2024
Queer Bibliography Conference 2024
2023
Screening: Talking Leaves, August 1, 2023, Moore Hall 100
Lecture: Shubigi Rao — Banishment and Resistance: A Brief Primer, August 2, 2023, Moore Hall 100
2022
2021
2020
For the first time, these lectures were delivered during CalRBS Summer 2020 Session via Zoom.
Click on the titles below for a full description and to watch the recording of the event via our CalRBS YouTube Channel.
Note that Lecture 1: Personal Narratives about the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic: The UCLA Library Collection by Russell A. Johnson, which was held on Wednesday, 3 August 2020 was not recorded due to the use of copyrighted material.
Lecture 2: A 45-minute lecture followed by 15 minutes of Q&A (not included in the recording) held on Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 5:30 – 6:30 pm PDT, via Zoom
Edmund Fry’s 1799 Pantographia as a typo-bibliographical resource
for alphabet historiography—or forty years’ obsession with this book.
Prof. Johanna Drucker
Distinguished Professor of Information Studies &
Bernard and Martin Breslauer Professor of Bibliography
Lecture 3: A 45-minute lecture followed by 15 minutes of Q&A (not included in the recording) held on Wednesday, 19 August 2020, 5:30 – 6:30 pm PDT, via Zoom
The Other Book: The Ames Almanack Opens a Window on Colonial America
Dr. Susan Allen
2019
2018
2017
2016
Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.
Presented by the California Rare Book School at the Book Club of California.
W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) is primarily known today for his type designs and his marionette theatre. However, from the late 1920s until his death, he was viewed principally as a book designer and considered to be one of the best in America. His work for Alfred A. Knopf was especially lauded, but the specific books of his that have been routinely singled out for praise tend to be limited edition work done for other publishers. When his Knopf books are cited, the emphasis is usually on their spines or shelf backs. Other aspects of Dwiggins’s book designs for Knopf, especially the interiors, remain overlooked. This talk seeks to rectify that oversight by looking at a wide swath of the more than three hundred books Dwiggins designed for Knopf, from their jackets to their colophons. In doing so, it will provide a new perspective on his work as a trade book designer and insights into Dwiggins’s views on book design.
Paul Shaw is a graphic designer and a design historian. He teaches calligraphy and typography at Parsons School of Design, and the history of graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway (2009) and the editor of The Eternal Letter (2014). Since 1980 he has been working on a critical biography of W.A. Dwiggins. Over the past decade he has given over a dozen talks on various aspects of Dwiggins’s varied career.
2015
Victorian Bibliophilia: How the Parker Society Invented the Reformation.
Date: Monday, November 2, 2015, 5-7 p.m.
Presented by the California Rare Book School at The Book Club of California.
5 pm: Hospitality 6 pm: Talk
Dr. Lori Anne Ferrell discusses the Parker Society: a nineteenth century subscription association organized to publish “accurate” editions of Tudor reformation texts (sixty volumes in all, still found, in crumbling splendor, on every research and clerical library shelf in America and Britain). This is no genteel and pious tale, but a gripping narrative of Victorian religious politics, mad runs on London book auctions, and cut-throat collecting, peopled by bibliophiles determined to not only corner the market in sixteenth century memorabilia but also to rewrite history.
Is It Valuable or Valueless?
A free workshop on the issues and complexities of rare book and manuscript evaluation sponsored by California Rare Book School
Friday, October 2, 2015
UCLA GSEIS Building, Room 111
Expert Panels:
Views of Auction Houses, Libraries, Museums, and Collectors
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Reception to follow
RSVP: (Enable Javascript to see the email address)
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Pasadena Center
BUSTAMANTE ENTERPRISES INC., October Book Fair
Panel: Views of Booksellers
11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
2014
Take Things Always by Their Smooth Handle and Give Them a Good Turn: Reflections on Life and Libraries with Christian Dupont
Date: Monday, November 3, 2014, 5-7 p.m.
5pm Reception, 6pm Lecture
Location: The Book Club of California
In 2006, Rare Book School director Terry Belanger invited Christian Dupont to give a talk about his experiences and “advices” as the newly appointed director of special collections at the University of Virginia. He naturally turned to Thomas Jefferson, and drew upon his “Decalogue of Canons,” a series of ten aphoristic expressions of practical wisdom—some more common, some more obscure—like “take things always by their smooth handle.” Applying this maxim to his own career soon led Christian to join a library software development company to create the first automated system for managing special collections library services. And now it has led him back. In his talk, Christian will reflect on what he has learned about life and libraries and whether Mr. Jefferson would approve.
Following a six-year stint with Atlas Systems, the leading provider of time-saving solutions for libraries, Christian Dupont was recently appointed as Burns Librarian at Boston College. Formerly director of special collections at the University of Virginia and Syracuse University, he embarked on his service to libraries while completing his doctorate in theology at the University of Notre Dame. His research and publication interests range widely from Dante to continental philosophy and the history and management of libraries.
Another Turn of the Screw
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2014, 5:15 pm-7 p.m.
Speaker: Terry Belanger
Location: UCLA, GSEIS Building, 2nd Floor, Grand Salon
Reception to follow
An(other) Unsuitable Job for a Woman: Printing in the Long Nineteenth Century
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 5:15 pm-7 p.m.
Speaker: Kathleen Walkup
Location: UCLA, Young Research Library
Reception to follow
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
Building on Mr. Jefferson
A lecture by Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
10 August, 2009, GSE&IS Building Room 111
2008
Luck is the Residue of Design, or Vice-Versa, or Not
Presented by David Stam, Senior Scholar in History, Syracuse University
6 August, 2008, UCLA
Stories from the Annals of the Southern California Book Trade
Presented Kenneth Karmiole, Howard Rootenberg, and Michael Thompson, moderated by Carol Sandberg
3 August, 2008, GSE&IS Building, IS “Salon” (Second Floor)