I was the teaching fellow for Professor Jill Lepore and Professor Leah Price‘s course How to Read a Book in spring, 2016. This course was a material culture history of reading and writing, beginning with clay tablets and ending with iPads. By working with Harvard Art Museums, the Boston Paper Collective, the Houghton Library, the Bow & Arrow Press, students learned how to make iron gall ink, paper from scratch, work a printing press, stitch book binding, and think critically about how the material stuff of books both limits and expands what can be transmitted.
Link to full syllabus.
A newly pressed page.
A very long page.
A very wet page.
The very small page.