English 293b. Book Theory

Instructor: Deidre Shauna Lynch
Monday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

In this seminar we will work our way through theoretical work presenting the Western book as, variously, medium, interface, commodity, technology (including technology of empire), storage device, and “scriptive thing” --both classic theories (e.g., Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Curtius, Gérard Genette, Roger Chartier) and more recent ones (e.g., Mark McGurl, Jessica Pressman, Leah Price, Nicholas Thorburn, Kelly Wisecup, Robin Bernstein, Tia Blassingame). We’ll also consider such topics as print, publics, memory, ephemera, waste, and the often-announced death of the book. And as aids to our collective theorizing, we’ll derive resources from artists’ books (e.g. those created by Stéphane Mallarmé, Angela Lorenz, and Tia Blassingame) and from fiction that calls attention to its own physical platform (e.g. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Ling Ma’s Severance, and Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate). 

Space permitting, this course is open to qualified undergraduates. Undergraduates, please contact Prof. Lynch before classes begin if you would like to take the course.