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Though modern day notions of the book tend to be conceptualized in the form of paginated codices, “book” is a capacious term. The physical form of the book, which changes through time and endless technological developments, has a rich history that forms the basis of bibliography and the basis of how our societies consume information today.
This site is a compilation of the research conducted across the Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, and Spring 2024 classes of Professor Whitney Trettien’s Cultures of the Book undergraduate seminar. The Fall 2018 page, Material Book Cultures Through the Ages, emphasized observing materiality, especially in the form of numerous objects from the University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts collection, unraveling discussions on the creation of meaning beyond content, from parchment and pagination to mimeographs and HTML, various book technologies were explored through presentations before being turned into research papers. In 2020, our class, which was taught remotely, heavily utilized Amaranth Borsuk's text "The Book" as a central framework for our understanding of what a “book” is. This central text considered the complex history of the book as a technology, as well as the various methods of analysis scholars employ when studying the book. Moreover, Borsuk’s writing also pushed us as a class to challenge our notions of what makes a book a book, allowing us to better understand the true breadth of scholarly considerations of the book as a technology. In 2022 and 2023, each member of the class adopted a book from Kislak's special collections to research, with help from John Pollack and the staff at the library. Each student wrote a material text analysis as well as original research on these unique items.
Among other topics, researchers in this class have focused on:
- substrates: how do paper, parchment, and palm-leaf, among other materials, inform us of the contexts in which works were created?
- inscriptions: what implications do para-texts such as footnotes and apparatus such as binding have on the way content will be consumed?
- and platforms: in what ways do devices, software / hardware, and operating systems contribute function transitionally to give voice to content?
2018 Contributions
This page contains a compilation of resources from the Kislak Center gathered by the 2018 class.
Material Book Cultures Through the Ages
2020 Contributions
2022 Contributions
Each of these entries links to an article on a unique book in Kislak's special collections.
A Brief State on the Province of Pennsylvania
Chinese Poetry Paper by the Master of the Ten Bamboo Hall
John B. Thayer Titanic Memorial Collection
John Wright Commonplace Book: A Unique Late 18th-Century Manuscript
Perpetual Card: Vaticinia Varia
A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke
Home Economics Foods and Food Preparation
Mayan Medical Receipts and Spanish Translation
The Graphic: a Premier Illustrated Newspaper
William Penn's 1683 Letter to the Free Society of Traders
The Provincial Freeman and Weekly Advertiser
Maps and Plans Illustrative of Thucydides
House of Mystery, Volume 2: Love Stories for Dead People
The Boke of Common Prayer (1583?)
A British Soldier's Photoalbum of India
2023 Contributions
Each of these entries links to an article on a unique book in Kislak's special collections.
William B. Richard World War II letters
Tunnel book depicting a promenade on the Champs-Élysées
Collection of Chinese Culture: Stone Rubbings
Edith Mary Mellor's Travel Diary
Scrapbooks & Theatricals in Philadelphia
A Defense Of The Antient Historians: Ireland and Great-Britain
A Friend in Need: English-Tamil Cookery Book
Balthazar Solvyns' Etchings of Colonial India
A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica
A Pesach Sampler: from appetizer to afikomen
A North African Megillat Esther
Jiu Huang Ben Cao: A Plant Atlas for Famine
The Experienced English Housekeeper
芥子園重訂本草綱目:a reprint version in Qing Dynasty of the Bible of Traditioanl Chinese Medicine
Springs, An Artist Book by Enid Mark
Ruptures, Their Causes and Varieties : With Various Methods for Curing Them
American and British Ballads, Circa 18th-19th Centuries
Beyond Pedagogy and Aesthetics: Werner Pfeiffer's ''Errantry''
State of the Union: a Snapshot of Our Political and Social Conundrum
The American Flag: Reconstructed
The Black Panther Ministry of Information
Swirls: James Prez's Ode to Duchamp
Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant: Risks and Rewards
Medicinal Experiments, or, A Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies
2024 contributions
Curious Flap Anatomies - 19th Century Obstetrics
Balzaculator – La Comedie Humaine as a Binary System for Balzacolytes
Susan Kae Grant - Radioactive Substances
The Traveller's Pocket Farrier Handbook
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