Jesse Erickson to give 2024 Schlueter Lecture

By Madeline Marriott ’24

To teach about emerging methods of storytelling for youth audiences, Jesse R. Erickson turns to the pixelated world of Roblox. As the 2024 Paul and June Schlueter lecturer on the “Art and History of the Book,” Erickson will bring students along into his world of meaning-making, centering the experience of minoritized populations, and featuring rapper Ice Spice. 

The lecture will give the discipline a digital spin while focusing on the online gaming platform and how it relates to the creation of children’s books and other types of literature. 

“Erickson’s lecture will be of particular interest to students—gamers and non-gamers alike,” says Ana Ramirez Luhrs, co-director of Special Collections and College Archives. “Anyone interested in storytelling and children’s book history will enjoy this talk.” 

Erickson currently works as the Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Morgan Library & Museum. His scholarly approach utilizes ethnobibliography, which analyzes the intersection of racial and social identities with the object of the book. 

“Ethnobibliography is a refreshing and important approach to critically examining the materiality of the book in relation to a people, particularly minoritized groups of people,” Ramirez Luhrs says. 

Dr. June Schlueter, former professor of English, provost, and dean of the faculty, has sponsored the lecture series alongside her husband, Paul, since 2007. Each installment features a different aspect of the study of the book as an object. 

“The Schlueters are bibliophiles through and through—their home is wall-to-wall books, and one way they’ve shared their love of books is through an endowed gift for this annual lecture,” Ramirez Luhrs says. 

Hosted by Lafayette College Libraries, the lecture will take place Nov. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in the Gendebien Room of Skillman Library.