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This course examines books and readers in East Asia from the 4th century BCE to the onset of the printing era around 1000 CE. We explore how classical knowledge and pragmatic information composed, practiced, circulated, and forgotten via various pre-printing materials such as bamboo, wood, and paper, and how readers and writers before the advent of printing employed their learning tools and informational devices. Introducing a series of seminal scholarship and newly found materials from China, Japan, and Korea, we cover the most important archeological materials, examine a series of recently found literary, philosophical, historical, legal texts, and much more. We explore questions such as: How did people read, write, and learn from their books two thousand years ago? How was information represented and utilized through the media of bamboo, wood, and paper? How was the imperial administrative system and classical textual tradition established and renovated through the scribal culture of writing on bamboo, wood, and silk? And finally, we ask, how is our digital/printing age different, and how has it been inherited from the era of manuscript culture?