Registration has opened for the fifteenth annual Book History Workshop at Texas A&M University, scheduled for 22-27 May 2016. Taking place in Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, the Workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to the history of books and printing.
This year, members of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing have the opportunity to apply for a SHARP Scholarship to assist in funding their participation in the Book History Workshop. Graduate students, post-docs, junior faculty, adjunct professors, and those within five years of their last awarded degree in any discipline are eligible, with preference being given to applicants applying from countries outside the United States.
To be considered for this special funding, applicants should submit a personal statement (max. 500 words) and current CV to Kevin M. O’Sullivan, Director of the Book History Workshop, at kmosullivan <at> tamu <dot> edu. The deadline for first consideration is 26 February 2016.
Over the course of five days, the Book History Workshop allows participants to create a complete facsimile of an eighteenth-century pamphlet by setting, correcting, and imposing type on an English common press, then printing the book in three octavo formes. The Workshop’s projects extend to other handpress-era technologies, including typecasting, papermaking, marbling, bookbinding, and illustration. Together, these projects provide a unique opportunity for book historians, literary scholars, librarians, and students to experience a complement of practices used to create books from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. For more information about the theoretical rationale and history of the program, please see “Empirical Bibliography,” a recently-published article in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (March 2015, vol. 109.1: 83-109).
The Workshop acts as an introduction to book history, providing participants the rare opportunity to learn principles of analytical bibliography through discussion sessions. Topical lectures about book production methods will draw from Cushing Library’s extensive historical collections. Students will also experience hands-on sessions in which they will cast type from molten lead alloy, pull sheets of paper, and cut relief illustrations. The activities of the week are incorporated into the finished project, a pamphlet bound in wrappers of handmade paper featuring printers’ devices cut by each member of the Workshop.
The Workshop has traditionally attracted scholars, librarians, archivists, students, teachers, and collectors, as well as those pursuing personal interests in book history. For more information, or to register, please go to:
http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/programs/bookhistoryworkshop/