Final Project: The Life of a Book

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For my final project, I want to build on Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library.” Benjamin writes about how each book in his collection carries a story. Where it came from, what it meant to him, and how it became part of his life. I really love that idea, because it makes books feel alive, almost like companions that share our experiences.

My project will be a photo story called “The Life of a Book.” It will follow one book through different moments in everyday life. Being bought in a store, carried in a bag, resting on a desk, or sitting beside a cup of coffee. Through these photos, I want to show how a book moves through the world with its reader, quietly collecting pieces of their life. It’s not just something we read and put away, it travels with us, changes with us, and holds memories of the time we spend together.

I will present the project as a digital photo essay with short captions or reflections next to each image. This format lets me show Benjamin’s ideas in a simple, visual way. Instead of writing about how books hold memories, I want to show how a book becomes part of someone’s story. The project is meant to be calm, personal, and a little nostalgic, celebrating the small ways books live alongside us.

Final Project Proposal – A Poem for The Divan of Hafez

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For my final project, I want to write a poem about The Divan of Hafez, that I used for my midterm. When I first saw it, it didn’t feel like just an old object. It felt alive. The red ink, the gold borders, the small tears in the pages all seemed to tell a story. I want my project to be a way of answering that feeling with my own words. My idea is to write a poem that speaks to the book, almost like a conversation. I want to describe what it felt like to hold it, to look at its pages, and to think about all the people who touched it before me. The poem will be in English, but I want to keep the rhythm and softness that I feel when I read translations of Hafez’s. Each part of the poem will focus on something from the manuscript the red ink, the miniature paintings, the worn leather cover. These small details will become symbols for love, time, and memory. The purpose of my project is to show that The Divan of Hafez is more than a historical artifact. It is a living bridge between people and generations. Writing a poem feels like the best way to express that connection.

Final Project Proposal

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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.

What I Still Need to Learn for My Final Project

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I’ve chosen a topic for my final project, but I feel like it is a subject that could potentially be sprawling, as almost all subjects surrounding the book are. I need to be careful when researching collectible presses that I do not allow my focus to stray too much. I need to learn the histories of these presses, particularly the Easton Press, as that will be my central focus. I would like to be able to tie this aspect of bookishness into the larger conversation around vintage aesthetics in America, without allowing the project’s scope to expand too broadly. I need to do some research into appreciation of vintage and antique goods as well as consumer preference toward good with vintage aesthetic that are made with modern production techniques.

In this project, I will be doing multiple bibliographies and comparing my findings between editions and evaluating what that could say about the intention behind the creation of these books. I feel like a lot of my research will be hands-on implementation of the things we have learned in class this semester, and that will be very labor and time-intensive. I need to learn what publishing and binding practices were in use at what times, but in the past century and in the more distant history of books. I would like to learn the best way to compare two books bibliographical characteristics.

I am very curious to see how the Easton Press facsimile of the old purchaser-bound folio will measure up in terms of quality of the product, or even if it potentially surpasses the quality of the older book. Since these things are (for the most part) affordable for those that want them, have corners been cut in their manufacturing to keep costs low?

Final Project Proposal

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I feel that one of the main hurdles of this class has been the transition from seeing books for their content to seeing books as artifact and object.

For my final project, I would like to do a deep dive into the publishing of books as collectibles. As opposed to most of the other books we can buy that are being published today, these are meant, from the first view, to be seen as objects, rather than carriers of content. Presses like Folio Society, The Frankin Mint, and Easton Press all produce fine editions of many popular books; their pages are gilded, their bindings harken back to an earlier time, and many of the works are illustrated, but for most consumers, these are not things to be read, they are objects to be kept, looked at occasionally, and mostly, to sit on a shelf and project a measure of learnedness, worldliness, and status.

I will focus my research primarily on the Easton Press, as I have many of their books at home. I will delve into the history of the press, when it came about, and how the culture of the country of the time might have related to bookishness then and how it relates or does not relate now. I will compare collectible versions of books to their “non-collectible,” first edition, and mass-market counterparts when available, evaluating the physical differences and what those differences say about how the book is meant to be owned and shelved.

I will conduct some primary research into the acquisition process for Easton Press editions, looking at discourse communities that revolve around the collecting of these books, what their members’ commonalities and differences are, and what the acquisition process/price says about who these books are intended to be consumed by.

