This project argues that Ethiopian healing scrolls exemplify a media technology of both fashion and portability, where the scroll’s function of purging illness and demons is combined with its person specific tailored length, scripture and design embody both a religious and social importance.By analyzing the scroll’s portability as both a material and spiritual feature, this project will show how its design transforms the book into a wearable, embodied object whose form directly enacts its healing purpose.
For the creative-critical component, I will construct a scroll inspired by Ethiopian healing scrolls, using paper material, stitched joins, and alternating bands of text and imagery. This handmade scroll will serve as both an artwork and an analytical tool, allowing me to demonstrate how portability and wearability change the experience of “reading” compared to a codex. The scroll will be designed for myself, and what I believe could help heal me. The essay will close-read my scroll alongside historical examples, focusing on how images and material design function as operative features in ritual practice. The scroll’s portability will be analyzed not only as convenience or but as a religious technology: it travels with the body, protects the wearer, and restores their ability to move freely in social and spiritual life.
The project expands on my midterm by situating Ethiopian healing scrolls within a broader history of books as clothing and accessories. Just as girdle books in medieval Europe were worn on belts, or miniature prayer books were carried in pouches and lockets, Ethiopian scrolls blur the line between text and garment. They are tailored to the wearer’s height, inscribed with their name, and wrapped around the body for head-to-toe protection. This comparative lens highlights how media form itself—whether scroll, codex, or wearable book—shapes meaning, access, and use. By foregrounding portability and embodiment, the project demonstrates how the technologies of book design are inseparable from their cultural and spiritual functions.
This is a great project, and I’m glad to see you building upon your work from the midterm. I would like to see you develop a more specific argument; what you have here is a bit general: “By analyzing the scroll’s portability as both a material and spiritual feature, this project will show how its design transforms the book into a wearable, embodied object whose form directly enacts its healing purpose.” Perhaps you can tie your creative project and biography of a book to scholarship on the history of books as wearable and portable media. For example, you might consider the girdle book from medieval history. Or you might consider bookish fashion. But, I do want to see you get more specific than claims like the following: ‘y foregrounding portability and embodiment, the project demonstrates how the technologies of book design are inseparable from their cultural and spiritual functions.”
Perhaps you might consider research on other types of wearable books scrolls OR just do more sustained research on Ethiopian book scrolls, beyond the singular object you read in Special Collections for the midterm.