{"id":3856,"date":"2024-12-09T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/library-archives-blog\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2025-07-30T10:47:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T14:47:00","slug":"books-and-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/library-archives-blog\/2024\/12\/09\/books-and-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissecting Anatomical Structures: Curating an Exhibit on Books & Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Alex Rienerth, \u201925, MA in Literary History, 2024-2025 Graduate Assistant in Rare Books<\/em>
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At the beginning of my graduate assistantship in the rare books department, part of my training included watching<\/a> \u201cThe Anatomy of a Book<\/a>,\u201d a wonderful instructional video captured from an early 1990s VHS tape. Though the video is a bit peculiar, it was helpful for gaining a baseline understanding of how older books were produced and the terminology used to describe them. In addition to its contents, the title of the video caught my attention; I started to consider the kinds of anthropomorphic language we use to describe books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\""The<\/a>
“The Anatomy of a Book” training materials; includes a transcript, glossary, and paper samples printed to be folded into quartos, octavos, and duodecimos (which refer to specific book sizes and formats). The tactile aspect made me appreciate the amount of forethought and precision it must have taken to produce these books. I still can hardly wrap my head around the layout of the various pages on the larger sheet of paper!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While I made my way through the other training materials, I learned that other names of body parts are similarly applied to books: I\u2019d been familiar with the book\u2019s \u201cspine\u201d beforehand, but I wasn\u2019t aware that they also had \u201cheads\u201d and \u201cjoints.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Labeled<\/a>
Labeled diagram of a book from Borsuk’s “The Book<\/a>.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, when I was asked to curate an exhibit, I knew I wanted to try to do something meaningful with the interplay between books and bodies. Vague as this idea was, I started with an ALICE catalog search on our library website; I searched broad keywords like \u201canatomy,\u201d \u201cbibliography,\u201d and \u201cmedical\u201d and made sure to specify under the \u201clocation\u201d that I was looking for items in Archives & Special Collections. I kept a running document of ALICE links of records that seemed relevant and interesting, then extended my search to holdings catalogued under the same subject and with similar call numbers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I was done searching online, I had a long list of books I could potentially include in the exhibit. I was working with a smaller display case, though, so I needed to narrow things down a lot<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Detail<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Details of Ann Lovett’s Exquisite<\/a> <\/em>(left) and Casey Gardner’s Body of Inquiry<\/a><\/em> (right); I originally found Exquisite<\/em>, which is included in the exhibit, while looking for books similar to Gardner’s.\u00a0<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From here, my original broad topic had split into two potential directions for the exhibit: I had books that illustrated a relationship between the written text<\/em> and embodiment while others highlighted the physical connections between books and bodies. In retrospect, I probably ran into this problem because I\u2019d been thinking of books in terms of the words on the page for so long that it was difficult to shift my focus toward their more tangible aspects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictured below are some of the books I considered adding to my display, but couldn\u2019t due to space and\/or for the sake of clearer focus. From left to right: This Thy Body<\/a> <\/em>by Ada Elizabeth Jones Chesterton, Frankenstein<\/em><\/a> <\/em>by Mary Shelley illustrated by Lynd Ward;\u00a0 Wrongly Bodied Two<\/a><\/em> by Clarissa Sligh, Foetus Envy<\/a><\/em> by Maureen Cummins.\u00a0<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Cover<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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For my assistantship, however, I consistently work hands-on with a range of books. Some of these books are old, fragile, and require very <\/em>careful handling—if you\u2019ve ever held someone else\u2019s newborn baby, then you can imagine holding one of these books.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"View<\/a>
These are some of the older\/more fragile books in our collection; you can see some of the wear-and-tear on or along the spine, which makes it particularly important to support this part of the book when you handle them.  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, with this in mind (as well as the fact that an exhibit does, it turns out, need to be visually<\/em> interesting), I zeroed in on the physical components of books and bodies. Specifically, I wanted to think about physical frailty, mortality, and efforts at preserving and conserving books\/bodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After settling on the topic, I began pulling books from my list, then evaluated whether I\u2019d like to add them to the exhibit. My advisor, Special Collections Librarian Miriam Intrator, also suggested expanding upon my list by visiting shelving areas based on call numbers or subject. I found the visual aspect helped center my focus a lot, and browsing face-to-face ended up being the most effective process for finding the right materials for my exhibit. Though it can be time consuming and frustrating to pull a book, browse through it, and find that it doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s just as exciting when a book that looks unpromising from the outside turns out to be a perfect fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also found some materials completely incidentally, like Al Mutanabbi I<\/a><\/em> by Elsi Vassdal Ellis. When the majority of my exhibit had been planned, I was pulling materials for an English class. I meant to grab a different artists\u2019 book for that class when Ellis\u2019s book fell over on the shelf. Fortunately, I decided to look through Al Mutanabbi I<\/em>, and I knew pretty immediately that I wanted to add it to my exhibit for its focus on the sociopolitical dimensions of embodiment, mortality, and our treatment of (certain) books as cultural artifacts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
The top shelf that houses some of our artists’ books. You’ll notice the tiny artist\u2019s book (Karen Hanmer\u2019s A2Z<\/a>) next to the large one (Hanmer\u2019s Contemporary Paper Bindings<\/a><\/em>). Though gravity isn\u2018t always on my side when I pull from this shelf, it led me to find a great book!\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\"A<\/a>
(above and right) From Al Mutanabbi I<\/em> by Ellis; each time you turn a page of this work, you watch the slow decay of books chronicled by Ellis\u2019 photography. In an early concept of this exhibit, I wanted to include parts of books that had fallen off\/been destroyed to emphasize the common thread of mortality between books and bodies; this would have been pretty impractical, so I\u2019m glad Ellis executed this (with a lot more grace) in her work.  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Just as human bodies influence the legitimacy given to (and ultimately, the survival of) certain books, the same dynamic appears between the information recorded in books and the bodies they depict. As I continued to browse scientific and anatomical texts for my exhibit, it felt almost remarkable how deeply invested these books were in legitimating certain bodies; when an anatomical model would have a fleshy counterpart, you could almost always bet they would be lily-white, thin, and very deliberately gendered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Philip\u2019s manikin<\/em>; models of the human body, compared by assigned sex
(male left<\/a>, female right<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m well aware that I\u2019m by no means the first person to notice this or point out these issues, but I think there\u2019s something to be said about the fact that even in these pretty rigid models of the body we have, for example, \u201cPhilip\u2019s…model of the human body\u201d and \u201cPhilip\u2019s…model of the female human body,\u201d as if certain descriptors (e.g. \u201cmale\u201d) can be disregarded and subsumed under \u201chuman,\u201d but others are apparently important modifiers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The manikin at the beginning of Solis-Cohen’s Woman in Girlhood-Wifehood-Motherhood<\/a><\/em>. While the hyphenated title might communicate as much, that both this health manual and Philip\u2019s Manikin<\/em> portray women\u2019s bodies (within their very limited definitions of who women are) as perpetually pregnant provide just one example of how medical and scientific texts can contribute to very particular views on and valuations of peoples\u2019 bodies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After some deliberation, I settled on including these materials in my display: <\/p>\n\n\n\n