Rare Book School's Global Book Histories Initiative
FAIN: ZH-252982-17
Rare Book School (Charlottesville, VA 22903-2444)
Danielle Culpepper (Project Director: May 2016 to present)
Thirty-six fellowships to professionals
of color or those working with collections associated with people of color for
newly developed courses that deal with topics beyond the Western canon.
Rare Book School (RBS) is applying for 1:1 matching funds from the
NEH in the amount of $100,000, to raise a total of $200,000 in support of scholarships for its ongoing Global Book
Histories Initiative (GBHI). Building on current RBS programs to provide learning opportunities for members of
underrepresented communities and to expand its educational offerings in non-western and immigrant book history and
bibliography, this initiative directly benefits communities of color by supporting librarians and other professionals of
color as well as those working with the cultural heritage collections of underrepresented communities. These funds
would support 36 full fellowships, with travel and housing, as well as expenses for six lectures from esteemed speakers
on topics relating to global book history.
Associated Products
Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts
Author: Marianna Shreve Simpson
Abstract: This course is for students who have not yet had the opportunity to study Islamic manuscripts. It is an introductory course and will take a broad view of the manuscript arts from the origins of Islam in the seventh century through the early modern period (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), encompassing Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Indian cultures. The course will focus primarily on materials (binding and paper), layout, scripts, and decoration and will be taught through the rich collection of Islamic manuscripts that make up the Manuscripts of the Muslim World project. Students may expect to do some small group or individual work on their own in preparation for each synchronous class session.
Year: 2018
Audience: General Public
A History of Native American Books & Indigenous Sovereignty (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: A History of Native American Books & Indigenous Sovereignty
Author: Michael Kelly
Author: Kiara Vigil
Abstract: Even before Marisa Duarte’s Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country (2017) was published, Indigenous peoples have had a long and enduring history of creating and accessing different technologies (such as wampum belts, birch bark scrolls, ledger books, and buffalo hides) in order to chronicle Native ways of being and knowing in the world. In the midst of a global pandemic, this course will make use of remote teaching platforms and Indigenous epistemologies to offer a brief introduction to Native North American engagement with books as authors, editors, printers, publishers, and consumers. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, students will consider how settler colonialism has operated as an enduring structure, and not a one-time event, in both the U.S. and Canada with particular respect to the history of the Native book. By engaging with materials from Amherst College’s Kim-Wait/Eisenberg Native American Literature and History collection, alongside scholarship from Native American and Indigenous studies, students will deepen their understandings not only of Native nations’ and Native intellectuals’ relationships to book history and various writing technologies but also of how Native Books provide guidance for critical engagement with settler colonial theory, literary studies, and cultural history.
Year: 2018
Audience: General Public
The History & Culture of the Tibetan Book (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: The History & Culture of the Tibetan Book
Author: Benjamin Nourse
Author: Kurtis Schaeffer
Abstract: This course offers a broad overview of the history and culture of the book in Tibet. Participants will discuss what is meant by “the book” in Tibetan culture and explore how books fit into the larger material, religious, and intellectual cultures of Tibet. The course will focus on major periods and developments in the history of Tibetan manuscript and print cultures, the physical materials and process of making Tibetan books, and the book within Tibetan religious and scholarly culture. Early source materials, such as epigraphy and Tibetan manuscripts from the “library cave” of Dunhuang (pre-twelfth century CE), as well as the continuing importance of manuscript production in Tibet will be considered. Students will also trace the development of Tibetan woodblock printing, from the Yuan dynasty-era (1279–1368) books known as “Mongolian prints” (hor par ma) to the eighteenth-century editions of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. The end of the course will briefly touch on contemporary Tibetan publishing, both print and digital.
Year: 2018
Audience: General Public
The Jewish Book Since the Invention of Printing (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The Jewish Book Since the Invention of Printing
Abstract: The Jewish Book Since the Invention of Printing
Author: Emile Schrijver
Date: 6/11/2018
Location: Rare Book School
Presenting the Yoshiwara in Monochrome and Full Color: The Annual Events of the ‘Azure Towers,’ Illustrated (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Presenting the Yoshiwara in Monochrome and Full Color: The Annual Events of the ‘Azure Towers,’ Illustrated
Abstract: Presenting the Yoshiwara in Monochrome and Full Color: The Annual Events of the ‘Azure Towers,’ Illustrated
Author: Julie Nelson Davis
Date: 7/25/2018
Location: Rare Book Schools
Japanese Prints and Illustrated Books in Context (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Japanese Prints and Illustrated Books in Context
Author: Julie Nelson Davis
Abstract: apanese woodblock prints and illustrated books from the seventeenth through the twentieth century are celebrated for their high technical and aesthetic achievements. In this course we will look closely at both formats, putting these into their historical and cultural contexts. We will also think through how these materials were designed for their broad and largely literate audiences. By engaging a wide range of materials, we will consider how the goals for printed materials varied from transferring information to delineating artistic trends. Among the topics we’ll study are: the early forms of woodblock printing; the development of full-color multiple block printing; popular subjects, from kabuki actors to erotica; the book as medium of transfer of painting practices; and the role of tradition in a modern world.
