From the syllabus

"This course explores the history, production, and reading of the book as an object and an idea capable of traversing centuries of knowledge and culture. As a product both of its time and one that transcends it, the book has a life of its own, an existence shaped by the circumstances in which it comes into the world, as well as the stories of its own survival. Those stories in turn shape the lives of those who engage with the book, the living, breathing human beings who imagine, compose, create, sell, read, write about, and remember it. This then is a course about what it means to live the life of the book and what it might mean to try and live without it." 

Florilegium Project





The Florilegium Project invites you to imagine, plan, and sketch out a chapbook or anthology composed of your own writing or selections from our course readings. It includes a title, table of contents, dedication, about the author, author's introduction, cover design, and afterword.

Writ Anew is a fiction chapbook of my retellings of three stories from the Holy Bible, all centered around ideas of evil and wickedness.

Writ Anew.pdf

GhostWriter Project

GhostWriter Project.pdf



Choose a book that is important to you and identify a specific recipient for the book. Then, create annotations to take your reader through the book, invite your reader to remember shared experiences, point out details you think they would enjoy, and make other markings. In this process, you'll be making a reader's copy—a unique copy of a text that is special to you and your reader.




"Annotating the book made me linger on pages I normally wouldn’t and gave me new perspectives on a text I thought I knew well...I feel more connected to this book now that I have a new understanding of myself within it. Gaining a new perspective on a book after a decade of owning it feels so exhilarating; I wonder what other perspectives I can find. "

GhostWriter Project Reflection (ENG386).pdf

From Course Readings