The histories of architecture are evidently written both in buildings and in books. This seminar takes as its point of departure a selection of items from Yale’s special collections, studying them closely, not as disembodied texts, but as material objects that share in the layered histories of the discipline. As its title suggests, the course examines architecture’s engagement with the overlapping domains of the biblical, the bibliographic, and the graphic, paying particular attention to the representation of ideas in words and images, uncovering traces of writing on architecture and of writing on architecture, assessing the conceit of an architecture that might itself be read as a text, and questioning the capacities of architecture as an intellectual discipline that remains stubbornly inseparable from its material embodiment. Each student identifies a subject of particular interest to be developed into a research project; topics that engage with contemporary debates are especially welcome. Limited enrollment.