Brandon Harringtonbookbinder, community educator, library worker
Library Projects
Bind a Book at the Library
Updates forthcoming!Learning with Collections
Making books can be a way to learn about books. ‘Learning with collections’ documents Harrington’s ongoing research in teaching with library collections and how bookbinding, printing, zine-making, or other hands-on engagements with information production practices can unsettle power dynamics in library learning. Updates to this section are forthcoming.Reconstructing Gatherings from A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (Fall 2024)
Thomas Fuller’s Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (1650) is one of the earliest printed works in English language with ‘Palestine’ in the title. It is also considered the “first” biblical geography, attempting to match biblical descriptions of place with travel records and other historical sources. Mount Pisgah is the site at which Moses supposedly looked upon the promised land that he was not permitted to enter. In similar fashion, Fuller never visited Palestine, never experienced the place or geography he wrote about. Nevertheless, his attempt to reconcile biblical evidence with historical evidence amounted to reimagining Jerusalem and surrounding lands. Previous European descriptions conceived of a “perfectly designed” city. Fuller refuted previous depictions in favor of a more “realistic” vision of biblical Palestine. Still, as a historian and high-ranking clergy in the Church of England who lived through civil war, Fuller was committed to an ecclesiastical positon for his own time that emphasized church reform. For Fuller, the historical geography of Palestine evidences the “imperfection” of the real physical places of biblical history. Yet, this imperfection signifies the church’s historical embrace of reform. Building and rebuilding the church, ‘from a Pisgah-Sight’ is simply the nature of Christianity.
Today, the printed folio, with its 30+ full spread maps also represents one of countless claims upon the land known as Palestine. The labor to print and bind this tome is a testament to the amount of energy required to envision a place that the writer had only ever read about. Understanding the physical construction of the books binding helps us appreciate the venture of creating a biblical geography, the power and influence of publishing a reference book of this kind, and the enduring imagination that is shaped by powers of church and state and so on...