LEXINGTON, Va., Feb. 9, 2022—MAJ Kimberly Anderson, Visiting Assistant Professor in ERHS, will bring together groups of cadets, faculty, and staff to make their own handmade paper using the techniques of medieval scribes (“Making Medieval Manuscripts,” Feb. 10, 19:45-21:00) and Renaissance paper-makers (“Making Renaissance Paper,” Feb. 17, 19:45-21:00). Interested cadets should email MAJ Anderson at andsersonkt@vmi.edu to reserve a spot. Both workshops will be held in Scott Shipp Hall 403, the art studio.

Sponsored by ERHS and Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honors society, the workshops will engage cadets in the active, interdisciplinary learning that characterizes courses in the English major at VMI. In illustrating and decorating their handmade paper, cadets will make rhetorical choices, experiencing how visual and written components play off of each other to communicate with a patron or other readers.

MAJ Anderson, who teaches courses in first-year composition courses and British Literature, aims to help attendees grasp the expense and labor of making a text in the pre-printing press era, details which in turn highlight how texts were used and by whom, and who didn’t have access to them. Understanding the cultural contexts of texts and their production is a core learning outcome for VMI English majors.