Traditions of East Asian Typography

Woodblock was the dominant and preferred method of printing in East Asia up until the nineteenth century. By contrast, East Asia’s home-grown typographic traditions often seem like an afterthought, an eccentricity, or an abandoned experiment that failed to match the Gutenberg revolution. Yet, typography was never entirely discontinued and diverse actors utilized movable type at specific times, in certain places, or for certain objectives in face of xylographic competition. This conference, to be held on March 6, 2026 at the University of Southern California, investigates the autochthonous traditions of movable type in East Asia before the arrival of Western letterpress and lithography in the late nineteenth century.

This conference is supported by: Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and the Korean Studies Institute, Korean Heritage Library, and East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California.

The conference is open to the public, but we ask you to register in advance so that we have an estimate of how many people will attend.

The Conference on Traditions of East Asian Typography was made possible by the generous support of the following institutions: