Library Professional Development

Jennifer Buckley will discuss the Cranach Press Hamlet and the book’s illustrator, Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966). Craig, also a stage director, set designer, and theatre theorist, sought to prove that Hamlet was fundamentally a work of literature and thus unstageable, but his contributions to the Cranach Hamlet show that the two media cannot be so easily disentangled.
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Sept. 25: Panel discussion with: David Berona, Plymouth State University ; David Hajdu, Columbia University ; Mike Kelly, New York University

Reading Pictures, Burning Comics: New Perspectives on the History of Graphic Narrative

The publication of two recent books—Berona’s Wordless Books (2008) and Hajdu’s Ten-cent Plague (2008)—inspired this panel discussion.  Moderator, comics scholar, and rare book curator Mike Kelly will lead a discussion with Berona and Hajdu on current scholarship, historical perspectives, and a consideration of the place wordless books, graphic novels, and comics hold in both contemporary culture and the History of the Book.
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Oct. 7: David Whitesell, American Antiquarian Society, The Harvard College Library and Its Users, 1762-1764: Reassessing the Relevance of Colonial American College Libraries

The earliest extant circulation records for an American college library–those for the Harvard College Library from 1762-1764–afford an exceptionally detailed view of how the library was used and by whom. Library use was far more extensive than historians have previously thought.
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Nov. 5: Adam Hooks, Columbia University , Making Histories: Shakespeare and the Problem of Genre

Adam Hooks will discuss the disproportionate influence that the First Folio has had on our notion of Shakespearean genres, using the Folio’s familiar catalogue of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies as a case study. The multitude of generic designations given to the plays, in forms such as contemporary catalogues and subsequent edited collections, have been overshadowed by the current cultural status of the Folio, but what is now often called the most important book in the history of English literature was initially a critical failure subjected to years of often heated commentary and debate.