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Workshop: Comparative Perspectives on Materiality in the History of the Book: China and East Asia

January 26, 2016

Workshop: Comparative Perspectives on Materiality in the History of the Book: China and East Asia

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The workshop entitled “Comparative Perspectives on Materiality in the History of the Book: China and East Asia” was a first in annals of Western studies of traditional printed matter in East Asia. Organized under the auspices of an ACLS/Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation grant as a multi-university collaboration (Ohio State, Arizona State, Oberlin, and University of Pennsylvania), the workshop brought together 15 scholars from Asia (Korea, Taiwan, Australia), Europe (U.K.), and the U.S. with deep expertise in particular national traditions in order to reexamine specific material practices  and their cultural, social, and political significance through interregional comparisons. Alternating between theoretically informed hands-on sessions on books printed in Korea, Japan, and China and empirically motivated seminars devoted to broader methodological concerns, the workshop opened up new research questions for the field of book history in East Asia and is sure to stimulate further conversation designed to transcend national and nationalist accounts of the history of print.

History of Book