Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects

'This volume is both original and useful. Whilst each of the essays in and of itself offers new research, the volume taken as a whole is a substantial contribution to book, image, and media history. It deliberately disrupts the idea of a unified field, demonstrating how both books and prints (sometimes combined within the same volume) act as agents between cultures.'

- Kate Flint, Provost Professor of Art History and English, University of Southern California, USA

'Rather than ask the old questions, 'what is a book' or 'what is a print', Stead and her collaborators want to know: what has been the use of this text-bearing object? What does it do? Applying those queries to all manner of media - made, found, used, and re-purposed - this new approach dissolves (and complicates) the distinction between the material and textual aspects of what we read, and encourages methodologies that cross the boundaries of discipline.'

- LeslieHowsam, Emerita Distinguished University Professor, University of Windsor, Canada

This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward.