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In its first year, the Book Initiative hosted inaugural lectures by Isabel Hofmeyr and Jill Lepore. Since then, we have co-organized transcribe-a-thons with the Colored Conventions Project and Alexander Library, sponsored graduate student field trips to area libraries and letterpresses, granted graduate student fellowships to Rare Book School, sponsored an undergraduate class in bookmaking as well as co-sponsored a rare book exhibition. Recent events include talks, bookbinding studios, and scavenger hunts with Javiera Barrientos, Jesse Erickson, Denise Gigante, Melina Moe, Heather O’Donnell, Matt Rubery, Andrew Stauffer, Corinna Zeltsman, Kari Kraus, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Tia Blassingame, Jonathan Senchyne, Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, Ryan Cordell, Christy Pottroff, Olivia Moy, Katherine Ruffin, Miles Grier, Nicholas Dames, and Isabel Duarte-Gray. As of fall 2023, the Scarlet Letterpress is open to print student projects, dissertation and honors thesis title-pages, protest posters and more.
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Upcoming Events
Upcoming Events
Rutgers School of Arts and Science presents: Audiobooks: A Symposium. With Karl Berglund, assistant professor of literature at Uppsala University, Sweden: “‘The most difficult stage to study’? Understanding the reading practices through streaming audiobook data,” and Justin Tacket, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick: “Sound Technology and Vocalizing the Text.”
April 10, 2024 | 12:00 pm
Murray Halll 302 | 510 George St., New Brunswick
RSVP a sandwich here: book@cca.rutgers.edu
Self-Publishing Workshop.
Come learn about the world of spirit duplication. Bookseller and historian of radical publishing Brian Cassidy will provide an overview of these technologies and their use in early zines. Then try your hand at making your own ditto and hectography copies! All are welcome!
Wednesday April 17 | 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Scarlet Letterpress | Murray Hall 309, 510 George St., New Brunswick
If you have any questions, email us at: book@cca.rutgers.edu
The Second Colloquium on Independent Publishing
Come hear Dante Gonzalez present his “Edición, Literatura y Pensamiento en Lenguas Originarias” (event in Spanish) and the subsequent conversation “Independent Publishing and the Sociology of Literature” with John Thompson, Ana Cecillia Calle, and Gustavo Guerrero, with a response by Marcy Schwartz.
Thursday April 18 | 1:00 pm and 4:30 pm
Academic Building West Room 6051, 15 Seminary Place, New Brunswick
Past Events
Past Events
Serial Blackness & William Still’s Underground Railroad
February 29, 2023 | 12:30 pm
Derrick R. Spires is the John adn Patricia Cochran Scholar of Inclusive Excellence and Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware.
Unbinding Latinidad: Book History and the Horizon of Publishable Latinidad with Isabel Duarte-Gray
Dr. Isabel Duarte-Gray holds degrees from Amherst College (BA in English and Russian) and Harvard University (Ph.D. in English). Her work focuses on Latinx literary production and book history. Her first poetry collection, Even Shorn, debuted with Sarabande Books and was included in the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2021.
Book Launch of Nicholas Dames’ The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century
Nov 16, 2023 | 1-2 pm
Nicholas Dames is a specialist in the history and theory of the novel, with particular attention to the novel in Britain and on the European continent since the early nineteenth century.
Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery
November 02, 2023 | 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Miles Grier is an associate professor of English at Queens College, a division of the City University of New York. This event was a lecture and Q&A about Dr, Grier’s monograph, Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery.