The Late Age of Print

In his recent book, The Late Age of Print, Ted Striphas makes many of the same arguments that we've discussed in class and that you have so ably articulated in your essays. The short promotional video from Columbia University Press shows Mr. Striphas at the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. The Lilly has romantic and nostalgic resonance for me; it's where I found my passion for studying book history. My PhD seminars in the English Department usually left me flat. But at the Lilly I met librarians, curators, and scholars that were actively engaging with literary history by interrogating materiality. Theoretical abstraction back in the mid-1980s had a force and impact that seems unbelievable now. Studying book history was professional suicide, or so my English faculty mentors told me. Thankfully, I was too stubborn to listen.

Click Here to Watch the Video

The striking cover image is a photograph from Abelardo Morrell. He gave a visiting artist lecture several years ago at the Corcoran. Here are some more of his book photos.
I'll bring my copy of his book to class on Thursday