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RBSC's History of the Book Seminar Series: Home

The History of the Book is an interdisciplinary realm of study that includes printing and publishing, materials and technologies of the book, the book trade, reading and readers, and collectors and collections, as well as library and information history.

The Seminar Series

Founders Memorial Library, Rare Books & Special Collections

Room 403

October Program

Fawning Readers of Mass Popular Literature in the 19th and early 20th Centuries

October 6, 2023 @ 5-6pm

Light refreshments will be provided. 

Photographs of E. Coccio and S. Prescott

Emily Coccia (L); Sata Prescott, (R).

March Program

Tracing the Shades of Early Modern Europe

March 7, 2024 @ Noon-1pm  

Brown bag lunch welcome. 

 

Presenter: DrChris Nissen, NIU, Emeritus Professor, CLAS, World Languages and Cultures:  "Tracking an Early Modern Woman: Giulia Bigolina (1516-1569) and my quest to find her manuscripts.

Presenter: Dr. Brian Sandberg, Professor, NIU History Department, TBD

 

November Program

Riding and Fighting the Waves of Innovation in the 19th Century

November 2, 2023 @ Noon-1pm

Brown bag lunch welcome.

Presenter: DeeAnna Phares, NIU, Assistant Professor, University Libraries: "Directing the Channels of Literature to Flow in their Proper Courses’: Bibliomania and the Pathologizing of Social Mobility" 

Presenter: Michael Barnes, NIU, Professor, School of Art and Design, Printmaking:  "Innovation and History - the invention of Lithography and its transformation of printing and the dissemination of information"

 

Photograph of M. Barnes and D. PharesMichael Barnes (L); Dee Anna Phares (R).

April Program

Riding the “Lava Wave”: Rediscovering the Amateur Press 

April 4, 2024 @ 5-6pm 

Light refreshments will be provided. 

Presenter: Laura Wasowizc, Curator, American Antiquarian Society, "Riding the “Lava Wave”: Rediscovering the Amateur Press" 

 

February Program

The Who and How of Manuscript Management

March 7, 2024 @ Noon-1pm 

Brown bag lunch welcome. 

Presenter: Lara Crowley, NIU, Professor, English Department: " Is it Donne? Authorship and Attribution in Early Modern England "

Presenter: Hao Phan is the Southeast Asia Curator at NIU: "Palm-Leaf Manuscripts from Southeast Asia: their making and preservation" 

 

Photographs of L. Crowley and Hao Phan.Lara Crowley (L); Hao Phan (R).