College
University of North Texas

Bureaucracy is everywhere, but it becomes palpable and real for most people when they meet with it in a material, physical form: your birth certificate, a course catalog, the diploma you receive at graduation, the bylaws of a department or professional association, IRS Form 1040, the line at the DMV. This symposium gathers scholars working in the fields of history, library science, digital humanities, material text studies, literature, rhetoric, and the history of science to explore the materiality of bureaucracy.

The symposium will feature talks and object-oriented workshops by scholars whose work examines the material practices, written forms, […]

Mar
31

2015

Rematerializing the Classics: New Directions in Book History, Bibliography, and the Study of Antiquity (RBS-Mellon Program)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the UC Berkeley Department of Classics, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the History of the Book Townsend Center Working Group
Dwinelle 3335, University of California, Berkeley

A lecture by RBS-Mellon Fellow Joseph Howley, “Rematerializing the Book in the Roman Empire,” followed by a roundtable discussion with Berkeley faculty on the role of material studies in the field of Classics more generally, and future of materiality and book history in the study of antiquity and after.

Mar
27

2015

Architecture of the Book (RBS-Mellon Program)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Yale School of Architecture Ph.D. Dialogue Series
Beinecke Library, Yale University

This program consists of two complementary sessions: first, a conversation at the school of architecture that takes seriously the implications of The Architecture of the Book, the title of a retrospective volume recently published by Irma Boom, assessing the engagement of her work with the discipline of architecture and examining its self-conscious relationship to early printed books; and second, a workshop at the Beinecke, during which we look together at a selection of the Beinecke’s early architectural holdings to discuss them not, primarily, as historians, but rather as designers. The sessions pay particular attention to Boom’s resolute commitment to the materiality of the book and to its influence on the form and substance of her design; […]

Mar
18

2015

Manuscript Transcribathon

Presented by: RBS, the UVA English Department's Renaissance Area Group, and the Folger Shakespeare Library
Alderman Library 421

Join Rare Book School, the UVA English Department’s Renaissance Area Group, and the Folger Shakespeare Library for a Transcribathon. Learn from Folger Curator of Manuscripts Heather Wolfe about paleography and transcription of early modern English documents, and have a go at it yourself using special transcription software developed at the Folger.

Nov 11
/
Nov 12

2014

Popular Literacy During the High Middle Ages (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Cornell University Medieval Studies Program
Cornell University

A two-day symposium focusing on the question of popular literacy during the High Middle Ages, featuring a public lecture and Q&A by Professor Carol Symes (University of Illinois), followed by a workshop for students and faculty.

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Cornell University Medieval Studies Program. […]

Oct
24

2014

Making Publics: The Past, Present & Future of Publication (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; the Stanford Humanities Center; the Departments of History, English, Religious Studies, Classics, and Communication; the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Program in History & Philosophy of Science; and the Stanford University Libraries
Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University

How are texts, images, and messages transmitted to their audiences? How does the material form of a message influence and control its reception? How have online and digital publishers used data to respond to and shape their audiences and consumers? “Making Publics: The Past, Present & Future of Publication” will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars for a one-day conference to explore the materiality and meanings of texts, and how they have been, are, and will be published. The conference will be aimed at developing a longue durée narrative of the relationship between media and audiences in a global context. […]

May 15
/
May 15

2014

Composition: Making Meaning through Design (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; UCSB College of Creative Studies; UCSB Department of the History of Art and Architecture; UCSB Department of English; UCSB Department of History; UCSB Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies; UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
University of California, Santa Barbara

An interdisciplinary symposium that asks how design features (such as format, material, type font/ script, and imagery, to name but a few) can alter, enhance, or otherwise affect the transmission of meaning and shape a text’s use. This symposium aims to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to promote engaging new dialogues in book history. […]

Mar 27
/
Apr 24

2014

Working with Digitized Manuscripts: New Approaches to Old Sources (RBS-Mellon Event)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and the Huntington-USC Early Modern Studies Institute
University of Southern California

A series of two lectures and discussions on the topic of what digitization means for musicology, with Dorothy Porter of the University of Pennsylvania (“Ceci n’est pas un manuscript: Considering What Digitization Does to Manuscripts”) and Deborah McGrady of the University of Virginia (“Are Digitized Manuscripts Made for Scholarship? The Remediated Codex as the New Object of Medieval Studies”). […]

Dec 5
/
Dec 6

2013

New Media in American Literary History Interdisciplinary Symposium (RBS-Mellon Symposium)

Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School; NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks; Northeastern University Humanities Center
Northeastern University

A symposium aimed at bringing together “digital” and “analog” scholars interested in the history of American print media to discuss common questions and challenges, and to identify potential collaborations. The goal of the conference is to bridge the gap between digital and more “traditional” disciplinary work by putting scholars employing methodologies such as text mining, topic modeling, digital curation, and network analysis—in other words, “big humanities data”—into direct and productive dialogue with Americanist scholars, graduate students, and archivists employing well-established practices in book history, textual analysis, media studies, and critical bibliography in their work. […]

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