The seminar will examine continuity and change in the production, dissemination, and reading of Western European books during the 200 years following the advent of printing with movable type. Seminar participants will consider the governing question of whether the advent of printing was a necessary precondition for the Protestant Reformation, and ways in which elements such as book layout, typography, illustration, and paratext (e.g., prefaces, glosses, and commentaries) shaped the responses of readers. Employing key methods of the History of the Book and the History of Reading, our investigation will consider how the physical nature of books affected ways in which readers understood and assimilated their intellectual contents. This program is geared to meet the needs of teacher-scholars interested in the literary, political, or cultural history of the Renaissance and/or Reformation, the History of the Book, the History of Reading, art history, women’s studies, religious studies, bibliography, print culture, library science (including rare book librarians), mass communication, literacy studies, and more.



This seminar will meet from 4 – 30 July 2022 at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at OSU preserves more than 3,500 books printed before 1650, with exceptional strengths in the British and Western European Reformations and early printing (including one hundred books printed before 1500). Named collections include the Harold J. Grimm Reformation Collection (which includes, among other treasures, more than 120 Luther sermons and treatises in Latin or German printed during his lifetime), the John Foxe and John Day collections (both among the finest in North America), and the James Stevens-Cox STC-sigla collection (mostly religious books so rare that the editors of the Short-title catalogue listed this as a named private collection).



Those eligible to apply include citizens of USA who are engaged in teaching at the college or university level and independent scholars who have received the terminal degree in their field (usually the Ph.D.). In addition, non-US citizens who have taught and lived in the USA for at least three years prior to March 2022 are eligible to apply. NEH will provide participants with a stipend of $3,450. Up to three spaces will be reserved for non tenure-track faculty.

Full details and application information are available at the External Link below. For further information, please contact NEHreformationbooks2022@jmu.edu. The deadline for application is March 1, 2022.