Past Courses (Harvard and MIT)

Ann Blair An introduction to the cultural history of the book and its functions as both material object and text. Major themes include the techniques of book production, authorship, popular and learned readership, libraries and censorship. The course surveys developments...

For as long as people have lived on Earth, they have shaped their world and have, in turn, been shaped by it. This lecture course surveys humans’ relationships with the built world, beginning with the origins of civilization and extending through the present day. During the...

Susan Dackerman Topic for 2009-10: Prints and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Explores the overlapping knowledge projects of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists, artisans, and scientists and the role of printed images in those projects. An...

Ann Blair This course, designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, will examine forms of authorship in early modern Europe broadly defined and the contextual factors that help explain them. Topics include: authenticity and plagiarism, collaborations...

Alex Csiszar This seminar will investigate how and to what extent knowledge is shaped by the communication practices and media through which it has been produced, from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The last decade has seen a convergence of concerns in book...

Robert Darnton Examines the impact of books on Western culture from the time of Gutenberg. Hands-on experience in studying the book as a physical object and theoretical reflection on the nature of printing as a means of communication. Students will consider the publishing...

Jeffrey Hamburger In an age of mechanical - and now virtual - reproduction, we have lost sight of the basic visual unit that structures our experience of the book: the opening. Employing old and new technologies, this course focuses on medieval books, their decoration and...

This hands-on interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar is for students who want to think about what a book is and how to read one. Readings include historical and literary narratives of reading by Cervantes, Richardson, Franklin, Sterne, Ellison, and Bradbury, together with...

The architectural book and its readers, authors, circulation and manufacture in the early modern period.

Jeffrey T. Schnapp Literary studies examined from the perspective of the practices that have shaped ideas concerning literature, writing, speech, and communication: from scrolls and codices to the rise of printing and typewriting to digital writing.

Investigates historically and theoretically the relationship between textuality and technology in recent works as well as in "classics" of the history of technology, cultural theory, and literary criticism. Readings include studies in media history and theory, and theories...

In the beginning was the book. From his library the hidalgo, bent on writing himself into History, sallies forth into a world of actors, storytellers, and readers. How do books come by their power to shape individuals and their world? We read Cervantes’ masterpiece alongside...