Thesis: The widespread publication of collectible editions speaks to a preference toward the vintage aesthetic in American culture. This is a further proliferation of the bookishness that we have seen on the rise in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. These are books meant to be seen as objects, not reading material, and the people who consume these products choose them for the aesthetics of being well-read and learned, prioritizing these aesthetics over the functionality of the book.

Final Project Proposal – Soviet Union Comics

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For my final assignment, I will be analyzing political cartoons as a form of reality construction from the Soviet Union era. I will examine the way these political cartoons created nationalistic sentiment in the Soviet Union in the face of broader Western influence. In other words, I ask: What role did political cartoons take in culturally validating the U.S.S.R.? This will include any paper medium, primarily but not limited to, posters and political comics in the newspaper. My analysis will be guided by Edward Bernays’ philosophy towards public relations and marketing, which approached marketing as a way to construct the reality of the general population.

There will not be an explicitly artistic component for this project, though my essay will be printed out on printer paper to emulate the physical medium these political cartoons were consumed in at the time. I hope to find a political cartoon in the form of a newspaper clipping or poster to analyze in Special Collections and have emailed Anna for a direction of where to look. 

Annotated Bibliography

David-Fox, Michael. The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/111641.

Studies the role of the secret police in the Soviet Union through archives of “information, technology, economics, art, and ideology”. David-Fox attempts to get a full picture of the Soviet secret police through a variety of different archives.

Etty, John. Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political Cartoons. University Press of Mississippi, 2019. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/63713.

Etty focuses on the popular and long-lasting satirical magazine Krokodil (especially from the years 1954 to 1964). The magazine was “the most significant, influential source of Soviet graphic satire” and was in production for over 70 years

Norris, Stephen. “The Weapon of Laughter: Soviet Political Cartoons and the Making of a State Viewer.” Ab Imperio, vol. 2021 no. 3, 2021, p. 171-179. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/imp.2021.0058.

A lecture from a Professor of Russian Studies Stephen Norris regarding Soviet Union popular cartoonist Boris Efimov, who drew many caricatures and political cartoons.

Peteri, Gyorgy. Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 1 ed. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/1442.

Peteri describes how various indicators in architecture, film, writings, products, and more indicate shifts in Western ideals among Eastern Europeans. Acceptance of Western ideals make it not possible for Communism to meet the needs of its people, thus contributing to its downfall.

Smith-Peter, Susan. “Rethinking: “The Russian Archives”.” Ab Imperio, vol. 2022 no. 2, 2022, p. 63-69. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/imp.2022.0032.

Pushes the idea that Russian archival work overwhelmingly takes place in Russia as opposed to examining Russian archives present in the United States (specifically Alaska because it was owned by Alaska for a significant period of time and Pennsylvania for its Russian immigrant population) and Ukraine. In other words, the author is saying that Russian archives exist in many more, less-searched places than Russia.

Starks, Tricia. Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR. Cornell University Press, 2022. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/99516.

Starks analyzes the massive success of cigarettes in the USSR, specifically how it became and why it continues to be so popular.

Velychenko, Stephen. Propaganda in Revolutionary Ukraine: Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Cartoons, 1917–1922. University of Toronto Press, 2019. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/108060.

This book goes over the various dissemination giants (both governmental and corporate) in Ukraine from 1917-1922, their publishing techniques, and both their successes and failures.

Waterlow, Jonathan. “Sanctioning Laughter in Stalin’s Soviet Union.” History Workshop Journal, vol. 79, 2015, p. 198-214. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/579908.

This research examines humor in the Soviet Union, noting how it has previously been perceived by researchers and how it is actually more nuanced than expected. The state ultimately would decide what was or was not acceptable humor in a relatively arbitrary manner.

Final Project Proposal – “Walking Through Books”

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For my final project, I want to take the idea that has basically shaped all my blog posts this semester “Books as spaces“ and turn it into something creative. For weeks, I have been thinking about pages as rooms, chapters as places we move through and reading as a kind of navigation. Now I want to make that idea visual and experiential.

A core part of the project will be a poem. I chose to write a poem because so much of what I have been doing in the blogs has been philosophical and reflective and poetry feels like the form that can hold that best. It lets me continue the same kind of thinking but in a more condensed, atmospheric way. Since all my weeks of writing have revolved around ideas, metaphors and spatial ways of reading, a poem feels like the most natural extension. The poem will describe a journey through different book-spaces, like stepping between pages, entering rooms made of margins. Each section will feel like its own room, matching the movement of the poem.

