Book History Workshop

REGISTER now for 2013

Early registration period extended:

enroll in the Workshop before March 15 to receive a $100 discount on tuition.

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2004 Book History Workshop Video

Earn three graduate credit hours from the School of Library
and Information Science at the University of North Texas.

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OVERVIEW

ENROLLMENT 

COST

HOUSING

CAMPUS MAPS

LECTURES

TRAVEL

WORKSHOP FACULTY

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Overview

 

The twelfth annual Book History Workshop at Texas A&M will take place May 19-24, 2013, at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives. This five-day workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to the history of books and printing. The workshop is intended for librarians, archivists, students, teachers, collectors, and private individuals who have an interest in the first three and a half centuries of the printed book. The course consists of a unique combination of labs and seminars designed to provide students with practical experience, as well as a broad historical survey of the field.

The lab sessions will concentrate on printing in the hand press era and its allied technologies--typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and ink-making. During these sessions, students will have the opportunity to cast type in a hand mould. They will also set type, prepare it for the press, and print on a period-accurate common press. The seminar sessions will provide a chronological survey of book and printing history, with the collections of Cushing Memorial Library providing examples of some of the most significant artifacts and books in the history of recorded culture. These classes will begin chronologically with Mesopotamian clay tablets and medieval manuscripts before focusing on developments in the hand press era.

The workshop begins with a reception at 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening. Workshop sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. each day and, minus breaks and lunch, end at 5:00 p.m., except for Friday, which wraps up at noon with a wayzgoose, a reenactment of the annual party traditionally thrown by the master printer for his journeymen and apprentices. While the morning and afternoon sessions are limited to workshop participants, the evening lectures are free and open to the public. The lectures begin at 7:00 p.m.

Enrollment and Application

The workshop is limited to 20 students. Applications are welcome beginning January 10 and will be accepted until May. Admissions will be made on a rolling basis and will be made in light of each applicant’s needs in relation to the course content. Applicants are reminded that this is an introductory course intended for those with little or no exposure to the subject. On the application form, potential students should clearly identify the link or links between the subject matter of the workshop and their professional, academic, vocational, or avocational interests.

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A letterpress-printed broadside commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Workshop.

Cost

 

Tuition for the Workshop is $900, of which a $100 deposit is due at the time of admittance. Applicants who register before our early cutoff date of March 15 will receive a $100 discount on their final tuition. Participants who have not remitted their deposit or made other arrangements with us within three weeks of acceptance will be dropped from the workshop to accommodate other applicants. The full payment is due on the day you arrive.

 

Housing

Discounted accommodations are available at The Tradition, a recently-built commercial dormitory. Private suites generally cost around $37 per night (subject to change) and include daily breakfast. The Tradition is located in the Northgate area adjacent to campus; there are multiple restaurants within a couple of blocks. Cushing is about a 12-15 minute walk. All arrangements for accommodations in this dormitory will be made through Cushing Library. You can learn more about The Tradition by visiting their website.

Workshop participants may also stay in one of the many local hotels. Rates vary. If you choose to stay off campus, you will need a car, as there is no off-campus hotel within easy walking distance of the Cushing Library. You will also still need a parking pass. If you choose to stay off campus, please let us know when you register for the workshop. You are responsible for your own reservations if you stay off campus.

Travel

Directions to the campus and Cushing Library are available online.

Located in what National Public Radio has described as the “lush central Texas countryside,” Texas A&M University is within easy access of most of the major metropolitan areas in Texas: Austin is about 2 hours, Houston 1 ½ hours, Dallas 2 ½ - 3 hours, San Antonio 2 ½ - 3 hours. Commuter flights to Easterwood Airport in College Station, and minutes from the A&M campus, are available on SkyWest from Houston Intercontinental airport and on American from Dallas/Fort Worth. If you fly into Easterwood Airport, cab fare from the airport to the campus or nearby is about $12.00.

Workshop Faculty

Steven Escar Smith, founder of the Workshop and primary instructor, is Dean of the University of Tennessee University Libraries (Ph.D., Texas A&M; M.A., M.L., South Carolina). His publications include Roy Fuller: A Bibliography (Scolar, 1996) and American Book and Magazine Illustrators to 1920 (Gale, 1998) and essays and reviews in Studies in Bibliography, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Book Collector, Imprint, ANQ, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, and elsewhere. He has also spent the better part of the last decade gathering and acquiring the physical things (i.e. the books, printing tools, artifacts, facsimiles, etc.) that form the core of this workshop.

Todd Samuelson, Director of the Workshop and printer in residence, is the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives (Ph.D., University of Houston; C. A.; M.A., Boston College). His research interests include modern and contemporary American literature, poetry in translation, and the history of fine press and artists' books. His writing has appeared in various journals, including Agni, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and Lyric. His imprint, Fat Matter Press, specializes in letterpress chapbooks and artists' books of contemporary poetry, including a recent Czeslaw Milosz broadside. He is a graduate of the 2006 Workshop.

Christopher L. Morrow, senior instructor of book history, is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University (Ph.D., M.A., Texas A&M). Morrow is currently working on a book project which examines the emergence of nationalism in early modern literature and drama and how the material book and London book trade affected the dynamics of nationalism in these works. Morrow is the author of “Shakespeare and Pedagogy: A Bibliography” (Shakespeare Yearbook, 2002) and essays appearing in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, South Central Review, and This Rough Magic.  He is a graduate of the 2004 Workshop.

Cait Coker, papermaking instructor and safety officer, is the Coordinator of Research Services and Curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection at the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives and an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University (MLS, University of Maryland; C.A.). Her research interests focus on the history of women authors and the depiction of women in science fiction. She is also a doctoral candidate in English at Texas A&M with an interest in the history of women in the book trades. She is a graduate of the 2008 Workshop.

