How to fix a leaky faucet – isn’t it the case that as soon as you hear that sentence, the problem has disappeared? Of course, you may wonder why the world is not designed so that taps never drip. But in the ‘best of all possible worlds’ (G. W. Leibniz), it is apparently so, the… Continue reading University of Glasgow is Calling `How-to’
How-to Workshop1 Thurs. 3 – Fri. 4 October 2024, Glasgow
Henry Heaney Room, floor 12, Glasgow University Library Do old books have the potential to speak directly to the reader and inspire them to take action in the real world? What is conveyed in YouTube videos today was recorded in mostly inconspicuous books in the 16th and 17th centuries: instructions and explanations in concrete steps… Continue reading How-to Workshop1 Thurs. 3 – Fri. 4 October 2024, Glasgow
Glass, How-to and the Notion of Media
Wow! How does it work? How did you manage that? Skilled procedures that lead to products with an ‘aha’ effect have always inspired amazement and naive questions. In the early modern period, the production of glass was one of the most prominent areas of how-to. Numerous treatises bear witness to this: From Antonio Neri’s L’Arte… Continue reading Glass, How-to and the Notion of Media
“What’s cooking, Nara Smith?” Culinary Comedy: Online Recipes and Their Parodies
As our project shows, cooking recipes have a long history and their relevance is not declining. Today, the internet and social media provide a seemingly endless well of cooking recipes. Online platforms containing recipes reach from food blogs, by celebrity chefs or laypeople, to Instagram accounts dedicated to the how-to of cooking, to Tik Tok… Continue reading “What’s cooking, Nara Smith?” Culinary Comedy: Online Recipes and Their Parodies
First Impressions of Wolfenbüttel
I first heard of Wolfenbüttel when I was a postgraduate in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s: in the Lower Saxony countryside, in a beautiful sleepy town, was an outstanding library, a paradise for book lovers. Later an emblem friend compared it to Thunder-ten-Tronckh, the Baron’s castle in Voltaire’s Candide (1759), an inspiring rural edifice with… Continue reading First Impressions of Wolfenbüttel
How to produce collective knowledge from the sickchamber
I am a literary scholar interested in early modern conceptions of the body. But I also have a general interest in medical humanities and the ways in which knowledge about the body is formed, in the discourses that help shape what a body means, and in how such knowledge about the body gains authority. Early… Continue reading How to produce collective knowledge from the sickchamber
To Do or Not to Do?
Early Modern Recipes and Their Readers In the Middle Ages and early modern times, recipes were widespread in every area of everyday life, not just in the kitchen or in medical practice. Recipe collections provided instructions for cultivating plants, healing animals, farming, dyeing cloth, working with metals, beauty recipes, and much more. Recipes were… Continue reading To Do or Not to Do?
How To Harness Angelic and Demonic Powers with the Help of Scents
Today, when we enter an ‘esoteric store’, we not only see books on magic, alchemy, and witchcraft but also encounter various paraphernalia such as clothes or talismans. Other characteristic articles for sale in such stores are incense sticks, to be burnt on a special altar. While the modern tradition of aromatic magic appears to be… Continue reading How To Harness Angelic and Demonic Powers with the Help of Scents
A Dutch ‘How-to’ Book not just for Practical Instruction
In between ordinary recipes for preserving pears and cherries, Den sack der consten (Antwerp: Jacob van Liesvelt, 1528), a so-called ‘book of secrets’, provides a surprising instruction ‘to have a long life’: drink a good sip of patience every morning, mixed with a good part of God’s grace. This medicine also works wonderfully, the text… Continue reading A Dutch ‘How-to’ Book not just for Practical Instruction
How Easy it is to Handle a Book!
The book, which brings together eleven articles, addresses the question of how we manage to get things done when everyday life presents us with problems, and what role written instructions play in this, procedures that are often printed in inconspicuous books. Why were these books so popular, how were they used, do they constitute a… Continue reading How Easy it is to Handle a Book!