I am happy to share two syllabi prepared for the graduate level “BookLab” course I teach at the University of Maryland. BookLab itself is dedicated book arts studio and press, co-founded by my colleague Kari Kraus and myself, in a converted seminar room on the same floor that houses the English department. It affords access to four tabletop presses, a collection of metal and wood type, materials for bookbinding and papermaking, a 3D printer, and more, as well as a working collection of several hundred scholarly books about books, experimental artist’s books, chapbooks, and other printed matter.
Category: Classroom
SHARP in the Classroom posts
Book Materiality Exploration Kits
This classroom activity was a collaboration between a special collections librarian and a library and archives conservator, testing a new approach to engaging students with books as material objects. The conservator developed book materiality exploration kits that were individually paired to books from the library’s rare books collection. The special collections librarian used these kits with a graphic design class, which came to the special collections to explore historical (rare) books and contemporary artists’ books as inspiration for their own book design project later in the semester.
So Now What? Lessons from a Year of Virtual Special Collections Visits
Like so many others, my introduction to remote teaching was an abrupt and rapid process of trial and error. I started as the curator of the University of Florida’s rare book collection in the summer of 2019. I spent the next semester and a half establishing connections with faculty and bringing courses in to do in-person instruction: single sessions per course, often a combination of show and tell and hands-on activities and discussion. In mid-March, as warnings became more dire, I had a group of thirty students coming in to the collections to see a facsimile of the Codex Murúa, a 16th-century Mesoamerican manuscript, and discuss its materiality. The instructor wanted the whole …
Find Something and Bring It Back
With the “Find Something & Bring it Back” assignment, students in literature survey courses familiarize themselves with online databases of…
Open forum: pandemic pedagogy?
Teaching is nothing if not having questions and trying to get our students to ask yet more questions. With each…