The 2025 Annual Meeting: Morning Panels Announced
Book history on a budget in action!
The BSA Events Planning Sub-Committee invited our community of bookmakers and sellers, collectors, conservators, curators, educators, librarians, scholars, and students to submit proposals for a session centered on the myriad ways we activate bibliographical histories and practices. We are pleased to present the following panels during the morning session of the upcoming annual meeting.
Learn more about the selected panels and speakers below.
Book History on a Budget: A Maker-Centered Approach ↑
“Doing” Book History is expensive. It requires special collections, library staff, and spaces for study. Critical Making is expensive. It requires labs, tools, and support personnel. A maker-centered approach to book history can seem out of reach for many faculty and student researchers. And the reasons are more than pecuniary; lack of experience, time, and training, can make applied learning intimidating in the Humanities classroom. Yet, as media artist and scholar Garnet Hertz argues, “Doing something yourself, as a non-expert, is a crash course in understanding how something actually works, and it is the fastest way to unpack and learn about the things that would normally remain invisible and taken for granted. The process of being humiliated by things that you think are easy or mindless is a valuable experience.” This applies to students and instructors alike.
With program closures, budget restrictions, and the general depreciation of humanities methods on STEM-focused campuses, it is challenging to create opportunities for teaching and research in Book History and Bibliography, especially on smaller campuses. This workshop centers pedagogical strategies for maker-centered approaches to the study of material texts and does so specifically from the perspective of small campuses with limited material support and without dedicated labs. We will demonstrate and share assessment strategies for assignments that encourage students to make and unmake books and to also theorize how books (and book-like things) make meaning in the past, present and future. This hands-on workshop includes introductions to three maker-centered assignments: “Trash Books,” “Biodegradable Books,” and “Dangerous Books.”
About the presenters:
Lindsay DiCuirci @UMBC_CAHSS (on IG) is an associate professor of English, Graduate Program Director, and affiliate faculty in Language, Literacy, and Culture at UMBC, specializing in early American literature and the history of the book. Her award-winning book, Colonial Revivals: The Nineteenth-Century Lives of Early American Books (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) examines the politics of collecting, preserving, and reprinting colonial books and manuscripts in the nineteenth-century U.S. Her scholarship has recently appeared in Reception, Early American Literature, Archive Journal and in edited collections. Hands-on book history pedagogy and student-led digital humanities projects are a critical part of Dr. DiCuirci’s work at UMBC. Recent projects include Digital Cruikshank: Etching & Sketching in Nineteenth-Century England and the Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Collection Digital Exhibition.
Jillian J. Sayre @march_rucamden (on IG) is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers University-Camden. Her recent publications include Mourning the Nation to Come (LSU Press, 2020), a comparative study of early national literature and culture in North and South America; “First Person in Translation,” on teaching translation (and resistance to translation) in Native American literature using video games in Teaching Games and Game Studies in the Literature Classroom, and “But for His Dog,” a study of companion animals in frontier romances published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment. As the Director of MARCH, Dr. Sayre is working to establish a humanities maker space for the campus and community as well as new interdisciplinary initiatives in environmental humanities.
Sophia Westfall is in her final year of undergraduate studies at Rutgers University in Camden where she is a member of the Honors College, member of Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society, tutor in the Writing and Design Lab, writer for the student newspaper The Gleaner, volunteer at The Writers House, and student researcher at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH). In addition, she is a senior editor for The Undergraduate Review, a tech-specialist at Apple, the editorial director of Spoon University New Brunswick Chapter, and the founder of The Secret Society of Poetry, a literary magazine which publishes young and emerging voices internationally. Sophia’s poetry has been featured by The New York Poetry Society and she is a two-time award winner for The Young Writers short story contest. Sophia plans to develop her maker-centered approach to creative writing and literary analysis in her postgraduate studies.
Bridging the Gap: From Close-Looking to Structural Thinking ↑
This workshop will explore ways to move students (and ourselves) between the object-focused close-looking taught by bibliography and higher-order thinking about structures and systems. As the field continues to consider the impact of inequities, both past and present, on the historical record as it survives and is (in)accessible, how can we train students in ways that demonstrate the value of bibliographical modes of inquiry? How, in particular, might we extend classroom discussions about absences, silences, and lacunae in collections to exercises that more fully center the material aspects of textual artifacts as a primary form of evidence for better understanding larger systems and disciplinary histories?
