UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Book artists gino romero, Rowan Renee, Sky Syzygy and Emilee Taxman will present the Penn State University Libraries’ 2025 Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts titled "Document, Celebrate, Testify, Resist: Queer History through Book Arts." The lecture will take place virtually from 4-5:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, and is free and open to all, though registration is required.
Formatted as an artists’ panel discussion, the speakers will introduce the audience to their work and processes, exploring the themes and subjects that inspire them, before inviting open conversation with the audience. The discourse will explore how book arts practices contribute to the documentation and celebration of queer and trans identities and how the act of creation resists the erasures of queer and trans existence.
A co-founder of the artist’s residency program KODA x Stilt City, Rowan Renee’s work incorporates deep and extensive site-specific research and they exhibit their work in a variety of museums and galleries, including their current show, “My image is a lens.” Emilee Taxman recently completed their first solo exhibition, “Bound,” exploring combinations of book art and installation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They received the Hamilton Wayzgoose Academic Merit Scholarship in 2022 from the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. In 2021, Sky Syzygy launched gender.network, an archive of flyers, photos, artwork, cartoons, letters, poems and other media by trans*, Two-spirit, nonbinary and trans-adjacent activists, organizers and artists. In 2024, Syzygy transformed a select portion of these materials into the artist’s book, "gender liberators." gino romero is a book artist as well as an ordained minister, archivist and educator, and considers growing up queer and trans in Latinx spaces as part of their education. Their most recent solo exhibition was the 2025 show, “The House Our Hands Built,” at GG & POP Institute.
Pieces created by these book artists are on view until Sept. 17 in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library exhibition "'Give Us Also the Right to Our Existence:’ Collecting and Surfacing Queer Narratives." The exhibition features "gender liberators" by Sky Syzygy, "List of Homosexuals" by Rowan Renee, "Patchwork Voices" by Emilee Taxman, and "Stations of the Cross(dresser) III" by gino romero.
The Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts is named in honor of the first Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair for Special Collections in the University Libraries. This annual event, featuring scholars and book artists with research areas connected to the materials held in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, is funded by the Mary Louise Krumrine Endowment and the generous support it provides.
For additional information about "Document, Celebrate, Testify, Resist: Queer History through Book Arts," or the Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts, including questions regarding access, contact the Special Collections Library at spcollections@psu.edu.