Course Information

Instructor: Jeremy Abbott

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 11–15, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to the historical and legal origins of copyright in the United States (along with some relevant international contributions), how that history has influenced library, archive, and special collections practice, and what copyright means now. Through a mix of case law, case studies, and guest speakers, participants will learn the theory and day-to-day application of copyright, share best practices, and collectively try to wrap our heads around its many contradictions. No law degrees or previous exposure to copyright beyond recognizing this “©” are necessary.

Course Information

Instructor: Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This course will examine the principles and underlying practices of developing and administering rare and distinctive ethnic and cultural heritage collections within the framework of mainstream American libraries and museums. Emphasis will be placed on how to protect and advocate for historic and contemporary cultural heritage collections against multiple threats such as systematic racism, institutional bias, decreased funding, and increasing marginalization within predominately white institutions. 

Topics covered will include an assessment of the socio-cultural function of major ethnic heritage collecting institutions in America; a history of their development and collecting practices; and the principles and process of appraising, disseminating, and sustaining ethnic collections. The course will also consider social and ethical dimensions of racial agency (i.e. white privilege, historical trauma) that challenge ethnic diversity and inclusiveness within special collections curatorial practice, outreach, personnel, and budget planning. There will be a special class session on ethical and legal considerations faced by curatorial administrators when addressing cultural heritage restitution, collections of dubious provenance, and repatriation requests. While this course will have a strong focus on African American, Native American, Asian and Latinx collections, much of the course content is adaptable to any library professional responsible for the stewardship of collections representing alternative narratives of heritage (i.e. gendered and LGBTQ collections).

A significant portion of the student’s time will be engaged in lectures, class discussions, and fieldwork at local Los Angeles special collections repositories. Hands on activities include examining archival and rare book materials that illuminate opportunities and challenges administering ethnic heritage resources. 

Please note this is a seminar course and therefore, a forum for discussion that seeks to inform and advise participants who are addressing challenges and opportunities around cultural heritage collections in their current professional institutions, the instructor may modify the course topics to suit current events and expressed student interests, needs, and expertise. For example, special attention may be given to challenges faced by ethnic heritage institutions during the national pandemic. 

Course Information

Instructor: Daniela Bleichmar

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 11–15, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This course examines the role of images in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge in early modern European books, from the rise of printing to about 1800. It is a highly empirical seminar, based above all on our looking together and discussing a large number of books from the period. We will compare examples of books across graphic-rich genres such as natural history, anatomy, cartography, technology, and astronomy. Through specific examples, we will discuss topics including the role of images in the production and circulation of knowledge; relationships between authors, artists, and printers; the various types of work that images performed, including evidentiary, emblematic, allegorical, illustrative, and ornamental; images in printed versus manuscript books; the relationships between images, texts, and objects; the artistic and artisanal practices, materials, and techniques used to create images; the spaces and people involved in making and interpreting images; and trust and mistrust of images in books. Normally, the course is organized to maximize our time looking at original materials held in rare books collections in Los Angeles (such as the Huntington Library, the Getty Research Institute, USC Special Collections, UCLA Special Collections, etc.).

Course Information

Instructor: Mali Collins

Location: Internet

Mode: Online

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This online course offers students available frameworks made by black, brown, and indigenous communities which offer art as document of their lives and state-sanctioned violence. Given that most if not arguably *all* marginalized groups experience some sort of violence related to institutional sites of memory, this course looks toward art—novels, visual impression, oral history and much more— to examine historical events and experiences that communities pass on as knowledge. At the end of this course, students will have expanded knowledge on theories and approaches to the idea of a “document,” as well as possible ways to expand their own bibliographies or collections to include various forms of art as documentation rather than ornament.

The boundaries of this course will be focused on the continental United States, with specific credence given to the Southern United States and the Mid-Atlantic regions. It will complement other courses such as Tonia Sutherland’s Curating the Digital Afterlife: Analog Histories and Digital Futures and Rebecca Sheffield’s Queer and Feminist Archival Practices.

Course Information

Instructor: Catherine DeRose

Location: Internet

Mode: Online

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This course will introduce you to digital humanities methods, workflows, and use cases. We will begin by examining the process by which written, printed, and visual materials become digital data, and will consider what is gained and lost along the way: what kinds of claims can we make about the “data” as a result of how it was transformed? What questions can we ask when we increase our scale of study to hundreds or thousands of texts? 

