Anna Opryszko

This online course considers what might constitute a feminist approach to studying books, what the benefits of such approaches are, and how to incorporate them into our own work. We will center the textual object in exploring these issues, letting artifacts drive our questions rather than the actions of book makers, sellers, or collectors. Another way of putting this is that the course won't ask who women printing books were, but rather, who determined the terms on which we engage with books. This doesn't mean ignoring the many agents involved in book work, including the people involved in the long history of book trades, the academic field of print culture and textual editing, and the intersection of these with library practices. But it means that our work this week will be focused on generating questions about methodology rather than recovering names and histories.

We will also wrestle with the theory and practice of feminism, which has a history of different meanings for different communities, and how to develop it as an inclusive practice for our book work. If living a feminist life is, as Sara Ahmed argues, something we must return to over and over, something that we put into practice daily rather than something that stays in the classroom, how do we bring that into our spaces of book work? Through a combination of short advance readings about bibliography and feminism, course discussions, and your own work with textual artifacts, we will explore what questions are brought to the forefront when we approach our work through a feminist framework. Participants should anticipate two concurrent and two asynchronous sessions each course day, with those sessions being scheduled to accommodate the range of US time zones; asychronous sessions could involve exercises, readings, and off-camera discussions.

Discussions and exercises will also try explore different models of pedagogy in order to give participants a feel for what methodologies might suit them best. The course is intended to be of use to anyone researching, teaching, or acting as a custodian for rare books; although we will pay careful attention to the first centuries of western printing, since the study of those books have shaped the field of bibliography as a whole, the issues the course will consider cover all periods of book study. Participants should not expect to come out of the course having mastered a feminist history of books, but to leave with a set of tools to ask feminist questions of books.

Come think about Feminist Bibliography with me this summer! I’m teaching a one-week online course for @calrbs.bsky.social—I love this class and am excited to do it again. Description below; priority deadline April 15; all details at www.calrbs.org/feminist-bib...

Part of the "decline of reading" may have something to do with the forms of these readings we are (or are not) making available to possible readers

Bleak House serial numbers

hard cover volume of Bleak House

These are the same "book"

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library: New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks

Fully-funded AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership project:

'Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library: New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks' - BL & UCL Dep of Information Studies

www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanit...

Now open for student applications! Deadline: 14 April

Can’t wait!

The scream I screamed when Palencar agreed…

Here is a cool call for the #bookhistory communities: “Women Printing for Institutions in Early Modern Europe”, at the HAB Wolfenbüttel (and organized by Saskia Limbach) in November 2026.

CFP: www.hab.de/wp-content/u...

Screenshot from Instagram showing my four zine covers, with colorful and playful art: "Vandercookin: Letterpress for all types & sorts: an intro to typesetting, makeready, and printing your first print in a Vandercook press", "Just my type", "My first press", and "Movable text art now! what am I trying to impress? do I even need a printing press?)"

1) letterpress vs other possible ways to make movable letter art
2) how to do yr 1st typeset+print w/a Vandercook
3-4) how to access or buy yr 1st type & press for free or least $?

Emphasize physical+financial accessibility, why/how print under fascism (protest, infoshare, persuasion, joy, hope).+

Wood type locked on a sign press, reading “Ice Out” in large letter and “Protect our neighbors & communities” in smaller letters.

Multiple prints reading “Ice Out” “Protect our neighbors & communities” in blue ink.

A print reading “Ice Out” “Protect our neighbors & communities” in blue and black ink.

Printing is political.

Never not going to be angry about the demolition of the Washington Post

Flipping through the Post at my parents’ breakfast table was the first way I learned there was a much wider world than I had imagined! It’s so devastating

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. The Psychology of Religious Experience
2. Virginia Woolf’s Novels
3. The History of the Sixties
4. Latin
5. Pretty, Witty, and Gay (20th century queer media)

One of my most cherished classes is my 18th century novels course where the primary learning objective is "learn how read long novels." We did a "couch to 5k" approach to attention span and note-taking.

#BookHistory #Publishing

Going for a walk.

The new-parent impulse to hold up a full bottle of pumped milk like men hold up fish in dating profiles

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

No email from a library system stirs the imagination like a notice my scan is ready to download through WORLDCAT. The great cat that surrounds the world? That nuzzles the roots of the world-scratching-tree? The great world cat who is and was and shall be? That cat???

Queer Failure and Early Modern Books Adam Smyth ABSTRACT This article brings together bibliography and queer theory to consider the significance of errors in early modern printed books. Particular attention is paid to the errata narratives that appear in many early modern books, explaining the presence of mistakes and often requesting that the reader correct the errors before proceeding. If bibliography has tended to be norm-setting, queer theory provides a corrective, and a more patient critical mode for considering how historians of the book and literary critics might respond to the various kinds of mistakes that were central to early print. The article builds, in particular, from recent critical work on queer bibliography by Malcolm Noble and Sarah Pyke. KEYWORDS: queer bibliography; errors; errata; history of reading; book history; Sarah Pyke; Malcolm Noble

This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect—­ but it needn’t."

LOVING THIS THREAD

And this is why my spouse and I won’t be crossing the border home for quite some time.

A turquoise book cover with a orange-red design on the front, Illuminating Media: Transmitting the Renaissance in England, 1400-1550.

Hey hey, it’s now official on Concordia UP’s website, 20% discount code KENNEDY2026 at CUP (CAN) or Chicago (USD, link in next post) for Illuminating Media: Transmitting the Renaissance in England, 1400-1550! concordia.ca/press/illumi...

The full text of William Carlos Williams's This Is Just To Say, in the Zohran Mamdani campaign fonts

Motivational!

I‘m doing Noverwhelmedber

So jealous! That conference sounds amazing and Antwerp is so great

My book is now available open access on project muse, with OAPen launch coming soon. Hard copies should start going out this week (if they have not already): you can get yours for 50% off with code SAR50.

Japan's "Mundane Halloween" costume contest is back!

Each year website DailyPortalZ holds a contest where people dress up as something super duper ordinary.

Here's a thread of some of my favorites from the 2025 contest!

#MundaneHalloween