What books mean as objects
While most literature professors focus on the interpretation of texts, English Professor Leah Price wants to explore other uses to which books can be put. “I’m interested not just in words — the verbal structure of a book — but also in the material object,” Price said. “It can hide your face on the subway. It can decorate your coffee table. It can be burnt by political opponents. And it can establish relationships between two successive readers, as when [Barack] Obama was sworn in on [Abraham] Lincoln’s Bible.” For Price, who is a Harvard College Professor and chairs the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, the relationship between one reader and the next can be as interesting as the relationship formed between the reader and the author. When Price was in graduate school, thinking about a book this way as a physical object was considered “fairly vulgar.” “It was done outside the...