On May 20-21, 2025, Skeuomorph Press will host “Building Book Labs: Hands-On Research & Teaching in Book History.” This event will gather scholars and students to theorize experiential research and teaching in book history and adjacent fields; share practical advice about founding, growing, and sustaining such endeavors; and to make together through hands-on symposium activities. We hope to better understand the book lab movement in our particular current moment; contextualize it in light of historical phenomena such as the Bibliographical Press movement; and expand the conversation to a wider range of institutional, disciplinary, or pedagogical contexts.
This event is co-sponsored the by Andrew W. Mellon Society of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, the University of Illinois’ Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of English, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Champaign-Urbana Community FabLab.
We were bowled over by responses to our call for statements of interest and look forward to welcoming a larger-than-expected gathering to UIUC. We are especially grateful to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, who are providing not simply financial support, but also space for the symposium’s larger events.
Key Links:
- Travel, accommodations, and local food recommendations (this list is growing)
- Draft schedule (coming soon!)
Expected Workshops
- Printing in Difficult Times (Matthew Kirschenbaum, Kari Kraus, and/or UMD BookLab team)
- Needlework as a Means of Documenting Literacy (Jennifer Burek Pierce)
- Teaching with Typewriters (Isabella Viega)
- Improvisational Letterpress: Collaborative Broadside (Amelia Fontanel)
- low-fi screenprinting x concrete poetry (Éireann Lorsung)
- Historical (Re)creation with a Medieval Tarot Deck (Carson Koepke)
- How & Why to Incorporate Letterpress into Classes (Katherine M. Ruffin)
- Papermaking on a Budget (Kit MacNeil)
- Writing a Charter for Your Lab (Amanda Visconti)
- Planning Programmatic Outreach or Strategic Goals (Colleen Barrett)
- Book History/Book Arts Petting Zoo (UIUC Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
- Teaching Printing with the BookBeetle (Josef Beery)