We will begin with a brief discussion of ways context can emerge from, rather than being imposed upon, the material text. Next, we will model two exercises using objects from our own teaching: the Vinland Map, which is well-known enough that students must surmount their own preconceptions of the object in order to attend to its material details, and a copy of a small-format English New Testament from the 17th century, which is obscure enough that students must attend closely to the materiality of the object to begin making sense of it. In one case, the challenge for students is defamiliarization. In the other, it is starting from square one. As in our own classrooms, we will encourage participation throughout.
The final stage of the workshop will ask participants to think about ways to stage the transition between close-looking and structural thinking—and back again—in their own teaching. We’ll proceed with a paired or small-group exercise, with participants emerging with an activity (or at least the beginnings of one) tailored to their expertise, materials, and students. Along the way, the focus will be on the broader dispositions and habits of mind that bibliography can help their students develop: curiosity, ethical inquiry, attention to structures and systems, and the logical work of connecting the particular to the general.
About the presenters:
Gina Marie Hurley, who received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale in 2020, is Associate Director of Teaching Development and Initiatives at the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, where she leads pedagogical initiatives in the humanities with a particular interest in teaching with collections. Her work has appeared in Pedagogy and Profession, The Journal of Museums and Academic Collections, The Chaucer Review, the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Exemplaria, and Medium Ævum, among other venues. She is at work on a monograph entitled Revealing Truths: Confession and Reputation in Late Medieval Romance, as well as a joint book project on teaching at a distance from collections.
Aaron T. Pratt is Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center. His research and teaching focus on bibliography, the history of the book, and the literature and culture of early modern England. His writing has appeared in a number of venues, both academic and public, including Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, The Library, Fine Books and Collections magazine, and edited collections published by Oxford and Cambridge. Most recently, a coauthored article in the Times Literary Supplement announced the discovery of John Milton’s extensively annotated copy of Holinshed’s Chronicles.
Look, Think, Wonder: An Adaptable Framework for Teaching with Primary Sources ↑
The Lilly Library on Indiana University’s campus is home to over 500,000 rare books and 8.5 million manuscripts. The Lilly has a rich tradition of teaching with primary sources. Lilly librarians teach an average of 150 classes each semester, during which students and faculty visit the collections to engage with rare materials related to their studies. In his 2015 talk at the National Colloquium on Library Special Collections, Jay Satterfield of the Rauner Library at Dartmouth College described an approach to instruction sessions, which he called “teachable packages.”
The Lilly’s Teaching and Research department, then led by Rebecca Baumann, adopted and modified this idea, creating what we now call “Look, Think, Wonder.” This framework guides students through analysis of an object, prompting them to examine physical attributes, draw upon their previous knowledge, and consider what questions they still have. This activity has proven to be endlessly adaptable, provoking thoughtful discussion in student groups ranging from freshman undergraduates to doctoral students. Students leave these sessions with new confidence in their abilities and are more likely to return to use special collections independently.
In this session we aim to present case studies representing some of the myriad ways that the Lilly Library uses “Look, Think, Wonder” in the classroom and how other institutions might employ a similar approach in their instruction sessions. We will also discuss considerations for choosing high-impact materials for these sessions to optimize student engagement. We welcome collaborative conversation with attendees following the presentation.
About the Presenters
Erin Chiparo started her position as the Silver-Norman Curator of Dermatology, General Medicine, and Science at Indiana University’s Lilly Library in January of 2024. Prior to her curatorial work, Erin held positions in Teaching and Research at the Lilly Library and in Public Services at the William and Gayle Cook Music Library. In addition to all things science and medicine, Erin enjoys researching early music and maritime calamities, drinking coffee, and reading weird fiction.
Sarah McElroy Mitchell has been the Curator of Religious Collections at Indiana University’s Lilly Library since October of 2023. Before assuming this role, she worked for Lilly Teaching and Research for six years. Outside of her curatorial work, Sarah enjoys reading about politics and new religious movements, experimenting with new recipes, and riding the emotional waves of baseball fandom.