Books and Their Readers

In this course we will see how texts have been written, made into books and read in the West, from ancient Greece to modern America. We will read primary sources and modern case studies and make a number of visits to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone, where we can examine manuscripts and early books. Through the semester we will track the ways in which the experience of reading has changed - and remained the same - over the centuries.