James Stamant, typecasting and typography instructor, is completing his Ph.D. in English at Texas A&M University. A two-year Kelsey Fellow at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Jamie also completed the Workshop in 2008.

Evening Lecturers/Activities

2013 Lectures

To be announced.

2012 Lectures

Margaret Ezell will present a talk entitled "Much Amended, with Many New Additions: Seventeenth-century English book production and rethinking traditional literary histories" on Monday, May 21.  Ezell is a Distinguished Professor in the English Department at Texas A&M.

2011 Lectures

Rich Oram will offer a talk entitled "Authors' Libraries: History, Importance, and Problems for Librarians" on Sunday, May 22. Oram is the Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian at the University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center.

J. Lawrence Mitchell, currently the Interim Director and University Archivist at Texas A&M's Cushing Memorial Library, will return to the Book History Workshop to present an address, "Family, Friends, and Acquaintances: Tracing Relationships," using examples drawn from his own collection, housed in the Library, and from the wider Library collections.
 

2010 Lectures

Daniel De Simone will present a lecture entitled "Fifteenth Century Block Book Printing" on Monday, May 24. De Simone, curator of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress, has also worked extensively in the rare book trade. His award-winning exhibition and catalogue of the illustrated book in the hand press period, A Heavenly Craft: the Woodcut in Early Printed Books, features 84 treasures from the Rosenwald collection.

2009 Lectures

J. Lawrence Mitchell will deliver a talk entitled “The Garnett Family and the World of Books” on Monday, May 18. Mitchell, a professor of English and currently interim Head of the Department of Hispanic Studies, also served as the President of the Friends of the Sterling C. Evans Library from 2008-2009. Much of his collection of books and artifacts is now housed at Cushing Library. His collecting interests include English literature between the first and second World Wars, dictionaries, and boxing.

Nicholas Basbanes will return to Cushing Library on Wednesday, May 20, to present a talk in the Book History Workshop lecture series. Basbanes is a noted author, journalist, and rare book specialist. His first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Basbanes has been described as “our leading authority of books about books.” He is considered the pre-eminent spokesman on books, collecting, and issues concerning the printed word in the 21st century.

2008 Lectures

Michael Winship will deliver a talk entitled "American Publishers' Bindings and the Book Trades" the evening of May 19th. Winship, Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, has written extensively about the history of publishing and the book trade in nineteenth-century America. His volume on American printing during the industrial era, part of the History of the Book in America series, appeared from the University of North Carolina Press in 2007. He has taught annually at the University of Virginia's Rare Book School since 1983.

Craig Kallendorf will present a lecture, "Printing the Classics: Building a Virgil Collection in the Twenty-First Century," on Wednesday, May 21. Kallendorf, Professor of English at Texas A&M University and the Editor of Allegorica: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Literature and Rhetorica, has written extensively in the fields of Renaissance literature, Classics, and Rhetoric. Last year, he published The Virgilian Tradition: Book History and the History of Reading in Early Modern Europe as well as A Companion to the Classical Tradition.

2007 Lectures

Rebecca Laroche will deliver a lecture entitled, "'Helpes in their own fieldes and gardens': Early modern women's ownership of English herbals." Laroche is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has published several articles on early modern women, and her current book-length project, Herbal Rhetoric: Women's Texts and the Location of Medical Authority in England, 1550-1650, has received support from the Huntington, Folger Shakespeare, and Yale Beinecke libraries and the Institute for the Medical Humanities in Galveston, TX, where she is currently visiting fellow.

Fernando González Moreno will present "Illustrating don Quixote: a brief history of book illustration techniques." A Visiting Scholar and the current University of Castilla-La Mancha Cervantes Chair Research Fellow, Dr. Gonzalez Moreno received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Castilla-La Mancha and is the author of El Quijote de las luces: Ilustraciones para la edición de la Imprenta Real, 1797-1798 (2004), as well as several articles and book chapters. While at Texas A&M, Dr. Moreno has worked closely with the Eduardo Urbina Cervantes Project Collection in Cushing, and his lecture will draw upon this research.

Stephen Pratt, printer and craftsman in residence (M.A., BYU, and further graduate work at Berkeley), will discuss his theory and methodology in recreating iron presses and associated equipment. With his son Ben, Pratt is proprietor of Pratt Press Works, a family business specializing in replica printing and type-casting equipment. He is a member of the Gutenberg Geselleschaft, Arbeitskreis Druckeschichte, the Wood Engravers Network, the Fine Press Book Association, and was one of the organizers of the 2002 American Typecasting Fellowship conference, which was held at the Crandall Historical Printing Museum in Provo, Utah.

2006 Lectures

Eduardo Urbina will discuss "A Textual History of the Quixote, 1605-2005." Dr. Urbina obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley (1979) and is currently Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University, and Visiting Professor and Director of the Cervantes Chair at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. He is the Director of the Cervantes Project (http://cervantes. tamu.edu/), editor of the Electronic Variorum Edition of the Quixote, and Honorary Curator of the Cervantes Project Collection at the Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University.

Gary A. Stringer will speak about "Donne as a Manuscript Poet." Dr. Stringer came to Texas A&M University as a Visiting Professor in the fall of 2004, having previously retired from the English faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published articles on Donne, Milton, and various other Renaissance figures, and has edited two collections of essays on Donne. In 1981 Stringer organized the project to produce The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne and assumed the role of General Editor of the edition, a position he still holds.

Contact information:

Cushing Memorial Library & Archives
ATTN: Todd Samuelson
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-5000
Phone: (979) 845-1951
Fax: (979) 845-1441
E-Mail: todd.samuelson@tamu.edu