21H.343J | Spring 2016 | Undergraduate

Making Books: The Renaissance and Today

Instructor Insights

Course Overview

This page focuses on the course 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today as it was taught by Professors Anne McCants and Jeffrey S. Ravel in Spring 2016.

Part of the Concourse program at MIT, this course explored the impact of new technology on the recording and distribution of words and images at three different times: the invention of the printing press ca. 1450; the adaptation of electricity to communication technology in the 19th century (telegraph, telephone, photograph); and the emergence of digital media today.

Assignments included essays and online projects. Students also participated in the design and construction of a hand-set printing press. Learn more here:

MIT SHASS Communications, “In the MIT History Workshop - where building a printing press illuminates human systems,” SHASS News, May 25, 2016.

Melanie Gonick, “The History of Making Books: Building a Printing Press at MIT,” MIT News, May 25, 2016.

Course Outcomes

Course Goals for Students

  • Learn about the history of the book in Europe from Gutenberg (ca. 1450) to the French Revolution (ca. 1800).
  • Examine in detail European books and prints from 1450 to 1800 in the Rare Books Collection of the MIT Libraries and the MIT Museum.
  • Build a functioning, durable printing press based on Early Modern European designs.
  • Consider the parallels between the world of print in the Early Modern period and the rapidly changing media landscape today.

Instructor Insights

"So much learning happens in the hands-on component [of a humanities course] when it is well integrated with the reading, writing, and historical materials because of all the time afforded for spontaneous conversation between faculty and students while engaged with the project."
— Anne McCants

In the following pages, Professors Anne McCants and Jeffrey Ravel describe various aspects of how they taught 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today.

Student Insights

"The experience of building the press meant I learned new woodshop skills and ideas about design instead of unanchored facts about printing and presses."
— Lauren Huang

In the following pages, Lauren Huang, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major, and Theodore Mouratidis, a recent graduate who studied Aerospace Engineering and Physics, describe their experiences as students in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today.

Curriculum Information

Prerequisites

None

Requirements Satisfied

HASS-H

21H.343J can be applied toward a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and History, but is not required.

Offered

Offered for the first time in Spring 2016

Assessment

The students’ grades were based on the following activities:

  • 20% Class attendance and participation
  • 20% Four forum postings
  • 30% Two five-page papers
  • 30% Building a handset printing press

Student Information

Enrollment

10 students

Breakdown by Year

Mostly juniors and seniors

Breakdown by Major

1/2 electrical engineering and computer science majors, 1/2 history majors

Typical Student Background

Prior to enrolling in the course, one student had taken 21H.141 Renaissance To Revolution: Europe, 1300-1800. Another had taken 21H.009 The World: 1400-Present. The rest were new to the material. None of the students had built a printing press previously, and only two were aware of MIT’s Rare Books Collection.

Some of the students were also participants in the Concourse program at MIT. Among other things, the Concourse project engages students in collective deep reading in the humanities and was a critical factor in generating enthusiasm for the course.

How Student Time Was Spent

During an average week, students were expected to spend 15 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:

Seminar

  • Met 2 times per week for 1.5 hours per session; 13 sessions total; mandatory attendance.
  • Class sessions were discussion-based and several included an exploration of items from MIT’s Rare Books Collection.
  • A field trip to the MIT Museum enabled students to view visual material dating from 1500 to 1800.

Hands-on Lab

  • Met twice a week for 1.5 hours per session; 13 sessions total; mandatory attendance.
  • Students worked in the MIT Hobby Shop to design and build a printing press.

Out of Class

Course Team Roles

"I love co-teaching. The conversation between faculty with different points of view, different areas of expertise, or even entirely different disciplinary training, is so much fun for instructors, and so valuable for students. If we want our students to be able to think broadly, and engage with difference productively, the best thing we can do in the classroom is to model how that works."
— Anne McCants

Lead Instructors (Professors Anne McCants and Jeffrey Ravel)

During the first class meeting, the instructors divided the students into two groups. In most weeks, one group met with Professors McCants and Ravel to discuss class readings and examine rare print objects from the MIT collections, while the other group met with Mr. Stone (please see below) to build the printing press. The following week, the groups traded places, such that all students participated equally in the academic and building exercises.

