Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities. The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices.

Writing Material Culture History examines the methodologies currently used in the historical study of material culture. Touching on archaeology, art history, literary studies and anthropology, the book provides history students with a fundamental understanding of the relationship between artefacts and historical narratives. The role of museums, the impact of the digital age and the representations of objects in public history are just some of the issues addressed in a book that brings together key scholars from around the world. A range of artefacts, including a 16th-century Peruvian crown and a 19th-century Alaskan Sea Lion overcoat, are considered, illustrating the myriad ways in which objects and history relate to one another. Bringing together scholars working in a variety of disciplines, this book provides a critical introduction for students interested in material culture, history and historical methodologies.

This reader considers how writing practices, old and new, affect the ways we write, read, think, and looks at how writing is influenced by historical events, cultural values, and technological advances. This challenging reader examines transformations in reading and writing, from the oral traditions of the pre-print era to the hypertext of the digital age, to analyze the impact of these changes on our reading and writing practices. With its historical and cultural analysis perspectives, it has appeal for any instructor interested in having their students think critically about the changing nature of writing. The readings-which include ancient philosophy, personal essays, literary narratives, and accessible scholarly discussions all centered on the past, present, and future of writing-are intellectually ambitious and encourage active, critical reading. A pedagogical system of "Suggested Groupings" in the back of the text clusters the readings under specific themes that explore the complex relationships between the selections. Innovative writing assignments let students experiment with different communicative forms and media. Numerous visual images emphasize visual literacy.

Letter writing was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world, as indicated by the large number of surviving letters and their extensive coverage of all social categories. Despite a large amount of work that has been done on the topic of ancient epistolography, material and formatting conventions have remained underexplored, mainly due to the difficulty of accessing images of letters in the past. Thanks to the increasing availability of digital images and the appearance of more detailed and sophisticated editions, we are now in a position to study such aspects. This book examines the development of letter writing conventions from the archaic to Roman times, and is based on a wide corpus of letters that survive on their original material substrates. The bulk of the material is from Egypt, but the study takes account of comparative evidence from other regions of the Graeco-Roman world. Through analysis of developments in the use of letters, variations in formatting conventions, layout and authentication patterns according to the sociocultural background and communicational needs of writers, this book sheds light on changing trends in epistolary practice in Graeco-Roman society over a period of roughly eight hundred years. This book will appeal to scholars of Epistolography, Papyrology, Palaeography, Classics, Cultural History of the Graeco-Roman World.

This work, by the greatest living authority on medieval palaeography, offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account in any language of the history of Latin script. It also contains a detailed account of the role of the book in cultural history from antiquity to the Renaissance, which outlines the history of book illumination. Designed as a textbook, it contains a full and updated bibliography. Because the volume sets the development of Latin script in its cultural context, it also provides an unrivalled introduction to the nature of medieval Latin culture. It will be used extensively in the teaching of latin palaeography, and is unlikely to be superseded.

The Material Culture of Writing opens up avenues for understanding writing through scholarship in material culture studies. Contributors to this volume each interrogate an object, set of objects, or writing environment to reveal the sociomaterial contexts from which writing emerges. The artifacts studied are both contemporary and historical, including ink, a Victorian hotel visitors’ book, Moleskine notebooks, museum conservators’ files, an early twentieth-century baby book, and a college campus makerspace. Close study of such artifacts not only enriches understanding of what counts as writing but also offers up the potential for rich current and historical inquiry into writing artifacts and environments. The collection features scholars across the disciplines—such as art, art history, English, museum studies, and writing studies—who work as teachers, historians, museum curators/conservators, and faculty. Each chapter features methods and questions from contributors’ own disciplines while at the same time speaking to writing studies’ interest in writers, writing identity, and writing practice. The authors in this volume also work with a variety of methodologies, including literary analysis, archival research, and qualitative research, providing models for the types of research possible using a material culture studies framework. The collection is organized into three sections—Writing Identity, Writing Work, Writing Genre—each with a contextualizing introduction from the editors that introduces the chapters themselves and imagines possible directions for writing studies research facilitated by material culture studies. The Material Culture of Writing serves as an accessible introduction to work in material culture studies for writing studies scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates, especially as it makes a distinctive contribution to writing studies in its material culture studies approach. Because of the interdisciplinarity of material culture studies and this volume’s contributors, this collection will appeal to a wide range of scholars and readers, including those interested in writing studies, the history of the book, print culture, genre studies, archival methods, and authorship studies. Contributors: Cydney Alexis, Debby Andrews, Diane Ehrenpreis, Keri Epps, Desirée Henderson, Kevin James, Jenny Krichevsky, Anne Mackay, Emilie Merrigan, Laura R. Micciche, Hannah J. Rule, Kate Smith

"Writing Training Materials that Work is a solid and practical resource to move our field to a more professional level of practice in which instructional decisions are based on research and valid models of how people learn" --Ruth Clark, president, Clark Training and Consulting, past president, ISPI "I can see how this book will be immediately useful to my students. In fact, I can see how it will be immediately useful to me. Thanks for putting it all together between two covers." --Allison Rossett, professor, San Diego State University The explosion of e-learning has attracted huge numbers of practitioners to the field of instructional design (ID), many with little or no actual ID training. And most current texts fail to cover the substantial recent developments in the field. Writing Training Materials that Work is different. In it, the authors identify, synthesize, and summarize the most current best practices in ID. They offer new ways of teaching declarative knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and well- to ill- structured procedural knowledge (problem solving). Their recommendations are based on those principles in the cognitive learning and instruction literature that are internally consistent, prescriptive, and have been empirically demonstrated to make a cost-effective difference. The authors' approach is easy to implement and consistently gets results because it focuses on teaching deep understanding and problem-solving, allowing learners to generalize and transfer learning to new situations without re-training. Whether you re an experienced instructional design practitioner who wants to expand your skills or a graduate student in an advanced instructional design course, Writing Training Materials T\that Work will prove to be a readable, usable, and indispensable guide!