History of the Book: 1400-2000 (LIB260) is an undergraduate elective course at Wake Forest University that introduces students to the study of material texts and their impact on human history. The articles that follow are by students from the Spring 2015 session.
Before we began our study of book history this semester, we had to answer one question…
What exactly is a book, anyway?
Is it a container for text? An artifact of the society that produced it? An economic commodity? A craft and design object? Or all of the above?
Over the course of the semester we examined books from all of these perspectives. We looked at many, many books, from medieval manuscripts to 20th century paperbacks. We investigated how they were produced, marketed, and read. We learned how to describe the physical features of books. We tried our hands at bookbinding and typesetting. And we read articles by scholars working in the field of book history.
As a final project, each student chose one book from the Rare Books Collection at Z. Smith Reynolds Library, researched its history, and wrote a brief article highlighting their most interesting findings. The diversity of topics and approaches reflects the variety of backgrounds and disciplines of the students in our class. But all demonstrate the new appreciation that we’ve gained over the semester for books, in their broadest definition.