Digital humanities is an expansive, rapidly developing area of research. This course is designed to give you a foundation, introducing you to approaches and resources you can continue to draw on after the week concludes. You will gain hands-on experience working with popular open-source tools used by digital humanities practitioners. You will also learn best practices for developing your own digital humanities projects, from curating a dataset and identifying a suitable method of analysis to creating effective and compelling data visualizations you can share.

The course is intended for students, faculty, and library staff who are interested in taking on or supporting digital humanities projects, or who are just looking for an introduction to the field. No prior programming experience or existing project is required.

Provided datasets will draw heavily on literary texts with written, visual, network, and spatial components. There will also be open “lab” sessions during which participants can begin creating their own datasets or can continue experimenting with the provided ones.

Topics with likely tools that will be covered include:

• Next steps for continuing with DH
• A brief history of the digital humanities
• Data reconcilitation (OpenRefine)
• Data visualization best practices (Tableau Public)
• Natural Language Processing techniques (Unix Shell, Named Entity Recognition, Topic Modeling)
• Network graphs (Gephi)
• Georeferencing historical maps (Georeferencer)
• Maps (ArcGIS Online)
• Image computation (PixPlot)
• Web publishing platforms for sharing textual, visual, audio, and spatial work (StoryMaps)
• Project management (Trello)

Course Information

Instructor: Devin Fitzgerald

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 11–15, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

In this course, students will be introduced to the history of the book in East Asia (with a focus on China) and Western Europe. By pursuing an integrated approach to the comparative history of the book, participants will not only be introduced important moments in the history of printing, but we will also discuss the historical and intellectual baggage associated with terms like "print," "paper," and "information." The course will culminate in discussions of how to integrate more capacious and inclusive methods in teaching and researching printed materials. By the end of the course, students will be able to globally contextualize Gutenberg's "inventions" and appreciate Chinese contributions to the emergence of modern forms of the codex. 

Course Information

Instructor: Michaela Ullmann

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Colleges, universities, public schools, community archives, and special libraries all over the U.S. have successfully introduced immersive, integrative, collaborative, and active-learning elements into primary source literacy instruction over the past decade. In partnership with teaching faculty, librarians and archivists now play an active role in designing pedagogy featuring in-class activities that teach students archival literacy, information literacy skills, critical thinking skills, and paleography, among other skills for the 21st century student. This course will focus on developing, integrating, teaching, administering and advocating for robust primary source literacy instruction. 

On top of this, Critical Pedagogy and Critical Librarianship (#critlib) has become an integral part of both rare materials theory and praxis. As such, this course will also weave in some of the theories and methods of critical pedagogy. The course will discuss readings that underpin the theories of this movement, and the implementation of the practice of these theories within library environments, classrooms, and community spaces. 

Throughout the course, we will also discuss pedagogy and tools for integrating digital projects as well as asynchronous teaching modules into primary source literacy instruction. 

Using case study projects, participants will gain a sense of how rare book and archives repositories have partnered with faculty in innovative ways. Guest speakers will broaden our conversations, focusing on how librarians can best support their instructional efforts. Class participants will be asked to bring along instructional examples from their home institutions to workshop in a group setting, or if they are not yet in the profession, to imagine a project that would involve faculty collaboration in some substantive way. 

This course is designed to be collaborative in nature and a venue for generating new ideas and to imagine solutions to often-encountered problems in public services and instructional outreach. 

This course is best suited for individuals who just start out with primary source literacy instruction and those who have been teaching classes in Special Collections for a while but who seek a deeper dive into pedagogies that make their instruction more engaging and student-centered, who are interested to learn about new lesson plans, and who want help with managing their instruction workload in a sustainable way. 

Components of the syllabus for the course include: 

• Infrastructure & General Management for building and sustaining a successful instruction program 
• Introduction to Special Collections and Critical Pedagogy 
• Discussion of critical theory and praxis models 
• Establishing meaningful collaboration with librarians, archivists, and teaching faculty 
• Introduction to Curriculum Mapping and syllabus planning 
• Overview of useful tools for instruction and their application 
• Overview & introduction of select digital scholarship tools 
• Best practices and standards (including RBMS and ALA) 
• Establishment & assessment of learning outcomes 
• Field trips 
• Guest Speakers from the field of Primary Source Literacy and Critical Librarianship 
• Panel of instructors who teach courses with embedded primary source literacy 

In order to reduce “lecture” time and to create a more vibrant learning environment, the course will feature frequent breaks, flipped classroom, and workshopping during which participants will work on projects by themselves and/or in groups and return to the classroom for discussions and/or presentations. 

