Only a few years ago we were asking: does the new digital world really mean “the death of the book?” Today we can luckily say no, books are clearly still thriving in both old and new ways. But having feared we would lose it, we’ve started to ask how we got this marvelous invention in the first place. What makes the book so different than the scroll long ago, or the e-book today? How do typefaces, printing methods, page-layouts, bindings, illustrations, and other design features work to shape the ways we read books? How are books read differently-now and in past centuries-in terms of gender and class? A highlight of the course will be a visit to the Hunt Rare Books archive on CMU campus so that students can handle priceless rare books in a guided setting to learn how they were made and used.
((Jon Klancher - In-Person: CMU Campus - Wednesday))
