“Tudor Books and Readers, 1485-1603” is a five-week college and university faculty seminar for sixteen participants to study book construction and print culture in the Tudor era, to be held in Antwerp, London, and Oxford. The seminar, co-directed by Mark Rankin (English, James Madison University) and John King (English and religious studies, Ohio State University), investigates the physical construction of books and the interpretative habits of readers during the era of the Tudor monarchs (1485-1603). Building on recent scholarship in the history of reading, the seminar seeks to shed light on ways in which readers related to books through handwritten marginal annotations, note-taking, copying, and other practices. The program begins in Antwerp, where participants can familiarize themselves with the physical plant of the sole surviving Renaissance printing and publishing house at the Plantin-Moretus Museum; it then moves to London, where visits to the British Library, which houses one of the best preserved collections of Tudor printed books, have been scheduled. The subsequent four weeks of residence at the University of Oxford enable participants to engage in further study at selected college libraries and the Bodleian Library, whose collection of Tudor books rivals that of the British Library. Discussions consider the role of typography, format, and layout in the marketing and reading of books; how marginalia reveal the mentalities of readers; and the impact of gender and social rank in the selection of reading matter. Co-directors are joined by guest lecturers Gergely Juhász (theology, Lessius College, Antwerp), Guido Latré (English, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), and David Vaisey (history, Bodleian Library). John King is a veteran director of NEH summer programs and he has collaborated with Mark Rankin on a previous summer seminar on a similar topic.
