TXTDS and GLITS Spring Quarter Event Recap | Printmaking Social Hour: Bookplates and Bookmarks
For our final event of the academic year, UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies partnered up again to host our second Printmaking Social Hour. Themed around bookplates and bookmarks, this session offered students enrolled or interested in the Textual Studies minor and the Global Literary Studies major the chance to make their own linocut ex libris while they socialized with fellow students and learned more about the TXTDS and GLITS undergraduate programs.
Linocut Ex Libris with UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies
Inspired by the ingenuity of the students at our inaugural Printmaking Social Hour, who decided to print their linocuts directly into the books they had brought with them, we themed our second Printmaking Social Hour around bookplates and bookmarks. Bookplates, or ex libris, are a mark of book ownership. Evolving over centuries, from simple markings to more elaborately printed and decorative artworks, bookplates have a rich history that is about as old as written records themselves.
During the event, we encouraged participants to BYOB—bring your own book—to print or paste their linocut ex libris into. From designing (and figuring out how to write their ex libris in reverse), cutting, inking, and printing, students got to experience some of the skills they could take with them into the TXTDS classroom. For example, a core course of the Undergraduate Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Printing, Bibliography, and Special Collections, instructs students in the art of letterpress printing and features discussions around the history and development of print illustration—both of which share core techniques and processes with linocut printing.
Linocut is a type of block printing, which involves carving a pre-set design into linoleum block using a linocutter. Then, ink is rolled onto the surface of the cut, and the design is impressed onto paper using pressure, which appears as a mirrored image to the cut block.
Linocut and Wood Type Printing with Provisional Presses
Textual Studies brought three Provisional Presses to run throughout the event. The Provisional Presses are small, portable proofing presses that can be used for a variety of printing techniques including linocut and other relief printing, letterpress printing, and wood type printing. They are part of Textual Studies growing print arsenal, which includes metal letterpress type, a platen press, and our most recent acquisition of wooden type. We brought along some of our wood type to the event, allowing students to experiment with type setting and utilize both linocut and letterpress techniques.
UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies Programs
During the printmaking event, students also had the chance to learn about the UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies programs, two interdisciplinary academic units on campus.
UW Textual Studies offers both an Undergraduate Minor in in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities and a Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies. The programs are focused on hands-on work with historical and present-day technologies for writing, reading, and archiving. From medieval manuscripts to early printing, to digitizations, databases, and archives, students in TXTDS courses learn how texts have been written, published, read, circulated, preserved, and archived from antiquity to today.
The Global Literary Studies Program (GLITS) offers students the chance to explore literature from around the world. It offers an undergraduate major in which students encounter a wide range of literatures in diverse genres that hail from various language traditions, periods, and geographies.
TXTDS Courses in the History of the Book and Printing
TXTDS courses reflect the program’s dedication to the study of diverse texts across time, place, media form, and language, including non-anglophone and non-alphabetic corpora, computational and digital approaches to textual study, and the ability to experience hands-on learning with materials in UW Special Collections and the UW Libraries’ archives.
If you’d like to find out more about opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students in UW Textual Studies, our upcoming courses, or the undergraduate minor and graduate certificate programs and their requirements, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu.
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