Linocut Printing with TXTDS and GLITS: Fall Quarter Event Recap
To close out the fall quarter, the UW Textual Studies Program and the UW Global Literary Studies Program partnered up to host a Printmaking Social Hour. Held at the HUB, the event gave students enrolled or interested in the Textual Studies minor and Global Literary Studies major the chance to make their own linocut prints, socialize with fellow students, and learn about the TXTDS and GLITS undergraduate and graduate programs.
In this blog, we’ll recap the event, share information about TXTDS and GLITS, and showcase some of the linocut artwork we made during the event. Plus, we’ll preview more upcoming events for spring quarter, so make sure to mark your calendars!
Linocut Printing at the HUB with UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies
For the inaugural event of the 2024-25 academic year, UW Textual Studies partnered with UW Global Literary Studies to offer students enrolled or interested in either program to gather with fellow classmates to take part in a Printmaking Social Hour. During the session, event-goers learned how to linocut print. This is a type of block printing in which you carve a design into linoleum using a linocutter, roll ink onto its surface, and print onto paper using pressure to impress the illustration.
Linocut printing is a relief illustration technique, meaning that it achieves an impression through a raised design that is made by cutting away from the printing surface. Other examples of relief printing include wood cut, anastatic printing or relief etching, and metal cut. Relief printing holds an important place in the history of print, being the process of letterpress printing, or printing with moveable type.
From designing to cutting to pressing the linocuts, students got to engage in the full process of relief printing during the session and, in turn, experience some of the techniques they could learn about and make use of in UW Textual Studies classes.
Thank you to all of our 50+ event attendees who made the event such a success!
What are the UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies Programs?
While at the event, students had the chance to learn more about the UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies programs.
UW Textual Studies is an interdisciplinary program, housed in the French & Italian Studies Department that focuses on the history, present and future of texts, from scrolls, manuscripts and printed books to archival documents, digital texts and textual data. Offering an undergraduate minor and graduate certificate, students in this program can explore how texts have been written, published, read, circulated and archived from antiquity to today. In TXTDS classes, you can experience hands on work with historical texts, archival sources, and artists’ books, as well as instruction in printing techniques, such as letterpress! Courses also explore methods for editing, digitizing, and publishing texts, as well as for building and analyzing text oriented databases, archives, and exhibits.
Hosted in the Slavic Department, Global Literary Studies (GLITS) gives students the chance to learn about works of literature from around the world. Offering an undergraduate major, students in this program can explore a rich array of literatures in various language traditions, genres, periods, and geographies, taking classes in subjects like Classical Mythology and the Ancient Novel, 20th Century Surrealism and the Avant-Garde, or Arctic Literature, just to name a few!
Bookplate Making with TXTDS and GLITS in Spring 2025
Stay tuned for more TXTDS and GLITS events on the horizon! In spring 2025, UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies will be hosting another joint event, this time focused on the printing of personalized bookplates. Bookplates, also known as ex libris (Latin for ‘from the books’), are printed or decorative labels pasted into books to indicate ownership. Historically speaking, bookplates are a rich source of information about book ownership and the printed cultures in which these object circulated. At the meeting, you’ll have the opportunity to design, carve, and print your own ex libris.
Don’t miss out on information about this upcoming event! Sign up for the TXTDS mailing list and the GLITS mailing list to keep up to date on future courses, events, and news from each program, and be sure to follow TXTDS and GLITS on Instagram!