To go with it, I will create digital images where I place myself inside these imagined book-rooms. One example is the image I already made of myself inside Celestial Navigation. The other images will expand that idea. Maybe a hallway built from stacked lines of text, a room where furniture is shaped out of paragraphs, or a space that folds open as I move through it. These images won’t simply illustrate the poem. They will serve as visual versions of the rooms the poem moves through.

This project builds directly on everything I have written about. Carrión’s “sequence of spaces”, Mak’s trained boundaries of the page and Borsuk’s metaphors of the book as a body. My goal is to turn those concepts into something you can see and something you can feel.

In short, the poem will ask what it feels like to walk inside a book (metaphorically), while the images show what that journey might look and feel like. Together, they bring my semester-long theme to a creative end. Stepping into books, not just reading them.

Fina Project Proposal

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The archive reveals, or unveils an apocalypse different than the one described in the scriptures; although we conflate the term apocalypse with the end of times, it can mean very different things. Rather than times coming to an end, it births a new “uncovering”, or sheds light onto a new revelation. In this instance, the archive exhibits human nature to: categorize, label and preserve writings that may be considered of literary merit. And, through the different modes of media, wether analogical or digital, we worship and reproduce different ways of seeing. This raises the question–why do we need to classify, codify and archive media? And, how does the reproduction of power operate within the realm of different ideological systems within politics and institutions?  

Grounded in different theoretical frameworks such as Derrida’s Archive Fever and Althusser’s theory of interpellation, this project seeks to explore how the archive, wether digital or analogical, functions as systems of control and conservation. The archive will be analyzed as a product of culture and time, operating as a system that reflects the dominant ideology of the time in which it was written. 

David Foster Wallace’s This is Water serves as a framework to reconsider our perception and awareness by deconstructing the choices we make in worshipping different modes of media; the way in which we engage with it allows us to engage with the world differently than what we know–challenging our beliefs and ideas; to encourage critical thinking and awareness. 

Final Project Proposal

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For my final project I will write an essay analyzing how the book is a perfect object that can be not only read, but consumed fulfill all of a persons needs.

For my project I will describe how the object of the book is consumable, I will not be focusing on the text that can be read from the book, but instead every other feature that the codex is made from to be a perfect consumable object.

To view the book as an object that is consumable by people I will overview and describe the book object’s ability to satisfy a human’s hierarchy of needs and be consumed by each of a person’s five senses.

Since books can take a variety of different forms and appearances, this project will primarily use a Penguin Publishing Group ‘Classics’ paperback book as the example and definition of a book object.

The reason for a Penguin book to be used as this projects’ book object reference is to be able to utilize what may be the most commonly known and used book form and shape. Since the Penguin Publishing Group is one of the most popular books publishers in the world, the form it’s books take can be used to exemplify what most people would consider a “book,” to be.

Thesis: The Book is a perfect consumable object. Using a Penguin Random House Classics book this project will analyze how beyond the text that it holds, each facet of a book can be consumed and ingested by each of a person’s five senses, giving one the ability to fulfill all of their needs through the consumption and absorption of a book.

Final Project Proposal

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Proposal Thought Process:

For my final project, I was interested in analyzing and making a creative version of a passport. My original thought was to look into how passports might be representative of identity, but they also are much more than that. Yes, passports are Identity Documents, but they are symbols of power, freedom, and much more. In order to discover more about passports, I came up with several questions I would look into.

How do passports serve as both modes of freedom and limitations? What changed these perspectives based on the accessibility of passports and the rights and restrictions of foreign travel, specifically in the United States? Why do passports represent these juxtaposing principles?

How does the passport serve to free its holders? 

How does the passport serve to restrict its holders?

What historical events have caused/influenced the accessibility of passports?
Who has the right to a passport and how has that changed over time?

Thesis: The United States passport is a booklet that serves as a symbol of great power and freedom, giving foreign immunity and national protection to its holders. Like any other book, it has a history of social, political, and economic affairs and, without human influence, would otherwise cease to exist. However, this booklet has also served as a symbol of restriction and control, limiting who has access to foreign travel and which countries one may visit. Having a passport in any country comes with its privileges as well as disadvantages, which is what makes this a book worthy of close-reading.

Creative Project:

Make a “universal passport.”

Examine components and how they pertain to the holders, nation of origin, and their implications. I will be using similar materials to create my own version of a universal passport that tries to challenge the implications of the U.S. passport.