ENG 5805 Gants Spring 2021
Books are eloquent witnesses to their own creation, circulation, and reception. Each leaf bearing inked impressions of long-recycled letterforms and elegant autograph marginalia speaks from the eyes and the hands and the minds of those who made those marks. Watermarks hiding in the fibers of the paper hint at the aesthetic desires of those who twisted wire profiles into miniature icons and sewed them onto the waiting paper mould. Mise en page reveals how the sophisticated mixture of text and paratext interact to create complex layers of meaning. Because it involves careful listening to what an object tells us, this course might also be called The Autobiography of a Book, and it spans textual forms from classical scrolls to electronic publications. The course complements more theoretically and sociologically oriented History of the Book offerings by approaching the book as a physical and/or digital artifact, exploring various methods of bibliographical analysis, and engaging in current scholarly debates.
Requirements: This course satisfies the requirement for coursework in the following Area of Concentration: History of Text Technologies (production). This class also fulfills 3 credit hours of the academic requirement for the Certificate in Editing and Publishing. If a student has already met the academic requirement, the course can count for additional credits toward the 12-hour Certificate.