The Mind of the Book (HSAR 620): Student Research Posts

This seminar offered an art-historical approach to the early modern book from the dawn of the printing press through the seventeenth century. Students examine the interrelation of manuscript and print, collaborations among publishers, authors, and artists, and major early modern genres of visual and intellectual production (such as emblem books, natural history treatises, and cartographic atlases). Topics included the role of frontispieces, paratexts, illustration, annotation, and the idea of the book as a “body” of thought. All meetings were in Beinecke Library and centered on close firsthand study of the books themselves. The focus was on early modern Europe, but students were welcome to pursue research topics on early modern books from any cultural sphere.

Here is a link:

https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/article/mind-book-hsar-620-student-research-posts