"Objects of Study showcases a wonderful explosion of innovative pedagogy and research focused on studying texts as material objects. This well-illustrated volume was developed out of a 2017 conference supported by Rare Book School and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand the purview of bibliography beyond the well-known canon. The 47 contributors model and illustrate inclusiveness and collaboration in sharing their experiences of teaching and practicing the study of books and book history across an exciting range of times, places, and techniques of text-making."Ann Blair, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard University“Of making many books there is no end,” the Bible informs us. Rare Book School at the University of Virginia attests to that enduring truth. No educational institution has done more to foster teaching and scholarship about books as material texts embedded in cultural history. . . . Objects of Study offers at once an introduction to the challenges and joys in this field of inquiry and fascinating lessons for the practitioner about how to teach this important and varied subject matter to others.Robert A. Gross, author of The Minutemen and Their World "Like all books, this book is—literally—a gathering. More than most, it is an intersectional gathering, bringing together not only “disciplines” but also objects, places, and people, all bound by a common interest in the material conditions of meaning and making. It is (to borrow the locution of the opening chapter) great stuff."Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor and Co-Founder, BookLab, University of Maryland "The book is surely the most humane prosthetic device ever devised by advanced human societies. So reading this wonderful collection is both an uplifting and humbling experience. Here is a widely ranging set of essays by a learned company of scholars and educators whose meticulous care for books is an index of their greater care, for the people who produce and maintain and use them. Generosity is the leit motiv for what these admirable people do, stories of human beings at their working and caring best."Jerome McGann, Emeritus University Professor, University of Virginia"This wide-ranging collection offers timely and practical pedagogical ideas that will be of immediate use not only in book history courses but in almost any literature or history course that could usefully incorporate hands-on making or analysis of books. . . . whether at a research university or a community college, its incorporation of other languages, of non-Western materials, and of genres ranging from cookbooks to devotional texts will make it of interest to instructors across a variety of fields."Leah Price, Director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book and Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of English
