“History and Future of the Book” a hands-on class at Colorado College

In an age that’s gone mostly digital and will soon use AI to remove the human touch entirely, it’s reassuring to know that at least one school is still teaching the “History and Future of the Book.”

Back in July an intriguing notice appeared announcing a class at Colorado College, a small liberal arts school, in Colorado Springs.

HY200 - The History and Future of the Book. Examines the development of technologies of the written word, from clay tablets and sheepskin scrolls to the manuscript codex, early printed book, modern printing, and digital text. Questions the way reading, writing, and preserving texts intersect with identity, memory, and history, making extensive use of primary materials in the library's Special Collections and incorporating a hands-on experience at The Press at Colorado College. 0.5 unit-Lawson and Randall.

That’s certainly a tall order for a half-credit course. To find out more RBH called instructor Jessy Randall, Curator and Archivist of Special Collections at the college’s Tutt Library. She explained more about the course she co-teaches with colleague Steve Lawson.

“We’ve been offering this class since 2010,” she said. “Steve and I had the idea of presenting this kind of a class combining material from our special collections and using the school’s Vandercook letterpress which had not been used to its full capacity. We wanted to make it more than an historical/theoretical experience and offer the opportunity to learn how to set type.

“We came up with a class where students would make some kind of a collective book: design and create it together and print multiple copies. Over the years we’ve worked with three different printers. I don’t know if our students would be as excited if it wasn’t for the press.

“Because of the way our school is structured,” she explained, “the course is a short, but really intensive experience: it consists of nine consecutive days with three hours of class in the morning and one or two hours at the press in the afternoon. Most recently, for a very ambitious project, the students worked on it even longer.

“Some years are better than others; our most recent class was fantastic from start to finish. They figured out content and design together and worked with printer Jillian Sico to make it a reality. The challenging part (for the faculty) is to get the students to come up with a group project without putting a leash on them.”

Enrollment has fluctuated through the years. The class has had as many as 25 participants and as few as two during the pandemic. Usually enrollment is about ten or twelve.

“The idea of making a physical thing together, multiple copies, is a magical experience,” she said. “It’s something that they don’t get from most undergrad classes. In a digital world you never hold your paper in your hand. Never touch the thing you wrote. With our class, they get that physical thing. The way you work together when you’re making a physical object is different: it’s not staring at a screen, not arguing about reading.

“Students come from all different majors, and a variety of ages. They make visual notebooks and do a little drawing every day. It helps them to think visually. We see them listen to each other and sometimes produce something astounding.

“The theme for our January 2024 group was climate change and environmental disaster in an imaginary future. This was not historical time travel; it was definitely 21st century. The techniques used included printing on plastic bag scraps, a fan folded to duodecimo (12mo) a small book about the size of a hand, all different kinds of paper, hand sewn. They did it in nine days.”

Randall gave a brief summary of her own experience: “I’ve been in rare books since library school.” She started out with the Library Company in Philadelphia and then moved to her current position. “I’ve been here forever, almost 25 years.” She was amazed to find “the college had a great teaching collection, but nobody had ever done much with it.”

After talking with faculty she worked to get special collections to be seen as a resource and a way that students could work directly with primary source material. “Now we interact with a wide range of departments and reach many more students.”

Aaron Cohick, one of the college’s former printers, was involved with the production aspect of the class between 2010 - 2023. He ran the letter press in the book arts studio and served as an instructor and guide.

“My part was to help them actually do the things they talked about. The class was very compressed, only nine days long. It was a very intense experience. During that time students were introduced to many basics in set up and printing. I showed various other techniques and whatever else was appropriate.”

His favorite part was “meeting with the students and finding out what they wanted to make. That involved talking it through and finding the best way to make it happen. It was always an interesting challenge. The reality was that something like this takes more time than a formal class.” He found it “a rewarding experience.”

These days Cohick runs NewLights, his own press in Louisville, KY. The website describes the venture as “an interdependent printer and publisher working at the intersection of artists' books and experimental text/image//making.”

Examples of student book projects

A student blog about the class.

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Reach writer Susan Halas at wailukusue@gmail.com