In 2021, the Bibliographical Society of America graciously hosted a conversation about the intersection of typography (specifically, how typography was described, discussed, and understood to function culturally and politically) with discourses of race and gender in early modern England—and in our own moment.
The virtual roundtable covered how early modern typography—broadly construed as the design and disposition of type on paper and within the bounds of the book—was anything but a neutral container for the publication of early modern writing.
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Last year, I started reserving a day in each of my Shakespeare courses for students to "make" quartos. I wrote at some length (almost exactly a year ago) about the experience of making Q1 Hamlet with my students at VCU and posted instructions, information about supplies for the activity, and a link to the sheets (which I made from EEBO printouts).
This semester, I'm teaching a senior seminar called "Early Modern Drama: Manuscript, Print, Performance" that focuses on the material-textual processes that facilitated the making of theatrical performance and printed texts of the plays. So far, my students have reverse-engineered scribal backstage plots of Doctor Faustus, performed a scene from the same play using cue scripts, and "made" quartos.