History of Text Technologies

The History of Text Technologies Lecture Series is held at English Common Room at Williams 013 during the Fall of 2008 and Spring of 2009.

For more details, please contact François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles.

Lecture Series 2008-2009

Eric Holzenberg

Librarian and director of the Grolier Club, New York

'Books Under Glass: A History of Book Exhibitions'

  • Date & Time:Wednesday, March 25 at 6pm
  • About the speaker: Eric Holzenberg is a specialist in the history of book collecting and modern publishing. Among other publications, he is the author of The Middle Hill Press Broadsides printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (New York, The Grolier Club, 1999), and of Printed Catalogues of French Book Auctions and Sales by Private Treaty 1643-1830 in the Library of the Grolier Club (New York, The Grolier Club, 2004). He teaches the history of the book at the Rare Book School of the University of Virginia and New York University. He is currently preparing a book on the history of book exhibitions.
  • Description: Unlike objects in museums, books in libraries require manipulation or arrangement under close examination in order to reveal their beauty and significance. In the past, bibliophiles and library caretakers shared the qualities of their books physically with one or two visitors at a time, hand to hand; today books are exhibited to crowds of hundreds or thousands, air-conditioned, protected under glass, and lit like movie stars. This talk traces the history of book exhibitions, from their origins to the present, and discusses the changing attitudes toward books driving the development of these displays, and the technological breakthroughs which made them possible.

See PDF Flyer.


Trysh Davis

Professor, Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, University of Florida

‘Twentieth-Century Feminist Book History’

  • Date & Time: Fall 2009
  • Description:Professor Travis is a literary historian of the 20th-century U.S., studying the gendered history of the book, with a focus on reading communities and the publishing industry. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is currently completing a book on contemporary reading and self-help culture. Her articles have appeared in journals like Book History, American Literary History, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

More information on HOTT

HOTT is part of Florida State University’s Pathways to Excellence initiative.

HOTT connects the research and teaching interests of faculty in many departments at FSU (from Anthropology, Art, Art History, English, History, and Humanities to Modern Languages, Information, and Religion). The interdisciplinary cluster, consisting of eight new hires between 2007 and 2009, builds on existing excellence in Text Technologies at FSU. It focuses principally on the history of text and textual communities in Western Europe, especially in the related literatures and cultures of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain over the last two millennia, stretching from the earliest forms of writing to hypertext. Major structural changes in this lengthy story—from tablet to roll to book to computer and from inscription to handwriting to print to digitization—are critical areas of investigation, and our new technologies are crucial tools for studying old technologies.

Using a wide variety of descriptive methodologies intrinsic to Book History, Manuscript Studies, the Sociology of the Text, and Digital Humanities, HOTT aims to make a major contribution to the scholarly advancement of Text Technologies.

The HOTT Faculty

For more information: http://hott.fsu.edu or contact-hott@fsu.edu