The Sixth Annual
Texas A&M Workshop in the

History of Books and Printing

May 20-25, 2007

Cushing Memorial Library and Archives
Texas A&M University
 

Register Now for 2007!

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2004 Book History Workshop Video!

 



The sixth annual Texas A&M Workshop in the History of Books and Printing will take place May 20-25, 2007, in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. This five-day workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to and survey of the history of books and printing. The workshop is intended for librarians, archivists, students, teachers, collectors, private individuals and others who work in areas related to or who have an interest in the subject. The course consists of a unique combination of labs and seminars designed to provide students with practical experience as well as a broad historical survey of the field. The lab sessions will concentrate on printing in the hand press era and its allied technologies--typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and ink-making. Students will have the opportunity cast type in a hand mould. They will also set type, impose formes, and print on a replica common press. The seminar sessions will provide a chronological survey of book and printing history, beginning briefly with pre-codex structures and then concentrating on developments in the hand press era. 

The workshop begins with a reception at 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening.  Workshop sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. each day and, minus breaks and lunch, end at 5:00 p.m., except for Friday, which wraps up at noon with a wazygoose, a reenactment of the annual party traditionally thrown by the master printer for his journeymen and apprentices. While the morning and afternoon sessions are limited to workshop participants, the evening lectures are free and open to the public. The lectures begin at 7:00 p.m.

 

Enrollment and Application

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The workshop is limited to 20 students. Applications are welcome beginning December 1 and will be accepted until May. Admissions will be made on a rolling basis and will be made in light of each applicant’s needs in relation to the course content. Applicants are reminded that this is an introductory course intended for those with little or no exposure to the subject. On the application form, potential students should clearly identify the link or links between the subject matter of the workshop and their professional, academic, vocational, or avocational interests. 

 

Cost

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$625 registration fee, $100.00 of which is due at the time of admittance.  Participants who have not remitted their deposit or made other arrangements with us within three weeks of acceptance may be dropped from the workshop to accommodate other applicants.  Refunds are available up to three weeks before the course begins.   The full payment is due on the day you arrive.

Housing

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Discounted accommodations are available at Traditions, a recently-built commercial dormitory. Last year, private suites were $35.40 per night and will include daily breakfast. The Traditions is located in the Northgate area adjacent to campus; there are multiple restaurants within a couple of blocks. Cushing is about a 12-15 minute walk. All arrangements for accommodations in this dormitory will be made through Cushing Library. You can learn more about Traditions by visiting their website.

Workshop participants may also stay in one of the many local hotels. Rates vary. If you choose to stay off campus, you will need a car as there is no off campus hotel within easy walking distance of the Cushing Library.  You will also still need a parking pass. If you choose to stay off campus, please let us know when you register for the workshop.  You are responsible for your own reservations whether you stay off or on campus.

 

Travel

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Directions to the campus and the Cushing Library are available online.

Located in what National Public Radio has described as the “lush central Texas countryside,” Texas A&M University is within easy access of most of the major metropolitan areas in Texas: Austin is about 2 hours, Houston 1 ½ hours, Dallas 2 ½ - 3 hours, San Antonio 2 ½ - 3 hours.  Commuter flights to Easterwood Airport in College Station, and minutes from the A&M campus, are available on SkyWest from Houston Intercontinental airport and on American from Dallas/Fort Worth.  If you fly into Easterwood Airport, cab fare from the airport to the campus or nearby is about $12.00.


Workshop Staff

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Steven Escar Smith, workshop director and instructor, is C. Clifford Wendler Professor, Director of the Cushing Library and Archives, and Associate Dean for Advancement, Texas A&M University Libraries (Ph.D., Texas A&M; M.A., M.L., South Carolina). His publications include Roy Fuller: A Bibliography (Scolar, 1996) and American Book and Magazine Illustrators to 1920 (Gale, 1998) and essays and reviews in Studies in Bibliography, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Book Collector, Imprint, ANQ, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, and elsewhere.  He has also spent the better part of the last decade gathering and acquiring the physical things (i.e. the books, printing tools, artifacts, facsimiles, etc.) that form the core of this workshop. Smith is director and organizer of the workshop.

Stephen Pratt, printer and craftsman in residence (M.A., BYU, and further graduate work at Berkeley). With his son Ben, Pratt is proprietor of Pratt Press Works, a family business specializing in replica printing and type-casting equipment. They recently completed their 24th press, a foolscap folio Albion. Pratt’s study of the typeface used in the printing of the Gutenberg Bible (“The Myth of Identical Types”) was published in the most recent issue of the Journal of the Printing History Society (n.s. 6, summer 2003). Pratt is taking an experimental approach to the birth of printing. As part of this study, he has created matrices for Gutenberg’s type. They have also built a replica of the oldest known hand mould (GI48 in the Plantin-Moretus museum) for the casting.  He is a member of the Gutenberg Geselleschaft, Arbeitskreis Druckeschichte, the Wood Engravers Network, the Fine Press Book Association, and was one of the organizers of the 2002 American Typecasting Fellowship conference, which was held at the Crandall Historical Printing Museum in Provo, Utah.

Christopher L. Morrow, assistant director of programs, is the Curator for Outreach for the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University (Ph.D., M.A., Texas A&M). Morrow is currently working on a book project which examines the emergence of nationalism in early modern literature and drama and how the material book and London book trade affected the dynamics of nationalism in these works. Morrow still serves as a correspondent for the World Shakespeare Bibliography and is the author of “Shakespeare and Pedagogy: A Bibliography” (Shakespeare Yearbook, 2002). He is also a graduate of the 2004 Workshop.

 

Evening Lecturers/Activities

2007 Lectures:

"'Helpes in their own fieldes and gardens': Early modern women's ownership of English herbals." by Rebecca Laroche

Rebecca Laroche is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.  She has published several articles on early modern women, and her current book-length project, Herbal Rhetoric:  Women’s Texts and   the Location of Medical Authority in England, 1550-1650, has received support from the Huntington, Folger Shakespeare, and Yale Beinecke libraries and the Institute for the Medical Humanities in Galveston, TX, where she is currently visiting fellow.

"Illustrating don Quixote: a brief history of book illustration techniques"

by Fernando González Moreno. 

Dr. Fernando González Moreno, Visiting Scholar and the current University of Castilla-La Mancha Cervantes Chair Research Fellow received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Castilla-La Mancha and is the author of El Quijote de las luces: Ilustraciones para la edición de la Imprenta Real, 1797–1798 (2004),  as well as several articles and book chapters.  While at Texas A&M, Dr. Moreno has worked closely with the Eduardo Urbina Cervantes Project Collection in Cushing, and his lecture will draw upon this research. 

Lecture by Stephen Pratt: TBA

Stephen Pratt, printer and craftsman in residence (M.A., BYU, and further graduate work at Berkeley). With his son Ben, Pratt is proprietor of Pratt Press Works, a family business specializing in replica printing and type-casting equipment.  He is a member of the Gutenberg Geselleschaft, Arbeitskreis Druckeschichte, the Wood Engravers Network, the Fine Press Book Association, and was one of the organizers of the 2002 American Typecasting Fellowship conference, which was held at the Crandall Historical Printing Museum in Provo, Utah.

 

2006 Lectures

"A Textual History of the Quixote, 1605-2005" by Eduardo Urbina.

Eduardo Urbina obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley (1979) and is currently Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University, and Visiting Professor and Director of the Cervantes Chair at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. As a "cervantista," he is the author of Principios y fines del Quijote (Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, 1990), El sin par Sancho Panza: Parodia y creación (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991), and editor of 'Don Quixote' Illustrated (2005). He has published over 90 articles and book chapters in Anales Cervantinos (Spain), Iberoamericana (Germany), Espéculo (Spain), Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica (México), Cervantes, Romanistisches Jarhbuch, Romance Quarterly, the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Insula, among other places. He is the Director of the Cervantes Project (http://cervantes. tamu.edu/), and editor of the Electronic Variorum Edition of the Quixote, the Anuario Bibliográfico Cervantino, the Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos , and the Biblioteca  Cervantes series. He is founding member of the Cervantes Society of America, member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, and Honorary Curator of the Cervantes Project Collection at the Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University.

"Donne as a Manuscript Poet" by Gary A. Stringer

Gary A. Stringer came to Texas A&M University as a Visiting Professor in the fall of 2004, having previously retired from the English faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published articles on Donne, Milton, and various other Renaissance figures, and has edited two collections of essays on Donne. In 1981 Stringer organized the project to produce The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne and assumed the role of General Editor of the edition, a position he still holds. At A&M, Stringer teaches in the English department and continues his work on the Variorum, the fourth volume of which was published in December of 2005 by Indiana University Press.


Funding for this event has been generously provided by the Friends of the Texas A&M University Libraries, the Sterling C. Evans Library, the Loran L. Laughlin Printing Arts Endowment, the John H. Hinton Endowment, Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and the C. Clifford Wendler Professorship.  

Contact information

Address:   
 
 
Cushing Memorial Library &Archives
ATTN: Chris Morrow
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-5000
Phone: (979) 845-1951
Fax: (979) 845-1441
E-Mail: c-morrow@tamu.edu 

 

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