Learning outcomes: 

Participants will 

• Workshop individual projects to implement at their home institutions. 
• Be able to define and implement the basics for a well-functioning instruction program for primary sources literacy; 
• Understand & apply key terms, concepts, models, and theories related to the critical pedagogy, including how critical approaches intersect with professional functions, including outreach and instruction; 
• Understand the key role libraries play in supporting diversity throughout society; 
• Have experienced hands on some of the techniques used to make teaching primary source literacy effective and successful 
• Leave the course with an understanding, the tools, and the confidence to transform their instructional approach while creating less work for themselves; 
• Gain a better understanding of the partnership between teaching faculty and Special Collections librarian or archivist and the roles each plays in it; 
• Gain a basic foundation in digital initiatives that use primary source materials and with selected basic tools they can use to teach primary sources literacy in the digital arena;

Course Information

Instructor: Guillermo Morales

Ubicación: Oaxaca, México

Modo: Tenga en cuenta: la instrucción será en español y en persona.

Fechas: 14 al 18 de julio de 2025

Matrícula: $1200.00 USD

Course Description

Gracias a la conservación y rescate de las colecciones mexicanas, el estudio del libro antiguo en México ha ganado terreno entre los interesados en fomentar su valoración como parte del patrimonio. Sin embargo, para lograr esto es necesario comprender al libro antiguo como objeto cultural reflejo de un pensamiento y época específica que mezcló un conjunto de intereses en su producción, que trascendió en el tiempo y ha transformado su significado; por lo tanto es prudente abordarlo desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar. En México existe una importante cantidad de documentos antiguos, tanto en español como en latín, francés, italiano –solo por mencionar algunos idiomas– náhuatl y otras lenguas originarias, ¿cómo los integraremos a las generaciones futuras?

Este curso es una continuación (pero también un reboot) de nuestro curso del 2024, así que tanto profesionistas con experiencia y aquellos otros nuevos estudiantes lograrán asimilar contenido de interés. Buscamos que los alumnos sean capaces de datar e identificar los impresos conservados en México, pero también que comprendan el contexto donde fueron producidos, comerciados, almacenados y estudiados. Se repasarán los procesos editoriales del siglo XVI y la rica historia de las bibliotecas en el territorio, se trabajará con documentos originales, veremos la producción de papel artesanal en la región y el panorama gráfico actual, ligado a la tradición de estos impresos. Una invitación para explorar los cambios dinámicos del presente y futuro del libro antiguo en México.

Course Information

Instructor: Jen Johnson & Brad Johnson

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Rare books, archives, vernacular photography, born digital collections, audio recordings, and ephemera are just some of the materials passing through the hands of antiquarian booksellers today. This week-long course will explore how professionals navigate various facets of the trade in the 21st century, and include specialist booksellers, special collections librarians, and archivists who will share their expertise and broaden our conversations.

We will visit local special collection libraries and spend an afternoon at our brick-and-mortar shop in Covina, where students will have real-world exposure to the inner workings of a used bookstore. Some of the topics will include new trends in collecting, finding and evaluating books and archives for purchase and resale, describing materials from a seller’s perspective, and an introduction to appraisals, as well as bookseller etiquette and best practices. The course is intended for booksellers, special collections librarians, collectors, scholars, graduate students, and anyone considering a career as a bookseller.

Instructor: Paul Shaw

Location: UCLA / Los Angeles

Mode: in-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200

Description

This course will provide a general overview of both the history of typography and of type design in the West—with an emphasis on Latin (roman) type—from the birth of printing with movable type in the mid-15th century through the first decades of digital fonts at the end of the 20th century. It is suitable for beginning and advanced learners. It will explore the influence of scribal styles of writing on early typographic forms; the development of the “modern” typographic book in the 16th century and changes and challenges to that format in the 19th and 20th centuries; the impact of technology on the form and use of typefaces since 1800; the shift from the book as the locus of typographic development to posters and ephemera from the 19th century to the present; and the effect of digital type on democratizing the profession. 

The class will consist of lectures and class discussions combined with field trips to Los Angeles-area institutions such as the Young Research Library at UCLA, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Getty Center in Brentwood, and the International Printing Museum in Carson City to see books, type specimens, posters, and other items relevant to the history of typography. We will be based at UCLA and CalRBS will provide transportation to travel to the above mentioned sites.

