WRI 280 - Print Culture and Book Arts

As the book has undergone a rapid century of changes, how have writers, theorists, and cultural critics imagined and come to terms with the complimentary ideas of “the book” and “the library”? This course implements experiential approaches to the production, distribution, and reception of the book as a cultural object in order to focus attention on our own status as readers and writers in the twenty-first century. Students will examine books in various contexts, including special collections and archives (at Davidson and elsewhere), museums and galleries, in the general public, and in theoretical and critical contexts, and students will explore and experiment with book-making technologies (from moveable type to digital design). In the process, students will become familiar with the material aspects of books and book collections, and will consider how materiality and content overlap and intersect in relation to textual meaning. While students will write throughout the course, a final capstone may include a group proposal aimed at the development of holding in the E. H. Little Library’s Special Collections .

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.