ABSTRACT
How do you teach books as objects without the (right) objects? Outside of dedicated book history courses? At institutions seemingly ill-equipped to support such topics? Why do books as objects matter, anyway, beyond the specialist preserve? This chapter argues that a “bibliographical disposition” or practice of attending to book objects cultivates skills and ethics—in evidence, ecology, and inclusion—essential for students (for humans) at this fragile time: close attention to evidence and to the work of interpretation beyond received ideologies; material focus on the world beyond human minds and bodies; and wider awareness of the collaborative and unequal labor that produces texts beyond canonical authorship. Object orientations re-center literary histories away from canonical superstars toward a deep (formerly) supporting cast of collaborators, both within their lifetimes and throughout their afterlives. By turning our attention to these other humans and their compatriots, we expand the canon without abandoning the works that undeniably shaped our English-speaking culture. By refocusing on the material world, we turn also to the ecological, to the more-than-human. Close looking at objects serves to unflatten literary texts, thus helping us to make mediation visible, to reveal multiple agencies, and so to tell a fuller, richer, broader, truer story.
