Rare Book School Opens Applications for Summer 2025 Courses

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia's 2025 schedule includes more than 40 classes, featuring online courses and in-person possibilities plus two new partner institutions, the University of Michigan and Oxford University's Bodleian Library which marks RBS's first international courses.

Rare Book School's summer 2025 in-person courses in Charlottesville will be offered in the University of Virginia's newly renovated Edgar Shannon Library. Other in-person courses will run in Chapel Hill (NC), Chicago, New Haven (CT), Philadelphia, Princeton (NJ), and Upperville (VA).

Among courses available for the first time are:

• Print for Children taught by Andrea Immel & Jill Shefrin at Princeton University, drawing on the rich resources of historical illustrated books, manuscripts, artwork, ephemera, and multimedia artifacts of the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton
• Digital Codicology & Book History taught by Dot Porter at the University of Pennsylvania which will explore the interplay between books as physical objects and their digital counterparts
• Transmission of the Bible from the Beginnings to 1500 taught by Peter Toth at Oxford University which will feature mornings lectures on the history of the biblical texts and afternoon presentations of manuscripts, papyri, early printed books, and other  items at the Bodleian and elsewhere in Oxford
• Researching Medieval Manuscripts: From Cataloging to Cultural History taught by David Rundle at Oxford University, mainly taking place in the Bodleian Library but with visits to the collections of the university’s colleges

One returning course is Paper as Bibliographical Evidence taught by Cathleen A. Baker at the University of Michigan in which participants will spend the equivalent of a day forming sheets of paper by hand and then examining and discussing them.

For the best chance of being admitted on the courses, applications should be submitted by February 17.