Course Objectives

1. to provide students with the tools and vocabulary to identify and describe typefaces; 
2. to establish a basic understanding of the major stylistic trends, technological changes, and key figures in type design from Gutenberg to the 21st century; and
3. to explain the source of many of the typographic features used in most book designs. 

Requirements

This course is intended for those with little or no formal instruction in the history of typography. 

Course Information

Instructor: Emily Drabinski

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Critical librarianship interrogates library practices to understand how the field’s systems and structures emerge through ideologies of gender, race, class, and other axes of social difference. For example, critical librarians take the cataloging and classification systems that are often pitched as neutral and natural and ask why books related to minoritized sexualities are described incompletely and shelved as “social problems.” If we can understand how library work is constituted through complex relations of power, we can begin to build a different kind of librarianship that works toward a more just future. Participants will work together to build a shared analysis of power and the terrain of struggle along with concrete plans for taking action in their own libraries.

Course Information

Instructor: Charles Hatfield

Location: Los Angeles, UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200

Course Description

Popular yet personal, branded as trivial yet rich with meaning, comics are more than cultural scraps or leftovers. In fact, comics are everywhere: they are art objects, storying machines, readable games, tools for disseminating knowledge, and platforms for worldbuilding and political argument. Whether viewed as historical artifacts or distinctive literary and artistic works, comics carry culture with them. In this workshop, we will study how comics move through the world, socially and materially, how they can make a difference in the world, and how we, as teachers, researchers, and creators, can use them.

Comic art has a complex social life. Comic books, graphic novels, strips, and cartoons come in varied material (and now digital) forms and reach diverse readerships. Many are thought to be ephemeral, as disposable as yesterday’s newspapers or tweets; some are built to last. Many last despite their seeming ephemerality, archived by collectors, fans, and, increasingly, archiving professionals and research libraries. Conserving, organizing, and accessing these artifacts can be a challenge but also a profound pleasure; comics offer us opportunities for creative engagement as well as deep research. Our workshop will study how comics come to be, how they circulate, where and how they are archived, and how we may teach with them.

We will focus on comics’ physical materiality, on firsthand experience and “show and tell.” Our hands-on sessions will mix varied forms of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century comic art, from newspaper pages to comic magazines, from graphic novels to minicomix, zines, and webcomics. Drawing on the resources of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, we will explore the material and social histories of comics, the idiosyncrasies of comics production, including differences among American, European, and Japanese traditions, and how comics have been shored against time by collectors. We will consider comics as products of various industries, cultures, and social scenes—as historic artifacts, yes, but also urgent dispatches from the here and now. Participants will come out of this workshop knowing:

• the distinctions among various genres of comics (including comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, webcomics, and minicomics) and how they look and feel
• the various ways comics are produced and circulated, by whom, and under what conditions
• how to find and access comics in archives
• how we can deploy comics in teaching
• how comics can elevate marginalized and minoritized identities and serve as vehicles for social protest and transformation
• overall, how comics move through and “trouble” the world, in the best senses of that word.

Course Information

Instructor: Joshua Teplitsky

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Jews are often held up as a “people of the book,” in a fashion that approaches cliché. In this course we will examine the people and their actual books, taking the example of the media of Jews as a diaspora population to explore the making and re-making of books in their historical context. Jews’ adoption and adaptation of media forms at times paralleled and at other times diverged from that of their dominant ambient cultures, and offers a valuable lens to confront transmissions of Jewish culture on its own terms as well as a prism to encounter wider media shifts in politics, culture, gender, and religion. The course will focus primary on the medieval and early modern periods, with framings from antiquity through the digital era, with case studies from the ancient Near East, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The course will be conducted through readings of primary and secondary sources, but will, most importantly, revolve around the examination of material objects and their design and dimensions at the literal center of the table and the core of class discussion.

Course Information

Instructor: Jackie Stallcup

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description 

Children’s literature is a vast, rich field of study that intertwines in fascinating ways with the history of bookmaking. The millions of diverse picture books that flourish today can trace their roots back to such texts as Caxton’s Aesop (1484), Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658), Janeway’s A Token for Children (1671), Watts’ Divine Songs (1715), Newbery’s Little Pretty Pocketbook (1742), and many anonymous hornbooks, alphabet books, primers, and chapbooks.

Children are notoriously hard on their books, often loving them to irretrievable shreds. So the very earliest editions of many of these books no longer exist. However, the Children’s Book Collection of the Young Research Library at UCLA provides us with a treasure trove of rare children’s books that we will use to analyze the development of the modern picture book. We may also (time and circumstances permitting) visit the collections at the Huntington Research Library and the Clark Memorial Library.

Among the questions we will explore: 

• What are some possible origins of different types of picture books?
• What do such “origin stories” suggest about the ideological underpinnings of the field of children’s literature?
• How have “school books” (such as primers and alphabet books) changed over time? (Or not?)
• What roles have pop-up and movable books played in developing both literacy skills and a sense of pleasure in reading?

More broadly, we will also pursue questions such as:

• By what means do we—children and adults—interpret works that closely juxtapose image and text?
• How do we make meaning out of such texts?
• In what ways do these works participate in the work of acculturating children?
• How do these works reflect/interact with/comment upon/reject both artistic and ideological concerns?

Critical readings and discussion will draw not only from children’s literature criticism but also from the fields of visual arts, film, narrative, post-colonial, reader-response and feminist theories.

Mornings will generally be spent in Special Collections examining and discussing one foundational text along with a variety of associated texts. In the afternoons, we will explore historical and contemporary picture books that developed from these roots.

Course Information

Instructor: Jonathan Senchyne

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

An inclusive survey, from manuscript to print to the end of the hand press era, supported by original materials wherever possible, aimed at those who have had no previous formal exposure to the history of the book and who want a broad, introductory overview of the subject. This course will be organized around format changes and technological transitions in book production, and their cultural impact. The course will introduce some theoretical issues in the current scholarship on the history of books, printing, authorship, and readership, including models and methodologies. However, understanding of and appreciation for the book as material object will be emphasized.

This course aims to provide an introductory vocabulary and a structure for students who wish to explore the history of books and printing through the hand press period. Topics include: the introduction of the manuscript codex, the impact of the invention of handmade paper, the growth of literate culture, the invention of movable type and the impact of printing on scholarship, science, and religion, the marketing and distribution of books, the rise of a reading public, and the transition to machine-powered printing at the beginning of the 19th century. Classroom instruction will emphasize giving students the opportunity to see and handle a broad range of manuscript and printed books, bindings, and printing equipment at research libraries in Southern California. While focusing primarily on Western Europe and North America, the development of papermaking and printing in Asia will be noted.

Course Information

Instructor: Ian Fowler

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 11–15, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This course is designed to provide a general overview of the history of mapping in the western world as well as the use of cartographic resources in modern day teaching and research. Topics will include an introduction to maps (projections, scale, visualization of information), the history of map printing; the evolution of European mapping; the role of maps as cultural and social objects; the wide variety and type of maps produced (nautical charts, city views and plans, topographic, land ownership, celestial charts, etc.); reference materials and cartobibliographies, and the role of museums and libraries as stewards of the content. The class will also explore how antiquarian maps are used by present day researchers, teachers, and students. Course participants will interact with physical examples from archives and special collections, as well as examine maps in the larger historical context through a class visit to a highly regarded cultural institution. This class will also explore and critically examine digital cartographic repositories from around the world and the role they can play in education and research." 

Course Information

Instructor: Aaron T. Pratt

Location: Los Angeles, California

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

This introductory course is intended for students who wish to increase their understanding of the physical descriptions of printed books, especially those produced in the handpress period, as well as books printed during the industrial press period up to approx. 1900.  The course accommodates special collections librarians and catalogers, book collectors, booksellers, graduate students, scholars, bibliographers and other members of the book community who wish to gain thorough comprehension of book structures and bibliographical descriptions and to develop their ability to write their own descriptions of printed books.

The course will introduce students to the principles and concepts of descriptive bibliography and develop their ability to accurately understand and describe the format, collation, pagination, and other aspects of the physical book.  The concept of “ideal copy” will be discussed and analyzed, as will the distinction of editions, issues, states, and impressions.  Also considered will be the accurate transcription of title-page, colophon, and other internal information; the identification of paper and watermarks, type, and illustrative contents; and the treatment of other features and circumstances of printing and distribution.

Each class will involve a combination of lectures and in-class exercises, both supervised and independent (largely the examination of printed books and the writing of bibliographical descriptions for progressively complex books), as well as the consideration of published descriptive bibliographies and representative examples of books described within those published works.

Course Information

Instructor: Sonja Drimmer

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 4–8, 2025

Tuition: $1200

Course Description

This class is an introduction tomanuscripts produced in Europe between c.700 and c.1500, with the goal of providing the basic skills for identifying them, studying them, and making accessible to the public these works of art. It is open to students, educators, researchers, collectors, and museum and library professionals at all levels in their careers who are looking for a fundamental grounding in this subject.Using the resources in UCLA’s Special Collections, field trips to the Huntington Library and/or Getty Museum, and several online resources, this course will provide an overview of the historical production of manuscripts, and an introduction to common genres of manuscript—Bibles and biblical commentaries, liturgical books, lay prayerbooks,and historical documents. In addition, there will be training in identifying fragments and detached leaves from different regions and time periods. Over the course of the week students will research a manuscript or fragment from UCLA's Special Collections and present their findings on the final day.By the end of the class students will be familiar with the myriad resources used in transcribing, dating, localizing, identifying, and studying manuscripts.

Course Information

Instructor: Magalí Rabasa

Location: UCLA / Los Angeles

Mode: In-person

Dates: August 11–15, 2025

Tuition: $1200

Course Description

Workshop Abstract: This course explores the ways that the object of the print book has been transformed, politically and materially, in the context of radical social movements in the twenty-first century in Latin America. Through examination of interplay between the political concepts proposed by the movements and the materiality of the books they produce, this course will consider the ways that the print book acts as a networking agent, facilitating and expanding transnational dialogues in the Americas. This course will explore the ways that radical, independent, and underground publishing projects propose alternative practices and ethics that question and destabilize historical power structures endemic to publishing and knowledge production.

Working from the concept of the “book in movement” as a way of accounting for the dynamic material and political life of this cultural object, we will examine informal archives of books produced by radical publishers in Latin America, as well as locally-housed collections in Los Angeles. The course may also include field trips to radical community libraries and bookstores and presentations (via Zoom) by members of publishing collectives in Latin America. Over the course of the week, we will focus on the different stages in the life of the book, as a means of considering how the various aspects of the production and circulation of print books are taken up as sites of political, social, and economic experimentation and intervention. Particular areas of focus include: collective practices of authorship, experimental printing and bookbinding, alternative approaches to intellectual property, and non-capitalist/anti-capitalist marketing and distribution.

Requirements

1. A brief set of required readings will be circulated in advance of the course. 
2. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop or tablet for use during the course. 
3. While many of the materials we will examine are in Spanish, knowledge of Spanish is not required for this course.  

Are you an established expert in rare books, special collections, and print culture? Or perhaps an expert in library and information studies, critical librarianship, or data studies? CalRBS encourages course proposals on innovative topics that build on its vast array of courses focusing on rare books, special collections, and manuscripts.

CalRBS is especially interested in the following areas as they relate to rare books, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums:

• Grant Writing
• Advanced Pedagogy and Teaching
• Remote Course Programming and Design
• Space Planning and Innovative Alternatives
• Social Media
• Programming for ESL and Bilingual Constituencies
• Data Preservation
• Digital Knowledge Repatriation
• Crisis Recordkeeping
• Public Libraries and At-Risk Populations
• Sustainability Studies
• Climate Change Impacts on the Profession
• Grassroots Communities
• Archives Organization
• Reappraisal and De-Accessioning
• Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship
• Data Activism
• Collection Development for Specific Communities
• Ink and Papermaking (Maker studio and/or history of)
• Children and Young Adults and Public Libraries
• Primary sources in K-12 Education
• History, production, and publishing of children’s books
• Material, Collections, and Institutions through Indigenous and First Nation lenses
• International Librarianship, Bibliography, and Rare Books
• Disability Studies
• Feminist and Gender Studies
• Postcolonial, Decolonial and Critical Development studies
• History of small presses and independent publishing in Los Angeles/California/U.S. and beyond
• Gastronomy, cook books, and food culture
• Topic and survey courses that focus on undergraduate and high school students

Courses that focus on critical analysis, diversity, ethics, and promote justice-oriented approaches are especially welcome. In addition to these areas, we are looking for courses that fill identified gaps in the current CalRBS curriculum. While new courses can extend beyond the domain of rare books and special collections, they should contextualize rare books within a larger library and information economy, emphasizing the importance of book and print culture throughout the discipline of Information Studies.