New Scholar Program: Literary Landfills. Bibliographic Waste and its Representations

Literary Landfills. Bibliographic Waste and its Representations

In this presentation, I examine the circulation, uses and representations of bibliographic waste found in viceregal vellum limp-bindings held at the Biblioteca Patrimonial Recoleta Dominica, the Biblioteca Nacional de México and the Hispanic Society of America. Here I create a comparative taxonomy that contributes to the characterization of colonial waste paper used within contact zones. Alongside the study of discourses that portray its value, the material analysis of these case studies has allowed me to situate colonial bookbinding practices within, on the one hand, the Transatlantic oceanic book trade, and, on the other, criollo recycling streams of conventional waste, where autochthonous media substrates such as bark paper played a significant role.

Javiera Barrientos is a book historian and book binder interested in the intersections between material cultures, literary genres and gender, particularly but not restricted to the Global Early Modern period. She earned her BA in Universidad Católica de Chile, her MA in Universidad de Chile and is currently a doctoral candidate in Literatures in English at Rutgers University, working in the Rutgers Book Initiative. She has worked as a bibliographical investigator in Archivo Central Andrés Bello and the National Conservation and Restoration Center of Chile. She is the co-founder of the Center for the Studies of Pretty and Useless Things (CECLI), a Chilean-Mexican collective dedicated to interdisciplinary research about objects and material culture. She also works as a bookbinder and bookbinding instructor in her own private workshop, Notas de Arte.