Works in Progress

Book-Length Projects

Edited Volume

“Extra Extra!”

A collection of interdisciplinary essays on the material history of the visually altered book from the medieval period to now, co-edited with Adam Smyth.

Monographs

"Writing’s Maker"

This monograph examines how different models of inscription, record keeping and memory making constituted intermedial forms life writing for writers of the long eighteenth century. Individual chapters center on the penmanship flourish as a vehicle for organic self-expression, the extra-illustration of books as a means for rewriting text with images and inscribing oneself into one’s books, the interface of manuscript, graphic design and print in pre-formatted pocket diaries, and the hand-drawn grid in commonplace books as a graphic tool for personal information management. Throughout the tensions between writing as a process of creativity on one hand and record-making on the other are considered.

“Like Life"

This book project investigates the materials and aesthetic techniques used to create the semblance of life across different media throughout early modern cultural history. How have human beings throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attempted to imitate, record and replicate the experience of being alive as embodied subjects in a material world? Like Life is organized around five major attributes and techniques of life-likeness in intermedial experiences and contexts, from the creation and experience of automata to the semblance of depth in perspective prints: transparency, voice, depth, and point of view.