Katherine M. Ruffin

Candidate statement

Katherine M. Ruffin, Director of the Book Studies Program and Lecturer in Art, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA. At Wellesley College, I work with colleagues from various departments to integrate the study of the art and history of the book into the liberal arts curriculum. I teach the history of 19th and 20th century typography and printing at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and the history of the book at Simmons University (where I earned a PhD in Library and Information Science in 2015). I earned an MFA in the Book Arts from the University of Alabama in 1996. I was a Vice President of the American Printing History Association (2016-2020) and currently serve on advisory boards for the Bookbinding Program at the North Bennet St. School and the Program in the History of the Book at the American Antiquarian Society. My research interests include the history of printing, bibliography, and libraries. At the 2019 SHARP conference at Amherst, I presented a paper about Hannah French, founder of the Book Arts Lab at Wellesley College, as part of a panel about women in book history. I will be sharing a project about 20th century printing history with the SHARP community as part of a Research Lab at the 2021 conference hosted by the University of Münster. As a member of the Board of Directors, I would contribute to efforts to build community and to bring people from various backgrounds and disciplines together to advance the mission of SHARP.