Program Overview
Book Studies
Rethinking the possibilities of the book.
Oberlin’s letterpress studio, a focal point for the book studies curriculum, invites students to learn the craft of bookmaking.
Photo credit: Pang Fei Chiang
From Cuneiform to Data Mining
Students have over 200 cases of type at their fingertips as part of Oberlin’s letterpress studio
Oberlin’s Letterpress Studio
Oberlin's Letterpress Studio invites students to compose text by hand using metal type, and to operate both cylinder and iron plate presses. Students can create their own original work while consciously making decisions about paper, impressions, layout, typography, color, illustrations, ornaments, format and special effects.
The Oberlin College Mail Art Collection includes more than 20,000 pieces by over 1,800 artists from 70+ countries
Artists’ Books
Oberlin’s premiere collection of Artists’ Books provides students the opportunity to explore one of the most versatile and unconventional modes of expression for artists working at the boundary of print and sculpture.
Featured Courses
Arts 039
Reimagining the Book
Employing the form of the book as both an aesthetic and historic object, this course explores a range of embodied and material practices. Students will design and construct a series of books using narrative and non-narrative techniques in relation to concept, image, and form.
- Taught by
ARTH 204
Introduction to Book Studies
Encompassing printed and handwritten paper objects as well as ancient clay tablets and contemporary electronic media, this course introduces students to key approaches and concepts in the discipline of Book Studies. Students will have hands-on experience in the Letterpress Studio, Art Museum, College Library and Conservatory collections with text-and-image-objects from Europe, East Asia, Islamicate cultures and the Americas.
- Taught by
- Erik Inglis ’89
EAST 272
Pleasure and Confinement
Colorful ukiyo-e, pictures of courtesans, kabuki actors reenacting samurai epics, and landscapes of Mt. Fuji, are among the most recognizable images of Japanese art. This course explores how woodblock prints developed in the 17-18th centuries alongside the growth of Edo (modern Tokyo) and during a period of isolationism. We will track innovations in woodblock technology and how features of prints were creative responses of artists to constraints imposed by the ruling shogunate.
- Taught by
- Bonnie Cheng
ENGL 308
Materiality and Visuality
This course will consider the relationship between the verbal, visual, and material in early modern culture and literature. Renaissance printed books, portraits, jewelry, perspective paintings, automatons, anatomy theaters, machines, maps, stage sets, costumes and more will be read alongside the works of authors like Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Ralegh, Milton, Jonson, Webster, Carew, Middleton, and Wroth.
- Taught by
- Wendy Beth Hyman
Obie Book Stories
Pens and Needles
Students in Associate Professor Danielle Skeehan’s Early American Media and Identity course aren’t just bringing laptops and books to class. Required materials include Band-Aids, scissors, needle threaders, and kitchen sponges.
The Art of the Artist Book
After spending a month researching artist books and creating a book of her own, Marie Romanelli ’21 is officially hooked on the craft, both as an artist and as a short-form poet. ‘‘Artist books are anything a conventional book shouldn‘t be, and there aren‘t any rules,’’ she says.
Learning through the Letterpress
Presided over by Special Collections and Preservation Librarian Ed Vermue, one of Oberlin's best resources for hands-on learning hosted an intensive winter term course on printing books from scratch, without a computer.
What does Book Studies at Oberlin look like?
As part of an intensive workshop, led by artist and award-winning author Aimee Lee '99, students practiced the art and craft of paper-making.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Aimee Lee
The workshop, held over Winter Term, combined Western and Asian techniques to make paper, decorate it, and sew it into signatures.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Aimee Lee
As part of a Winter Term group project, students designed and printed their own creative projects using hand presses, movable type, and linocuts.
Photo credit: Yevhen Gulenko
In addition to the on-campus studio, first-year students can learn letterpress at the Morgan Conservatory during Connect Cleveland.
Photo credit: Photo courtesy of Ann Sherif
