From Papyrus to the PDF: The Transmission of Texts

3 Credits.

Texts are conveyed to readers in songs, scrolls, books, and digital files. Some of them survive over extended periods because they are successfully transferred from one form to another, while others are frozen in the past, Many are lost altogether. The form in which a text is communicated often determines how it is read -or if it can be read at all. The study of texts as they move between readers and through time illuminates more than the history of the “book” though, since the medium of the message has often shaped how we understand all aspects of the humanities. This course surveys the long history of "books," paying attention to oral and scribal traditions as well as print and the digital, paying special attention to the interactions between materiality and social contexts.