In considering this larger world of print, we will seek to understand how savvy publishers provoked and sated the appetites of their audiences by marketing writers and illustrators—along with many of their subjects—as brand names, even turning some into celebrities. These multi-market publishing ventures appeared as both inexpensive diversions, to be consumed and discarded, while others were designed for elite audiences, using high quality materials, techniques, and references. Publishers also dabbled in job printing in the form of producing high end works on commission for poetry groups, fan clubs, and others. In the modern era, these practices of the past were adapted by publishers, artists, and writers to serve their new markets. As we shall see, some projects reinscribed the bounds of traditional culture while others embraced the broader range of representation offered by an international art world.
Year: 2019
Audience: General Public
Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory
Author: Bethany Nowviskie
Abstract: This is a course on conceptualizing and curating digital cultural memory, with a particular focus on the construction of identities and expression of possible worlds, and on power, agency, and liberation in/through the independent “philosophical structures” of community-based archives. Among our animating concerns will be Afrofuturist and speculative digital library interface provocations; indigenous and local knowledges and their relation to nonlinear conceptions of time and “the record;” opportunities for place-based inquiry and understanding through archival collections; issues of sustainability; and problems of surveillance culture, hyper-quantification, and consent. We will also consider the challenges that established memory institutions and professionalized libraries and archives face when working in community. Under what conditions are authentic and equitable partnerships possible? What does good stewardship (or scholarship) mean in a post-custodial and collaborative context? How might digital platforms be better designed to protect their users, foster imagination, and honor local expertise and control? And finally, because this is a Rare Book School course, we’ll pay close attention to the ways that even born-digital and digitally remediated collections are really material culture through and through: expressions of lived experience, deeply embodied and interpenetrating with physical spaces, documents, and artifacts.
Year: 2019
Audience: General Public
The History of the Book in China to 1368 (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: The History of the Book in China to 1368
Author: Søren Edgren
Abstract: This course will offer a comprehensive history of books in China with reference to relevant developments in Korea and Japan and to parallels in the West. It treats the subject in the broadest sense from the advent of actual books in East Asia during the first millennium BCE until the introduction of virtual books at the end of the twentieth century, but the emphasis will be placed on the traditional Chinese book printed on paper from the ninth to the nineteenth century. In addition to describing the physical aspects of traditional Chinese books and their evolution over many centuries, their role as bearers of text and transmitters of knowledge will be introduced in the context of China’s long and complex history.
Year: 2019
Audience: General Public
The History of the Book in China since 1368 (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: The History of the Book in China since 1368
Author: Søren Edgren
Abstract: This course will offer a comprehensive history of books in China with reference to relevant developments in Korea and Japan and to parallels in the West. It treats the subject in the broadest sense from the advent of actual books in East Asia during the first millennium BCE until the introduction of virtual books at the end of the twentieth century, but the emphasis will be placed on the traditional Chinese book printed on paper from the ninth to the nineteenth century. In addition to describing the physical aspects of traditional Chinese books and their evolution over many centuries, their role as bearers of text and transmitters of knowledge will be introduced in the context of China’s long and complex history.
Year: 2019
Audience: General Public
Revolutionary Spirits: Typescript Books, DIY Zines, and Other Forms of Unsanctioned Publishing in Maoist and Post-Mao China (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Revolutionary Spirits: Typescript Books, DIY Zines, and Other Forms of Unsanctioned Publishing in Maoist and Post-Mao China
Abstract: Revolutionary Spirits: Typescript Books, DIY Zines, and Other Forms of Unsanctioned Publishing in Maoist and Post-Mao China
Author: Thomas S. Mullaney
Date: 7/22/2019
Location: Rare Book Schools
Cheap and Bad Books: A Social History of Printing and Publishing in Colonial India (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Cheap and Bad Books: A Social History of Printing and Publishing in Colonial India
Abstract: Cheap and Bad Books: A Social History of Printing and Publishing in Colonial India
Author: Anindita Ghosh
Date: 7/29/2019
Location: Rare Book Schools
RBS Online (Web Resource)
Title: RBS Online
Author: Rare Book School
Abstract: In 2020, RBS responded to the pandemic by offering a varied series of free digital programs centered on bibliography and the history of the book. These programs focused on the study of textual artifacts and their crucial role in shaping understandings of cultural heritage and informing humanistic research. The offerings included five series: a Course-Related Content Series offered by RBS faculty members that will be available to students who were enrolled at RBS this summer in some cases and, in others, open to wider audiences; a Panel Discussion Series, featuring RBS faculty members and colleagues from the broader book community; a Young Book Lovers Series, designed to engage K-12 audiences as well as others new to the book; a Lecture Series, building off of RBS’s traditional programming; and a BiblioVideo Series, highlighting pedagogy and research with textual artifacts.
This content, while not a substitute for Rare Book School’s full courses, provided an opportunity to gather and pursue our shared love of learning what bibliographical materials reveal about human history and human nature, how to care for these remarkable objects, and how to share what we know with the wider world.
Year: 2020