Katherine Ruffin

I am the Director of the Book Studies Program and Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College. I have been teaching in the Book Arts Lab in Clapp Library, which was founded by librarian Hannah French in 1944, since 2000. My teaching practice focuses on incorporating letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking with various aspects of the liberal arts curriculum. In addition to teaching classes and instruction sessions in the Book Arts Lab and the Papermaking Studio, I oversee the activities of the Annis Press, the lab’s imprint. Beginning in fall 2014, I became the coordinator of Wellesley’s library-based Book Studies initiative.

Since 1994, I have published limited editions under my Shinola Press imprint. Broadsides I have printed in response to items in the college’s Special Collections and Archives will be part of the Q25 Studio Art faculty exhibition at the Davis Museum in the 2025-26 academic year. My research interests include pedagogy for the book arts and book studies, and the history of the book, particularly typography and printing. My book A Printer with My Hands: The Life and Work of Carl P. Rollins will be published by The Legacy Press in 2025.

I co-teach a class on the History of 19th and 20th Century Typography and Printing at Rare Book School. From 2016 to 2020, I served as Vice President for Publications for the American Printing History Association. In 2017, I gave the Hofer Lecture at Harvard University’s Houghton Library: “Books as Portals: Reading and Responding to Historical Collections in the 21^stCentury.” In 2022, I was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society. In 2024, the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama honored me with an Outstanding Book Arts Alumnae Award and the University of Alabama Graduate School named me a Graduate Centennial Scholar.

Education

• AB in Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College
• MFA in the Book Arts, University of Alabama
• PhD in Library & Information Science, Simmons University