Co-Instructor (Mr. Ken Stone, MIT Hobby Shop Director)

Mr. Stone helped plan the course and supervised the building of the printing press in the MIT Hobby Shop.

In this section, Professor Anne McCants shares her insights about facilitating a hands-on humanities course and addresses the concerns of educators who may be skeptical of evaluating student work in this context.

"So many of the questions related to [the hands-on] work would never even come up in a traditional classroom setting, and the discussions they engender are the ones students are likely to remember most."
— Anne McCants

I have a lot of experience teaching hands-on history during MIT’s IAP term in a series of long-running non-credit courses. Teaching 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today was my first experience teaching a hands-on course in the regular credit-bearing curriculum. I think for many faculty (especially in the humanities and social sciences where building things is not the curricular norm), the prospect of figuring out how to evaluate student work outside of traditional academic exercises is a daunting one. Indeed, there is often a good deal of skepticism about hands-on learning being too nebulous for a credit-bearing course.  

I would strongly encourage other faculty to worry much less about this than many of them do, however. So much learning happens in the hands-on component when it is is well integrated with the reading, writing, and historical materials because of all the time afforded for spontaneous conversation between faculty and students while engaged with the project. So many of the questions related to that work would never even come up in a traditional classroom setting, and the discussions they engender are the ones students are likely to remember most. So unless a student is genuinely slacking off on the project portion of the class, I think evaluation is really not an issue. The educational benefits far outweigh the concern about hands-on work being too abstract to assess.

In this section, Professor Jeffrey Ravel describes the inspiration for developing 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today. He also shares community resources he and his co-instructors used to learn more about presses and handset printing prior to teaching the course, advice to other educators developing similar courses, and his vision for future course iterations.

The printing press built by students in the MIT Hobby Shop.

Inspiration

Prior to teaching 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today I taught courses on book history. In these courses, we visited Harvard University to letterpress print on their Bow and Arrow press. The Bow and Arrow press is a wonderful resource, but I wanted MIT students to be able to handset print here on campus. I figured we would be able to build a press together—and that is what inspired the development of 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today, a hands-on course in which students explore key historical readings, engage with rare print objects, build their own printing press—and make their own cotton rag paper for use with the press.

Preparation

"The biggest challenge was the improvisational nature of the class: because we weren’t sure how long it would take to build the press, we had to be flexible when planning the other parts of the course, such as the discussions of assigned readings and students’ interactions with the archival materials."
— Jeffrey Ravel

To prepare for the course, my co-instructors, Professor Anne McCants and Hobby Shop Director Ken Stone, and I, made several field trips to learn more about presses and handset printing. We visited the Book Arts Program at Wellesley College, the Printing Office of Edes & Gill in Boston, the Firefly Letterpress in Brookline, where the owner runs monotype and linotype machines, the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, which houses the Thomas Press from the 18th Century, and Letterpress Things, a printing supply store in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

We also visited the Rare Books Collections of the MIT Libraries and the MIT Museum to get a sense of the archival materials we’d be able to share with students. Concurrently, we began developing our syllabus and creating a realistic plan for building the printing press and printing during the course of the term. The biggest challenge was the improvisational nature of the class: because we weren’t sure how long it would take to build the press, we had to be flexible when planning the other parts of the course, such as the discussions of assigned readings and students’ interactions with the archival materials.

Advice

The experience of teaching 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today, with its multiple components, reinforced something I already knew: with enough advanced planning, MIT students are capable of doing remarkable things over the course of a semester. We found a good balance between classroom discussion, examination of books between 300 and 500 years old, and the building process. My advice to other instructors planning similar courses is as follows: do lots of planning before the course starts; have your syllabus in order, and if you’re building something, have your finances and material sources in place before the term starts.

