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Seminars

History of the Book

This seminar is a bi-weekly, interdisciplinary faculty and advanced graduate student colloquium on the History of the Book, with the definition of "book" taken very loosely to mean any kind of text, be it a codex or something else.  There is a pronounced emphasis on the physical production of the texts of any sort and how they are received or perceived by their original (and subsequent) audience(s). 

This focus is intended to involve participants in discussion of a wide-ranging group of related issues: how material forms affect the meaning (or at least the understanding) of given works, how canons are formed, patronage and its effect on works of art, literacy and how one determines what constitutes it, the history of reading, changes in the dominant media in a given culture. 

The Seminar is sponsored in part by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Information on the Fall 2007 schedule will be announced.