Blooks, Jane Austen, and America’s First Public Library in Rare Book School's Summer Lecture Series
Rare Book School has announced the lineup for its 2025 summer lecture series at the University of Virginia.
For the first time, RBS is offering an option to attend a livestream of the in-person lectures via Zoom. Lecture recordings will be made available by fall 2025. Past lectures are also available via SoundCloud and YouTube.
The lineup includes:
* June 2: The Parallel History of Books and Blooks , with Mindell Dubansky, Museum Librarian for Preservation, Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
* June 4: Jane Austen on the Cheap, with Janine Barchas, Chancellor’s Council Centennial Professor in the Book Arts, University of Texas at Austin ( The 2025 Kenneth W. Rendell Endowed Lecture)
* June 9: Stationery Bindings: A Law Story, with Paul Halliday, Julian Bishko Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of Virginia
* June A 11: Chivalry in Color: Central European Tournaments and the Matter of Race , with Alexander Bevilacqua, Associate Professor of History, Williams College (The 2025 Kress Foundation Art of the Book in Europe Lecture)
* July 9: Publishing in the Renaissance: Christophe Plantin’s Business Strategy, with Mark McConnell, Associate Research Fellow, Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance, Johns Hopkins University ( The 2025 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Lecture on the History of the Book Trades)
* July 21: Books for Virginia 1620: America’s First Public Library? , with E. M. Rose, Visiting Fellow, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University (The 2025 NEH-SHARP Living American History in Primary Documents Lecture)
* July 23: Iconographic Disjunction in the Ruskin Psalter/Hours: A Flemish Illuminated Manuscript of ca. 1470–80, with James H. Marrow, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Princeton University
* July 28: Curious and Creative Women , with Rachael DiEleuterio, Librarian and Archivist, Delaware Art Museum (The 2025 Women in Books Speaker Program Lecture)
* July 30: What is Computational Bibliography? , with Christopher N. Warren, Professor of English and History (by courtesy), Carnegie Mellon University ( The 2025 Sol M. and Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Lecture)
All lectures are free and open to the public and unless noted take place at 5.30pm ET. Lectures last 30–40 minutes with approximately 10 minutes for Q&A.
