Material Texts

Catalog description

This course offers an introduction to the relationship of texts to their production, circulation, and physical forms, including the history of textual production and reproduction. Students will gain technical expertise and experience through a series of hands-on exercises in bibliographical analysis, but will mainly practice a "way of seeing" material texts that can be brought to bear on literary criticism, cultural or media studies, and historiography, beyond the technical work of bibliography. Different instructors will emphasize different aspects of this topic. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a complete description of the current offerings.