ENG 3803 - Fall 2025 - Bliss

In this class, we will think about books not just as things we read, but as objects we store, circulate, and design to convey specific meanings. As a survey course, we will begin with examples of the earliest tools with which humans began to record messages and move forward into the present day, lingering over particularly important moments in book history such as the development of the printing press and creation of a mass market of books in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ultimately, we will see how all of these text technologies formulated the modern book. Throughout the semester, we will continue to return to the question: how does material form shape how we communicate?

Our readings will consist of critical interventions in the history of text technologies as well as historical case studies, all of which we will supplement by visiting the special collections at Strozier Library. These resources will invite us to consider how editing, circulation, and physical presentation shape the texts we engage with every day.

This course satisfies the genre requirement.