Iteration

Now that we have a working printing press, we would like students to spend more time actually printing the next time we teach the course. In particular, we’d like to write, typeset, and print a multi-page pamphlet on a historical theme that we will jointly choose with the students. We also want to continue to perfect our paper-making technique so that we will ultimately be printing all our work on paper we have made ourselves. We’d also love to design and cast our own type, but that is probably something we’ll tackle at some point in the future.

In this section, Lauren Huang, a student in the course, shares how the different components of 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today worked together, and how she hopes the course will develop in future iterations.

How the Components of the Course Worked Together

21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today involved several components, including readings, exploring rare books, and building a printing press. The readings and MIT’s Rare Books Collection worked hand-in-hand to provide the background for the course. The readings, and the discussions we had about them in class, outlined the history of printing, and the influence that those printed works had on their contemporaries. The readings also introduced the development of the new printing techniques, some of which we were able to see in the books we handled. It was cool to see the techniques that went into printing a book: printing and cutting the folios, the double printing to add red lettering, the elaborate woodcut headers and illustrations. Being able to see books from the Rare Books Collection meant that we could compare manuscripts and printed books with our own eyes and physically feel the differences in the paper compared to the parchment.

"While the printing press we built was considerably more ‘modern’ in its design and in the techniques we used to put it together, it highlighted the biggest challenges people would have had in creating the first printing presses."
— Lauren Huang

The hands-on building of the printing press provided a very different perspective. While the printing press we built was considerably more “modern” in its design and in the techniques we used to put it together, it highlighted the biggest challenges people would have had in creating the first printing presses. Importantly, the experience of building the press meant I learned new woodshop skills and ideas about design instead of unanchored facts about printing and presses.

At times, it seemed to be challenging to logistically juggle the different components of the class. Since only a few people could be in the MIT Hobby Shop working on the press at once, we swapped places every few weeks. I suspect this problem will continue to happen, as there’s only one press available for the class. Having more than one professor was very helpful because we were able to split the class. Maybe limiting the size of the class could eliminate that problem, but I think it worked out okay. It was weird not to see half of the class very often, but it was also nice for people to make progress on the press while the other students were in the classroom.

Ideas for Future Iterations of the Course

I hope that in future iterations, the class will continue to include interactions with rare books and hands-on experiences working with the press. In particular, I hope that future students will be able to do a lot of handset printing! While it might not grow into a fully-fledged print shop, I think it would be cool to try out some of the fancier printing techniques, such as double printing. A lot can be done with the homemade paper to make it more consistent with the paper we see in the rare books. Also, book-binding would be great to include in the class! Perhaps future classes will finish by creating a printed book. I also think the discussions about the readings were more effective than the traditional “read a chapter and test facts” approach to teaching, and I hope the instructors will continue to structure the course in such a way that it remains discussion-based.

In this section, Professor Jeffrey Ravel describes how the instructors used online fora as a tool for engaging students in thinking comparatively about media in the Early Modern period and today.

"The online fora were a place to speculate on the meanings of the past for the current media moment in which we live."
— Jeffrey Ravel

In 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today, students were required to write four forum postings. We used the online fora as a place for the students to think comparatively about media in the Early Modern period and media today. For instance, we asked them to consider the similarities and differences between the so-called “printing revolution” 550 years ago, and the so-called “digital revolution” today. We asked them to think about how different media forms structured scientific advances in the Renaissance and today. The online fora were a place to speculate on the meanings of the past for the current media moment in which we live.

In this section, former student, Theodore Mouratidis, shares that his experience in 21H.141 Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1300-1800 prepared him to fully engage with the course material in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today. He also discusses how building the printing press in “Making Books” shaped his understanding of the process involved in producing script.

Taking “Renaissance to Revolution” before “Making Books”

I greatly enjoy the way Professor Ravel teaches his classes. I took his course, 21H.141 Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1300-1800, in Spring 2015 and it was completely different from any other history class I had taken; instead of going through a typical historical timeline with key events and key battles, we analyzed the changing thought and philosophy in society during the Renaissance era.

