Courses

This course will situate the Jewish book within the context of the theoretical and historical literature on the history of the book: notions of orality and literacy, text and book, authors and readers, print and manuscript, literacy and gender, the book trade and its role in the circulation of people and ideas. It opens with the history of Jewish texts and literacy in premodern society and the changes wrought by transitions within scribal culture and with the gradual introduction of print. We follow print and scribal culture through the migrations of early modern Jewry as well as the repercussions of destruction and suppression in some places, openness and opportunity in others. The course will be taught in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library with the cooperation of Michele Chesner, Norman Alexander Librarian for Judaica and Hebraica at the Columbia Libraries.