This is one of the four required core seminars in the graduate Textual Studies Program (others are Oral and Manuscript Texts, Hypertext, and Textual Theory). It gives an introduction to the history of printing as an art and a means of textual transmission, as well as a practical view of hand and machine press printing. The seminar includes introductory surveys of such topics as descriptive and analytical bibliography; the production, transmission, and editing of printed texts; history of the book; and contemporary textual and editorial theory. Students will also get practical experience in the editing of printed texts. Some seminar sessions will be held in Suzzallo Special Collections in order to provide first-hand access to examples of early modern print and book history. The professor himself is in the middle of a massive three-volume editorial project on Henry Fielding for Oxford Press, and seminar students will also get a possibly frightening inside view of the messy workings of such a project.

Students will undertake two group projects and a critical paper. There will also be a field trip to the Thorniley Collection of early printing press technology at the West Coast Paper Co., where everybody gets a shot at operating a hand press. Keep your fingers out of the way.