I found that my experience in 21H.141 Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1300-1800 was a perfect prelude for engaging in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today.  Through analysis of primary sources and secondary analyses of the impact of printing through Europe, we engaged in intellectual discussions which unveiled the true effect of the press during the Renaissance. Even more interesting was learning about the relationship between the manuscript and the book. 

Building the Printing Press

"I believe the incorporation of building a press was an ingenious idea. As MIT students, we are used to having our head in the books, but this was a fantastic way of making this class also slightly relaxing and extremely enjoyable."
— Theodore Mouratidis

I believe the incorporation of building a press was an ingenious idea. As MIT students, we are used to having our head in the books, but this was a fantastic way of making this class also slightly relaxing and extremely enjoyable. Through assembling and using the printing press, we were able to understand the process of producing script. That is, of course, after the painstaking process of putting the block print together!

The future of this class is difficult to comment on. Creating another press would not add the same level of excitement because it has already been done. Certainly, the new students would love it, but where would you put all the new presses!?

21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today involved three curricular components: 1) engagement with key readings; 2) exploration of rare print objects from the MIT collections; and 3) the hands-on experience of building a printing press and making cotton rag paper. In this section, Professor Jeffrey Ravel describes how offering students tangible experiences with archival materials helped ground the readings and provided a foundation for students’ building of the press and paper-making. He also offers other educators planning courses with similar components advice for getting started.

Students in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today read important scholarship in the history of the book from Gutenberg to the French Revolution, which they discussed with the instructors and each other during our seminar sessions. The purpose of these readings was to help students to think beyond technological determinism, or the idea that the “invention” of moveable type printing in the 1450s caused an immediate communications revolution.

"Opportunities to interact with archival materials allowed students to closely study the printed objects they had read about in class. It gave them a tangible understanding of objects that book and print historians sometimes talk about in abstract ways."
— Jeffrey Ravel

We also had three class sessions during which the MIT Rare Books Program Manager, Stephen Skuce, shared with students manuscripts and early European print materials, Early Modern printed religious materials, and Early Modern natural philosophy printed materials. Another class session involved a visit to the Hart Nautical Collection at the MIT Museum, which provided students with an opportunity to explore visual material from the period between 1500 and 1800.

These opportunities to interact with archival materials allowed students to closely study the printed objects they had read about in class. It gave them a tangible understanding of objects that book and print historians sometimes talk about in abstract ways. Because none of the students had extensive familiarity with the Early Modern materials, these tangible experiences also gave them a physical connection with the past places and periods we were discussing in class. Finally, the opportunity to discuss the relevant scholarship and to handle physical objects made with printing presses was invaluable background for the the process of actually designing and building their own handset printing press and making cotton rag paper.

In this section, Professor Jeffrey Ravel describes future plans for the printing press built by students in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today.

"We would love it if the press became a key component of a future Center for the Book located in the MIT Libraries."
— Jeffrey Ravel

The MIT Libraries would like to be the home for the printing press built by students in 21H.343J / CC.120J Making Books: The Renaissance and Today. My co-instructors and I are talking with the Directors of the Archives, the Rare Books Program Manager, and the Paper Conversation Lab Director about possible locations. Our hope is to have the press set up and ready for business in the Beaver Press Print Shop by the start of the Fall 2016 term, so that our colleagues in history and other departments on campus can begin to use the press for class exercises. We would love it if the press became a key component of a future Center for the Book located in the MIT Libraries.

Course Info

Departments
As Taught In
Spring 2016
Level
Undergraduate
Topics
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes
Written Assignments with Examples
Image Gallery
Instructor Insights
Download Course
MIT Open Learning
Over 2,500 courses & materials
Freely sharing knowledge with learners and educators around the world. Learn more
© 2001–2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Accessibility
Creative Commons License
Terms and Conditions
Proud member of:
© 2001–2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology