Abstract
Evanghelia Stead introduces this new research-level collection citing artworks by Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani in a bombed Bologna church, now a library. Recording the city’s rich cultural network from the Middle Ages to now, this cultural allegory provides a strong symbol for this book’s ambitions. Arguing that the multi-layered identity and history of books and prints are best shown through interdisciplinary stances examining their material, conceptual, symbolic and social uses, Stead posits methodological choices against historical background. She reconsiders benchmark approaches such as book history, analytical bibliography, cultural theories of literature and art, as well as book studies. Her innovative stress pairs material enquiries with multi-faceted reading processes, cultural representations and uses, circulation and transformation of print and visual culture, as this book’s ten chapters explore.
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Acknowledgements
The editor would like to thank: the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in Freiburg-im-Breisgau for funding the international conference “Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects” that hosted many of the papers that have been reworked as chapters in this book; colleagues from Freiburg University and FRIAS who have assisted her in contacting key actors; Dr Brook Bolander for sharing wisdom on organizational details; Professor Henrike Lähnemann for her enthusiasm; Junior Professor Corinna Norrick-Rühl for generously providing useful information; her husband, Christopher Stead, for his regular help with language and index matters; Dr Paul Edwards and Dr Guyda Armstrong for their helpful comments on the Introduction; Dr Ilaria Vitali for diligently supplying information in Bologna; and the contributors to the volume for their diligence with responses, their enthusiastic commitment to the objectives of the collection, not to mention their forbearance. The editor’s special thanks go to artist Claudio Parmiggiani for granting rights to feature his two artworks reproduced on the cover and in Figure I.1 as well as to the City of Bologna for generously providing the images. The editor is also grateful to the external reviewer of the first draft, to the series directors, and to the staff of Palgrave Macmillan, whose comments have been very useful.
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Stead, E. (2018). Introduction. In: Stead, E. (eds) Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7_1
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