ENGLIT 2141 - MAKING AND UNMAKING THE BOOK

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course is a historical, practical, and creative introduction to one of the most important media forms in human history-the codex book. You will have the chance to design your own books and to create the various components of books, including making paper, setting movable type, inking and printing on a letterpress printer, and learning to stitch and glue book bindings. You'll have lots of support along the way, including working with the wonderful staff in Pitt's Text and Context Lab. At the same time, we will study and discuss the material and cultural history of books, including a process of Western canon-formation that moved from the publication of the first printed bibles to the treatment of certain English literary works as quasi-sacred texts. After tracing how this influential view of the book was formed, we will turn to various modes of "unmaking" the book, from artists' books to poetry such as M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong! As we trace the material history of books, another central theme will be the relationship between words and images: Are different processes used to produce them, as when movable type would be combined with woodblock printing in the first European printed books? Or are they combined, as with William Blake's illuminated printing or graphic novels such as Alison Bechdel's Fun Home? Other case studies will include literary, artistic, and political examples of many kinds of print publications, including medieval illuminated manuscripts, early modern poems and plays such as Shakespeare's, illustrated religious and political broadsides, pop-up and other children's books, and many other of modern forms-such as zines, chapbooks, and art books. Students from all departments and programs are welcome, and you will have a chance to develop independent projects on topics of personal interest to you.
Academic Career: Graduate
Course Component: Seminar
Grade Component: Grad LG/SNC Basis

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