Creating a Book Studies Minor

FAIN: AA-295615-24

Trustees of Indiana University (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)
Patricia Clare Ingham (Project Director: May 2023 to present)
Elizabeth Hebbard (Co Project Director: May 2023 to present)

A three-year project to develop an undergraduate minor in book studies.

We seek funding to develop a cross-disciplinary, undergraduate minor in Book Studies, a broad field that includes book history, manuscript studies, text and page design, fabrication and conservation, and books as material culture. In addition to the rigorous training of a traditional book studies program, we aim to take advantage of the current pedagogical shift toward experiential learning in and for interdisciplinary humanities teaching. Our proposed undergraduate minor thus contributes to the further development of “experimental humanities” programs on the Bloomington campus, with a particular emphasis on immersive undergraduate experiences. In particular, we combine the collaborative, lab-based techniques familiar in the proliferation of makerspaces with more conventional archival research and teaching on the materiality of books and manuscripts in historical, trans-historical, and cross-cultural perspectives.