Welcome to Bookmobility
If this is your first time at Bookmobility, I recommend that you start by browsing some of the posts linked to below, which will give you a sense of the range of topics and styles on Bookmobility.
In these posts, you’ll find analyses of everything from library furniture to pop culture pedagogy, from political puppetry to the market in bull semen. You’ll find out what happened when Jim Crow went neon and why it isn’t enough to approach the bookmobile as a metaphor. You’ll meet some fantastic students, some creative librarians, and some really angry uteri. Enjoy!
Libraries, Bookmobiles, and Print Culture
“What Do Making and Reading Have in Common?”
“On the Strange Familiarity of the Guantánamo Bay Library” (quoted in the New York Times)
“Poking at Paper: E-Books, Printed Books, and the Feeling of Words”
“‘Nothing Stirs Me More’: Digital Technology and the Romance of Books”
“‘Build-Mobile!’: SparkTruck and Bookmobiles”
“Why the Bookmobile Isn’t Just a Metaphor”
“On the Racial Politics of Chairs (Yes, Chairs)”
“Bartleby in the Occupy Wall Street Library”
“‘Still There for Them’: Post-Sandy Libraries and the Permanence of Mobility”
“Are Books the End of Libraries?”
“‘Through the Gratings’: The Queens Borough Public Library Goes to Jail, 1915”
“Race and Reading on the Bookmobile”
“Chains and Branches: Danville, Controversy & Library History”
“What Does a Life-Size Dollhouse Have to Do with Libraries?”
Teaching
“Amazing Undergrads Talk Gender History Pedagogy; We Listen”
“What Does a Sloth Have to Do with the History of the Book?”
“How to Look at Television: Thinking through Pedagogy for Popular Culture”
“‘The Pace of Change’: How an Image Undermines Higher Education”
“Reading Marshall McLuhan with My Students”
Technology and Infrastructure
“Bull Semen, Big Data, and the Future of the Humanities”
“Francis Fukuyama, Angry Uteri, and the Serendipity of Search”
“Separate but Modern?: Jim Crow, Neon, and the Urban Landscape”
“‘My god, 2012’: Infrastructural Palimpsests and the Architecture of Information”
“An Outlet for Frustration: Adapting Infrastructure to New Needs”
“Supercuts & Food & Monkeys”
Historical Oddities
“Squids, Dinosaurs, and the Politics of Puppets in Public Space”
“‘Hostile to the View of the Crown’: Unexpected Alliances in Defense of the Public Domain”
“What Community Looks Like in a Zombie Apocalypse”
“Claims, Disputes & the Politics of Seeing History














