Author: Nikita Willeford Kastrinos

Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky on his Interview with The History of Literature Podcast

This week on the blog, we’re highlighting a recent interview of UW Textual Studies Co-Director, Geoffrey Turnovksy. Featured on The History of Literature Podcast, Dr. Turnovsky and the show’s host, Jacke Wilson, discussed his latest book publication from Stanford University Press: Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France. The book questions the notion of immersion that accompanies the activity of reading in print and interrogates modern anxieties over the “disordered” and  “distracted” conceptions of reading in the digital age. In the episode, Dr. Turnovsky and Jacke Wilson dive into the historical roots of “losing oneself in a book” and explore the way in which print-based reading became associated with particular psychological, moral, and educational benefits against the backdrop of modern day digital media consumption.

Read on to find out more about Dr. Turnovsky’s work, his experience recording the podcast, and his plans for future research, and listen to the episode, no. 639 “Immersed in Print (with Geoffrey Turnovsky) | My Last Book with Liz Rosenberg.”

Getting Lost in Books: Print Immersion, Digital Distraction, and Histories of Reading

Throughout the podcast episode, Dr. Turnovsky and Jacke Wilson discuss Reading Typographically, which examines the modern day assumptions that accompany print-based reading—namely, the immersive feeling of being “lost in a book.”  Going back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, Dr. Turnovsky explores how we came to see the printed book as the special vehicle through which this kind of experience is made possible. What he finds is that the technological evolution of the book and the development of fictional genres during the period, such as the novel, actually facilitated this kind of reading style. During its emergence over these two centuries, print-based reading became strongly associated with this immersive-style reading, despite encompassing a far more diverse set of practices in actuality. 

Discussing this with Jacke Wilson, Dr. Turnovsky recounts how he uncovered a variety of historical reading practices that involved a wider range of modalities, some of which include the same kind of scanning and discontinuity that have come to define contemporary perceptions of reading digitally. For example, as the codex supplanted the scroll as the technological format of reading, its system of bound pages made random-access content available. The adoption of a paginated system versus a single long sheet meant that flipping through a book was now possible, facilitating a discontinuous style of reading. 

“By book, I mean what we call a codex, which is the form of the book as we understand it today—a series of pages that are bound together and enclosed in a cover. We tend to think of it as something that you read linearly, page by page. But, historically, it was primarily read discontinuously. The codex was introduced in late antiquity, supplanting the scroll that was, at that time, the dominant reading technology. What it permitted to readers, which the scroll did not, was easily jumping back and forth within a text. So, really not a very immersive way to interact with a text at all. In fact, most representations of reading up through the seventeenth or eighteenth century show people surrounded by stacks of books, particularly with bookmarks in them. This suggests that these people were not “losing themselves in a book,” but were jumping from one book to another and jumping from one part of a book to another. In other words, they were reading very discontinuously. So, part of the story of Reading Typographically is the replacement of that model of reading with a very different model of reading, which is to say the model of reading we would now think of as associated with the printed book—linear reading.”

A Digital Moral Panic

In the centuries since immersive reading’s development, the idea of losing oneself in a book has continued to hold strong cultural associations with printed texts, especially (and more-often-than-not implicitly) with fictional texts. Today, this kind of reading is often connected to certain psychological and moral benefits that, in recent years with the advent of immersive digital environments like Tiktok and other social media platforms, has come to be seen as a positive pastime in contrast to those which take place on screens and which are viewed as overwhelmingly negative. 

However, as Dr. Turnovsky and Jacke Wilson discuss, when immersive print reading emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it entailed a similar moral panic: 

“Today, you get almost entirely positive representations of “losing yourself” in a novel and connecting emotionally with characters, but that was not the case in the eighteenth century when there was much more suspicion about it. It was seen to lead to immorality, to distract people from more worthwhile activities. The moral consensus we have today around immersive reading was not at all clear in the eighteenth century. It evolved over time.”

As Dr. Turnovsky explains during the course of the podcast episode, Reading Typographically, tries to explore this history in tandem with the developing material format of the book. As he sees it, the standardization and mass production of the book as a physical object during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was essential in creating the conditions for this immersive reading experience. Connecting commentary on typeface design from the printing industry and readers’ first-hand accounts, Dr. Turnovsky shows how typographical trends in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—intended to make reading easier and the text less noticeable—link up with new conceptualizations of the printed book as readers shifted to view texts less as physical objects and more as windows onto fictional worlds. 

Historical Perspectives on Digital Technologies

Ultimately, Reading Typographically is a historical exploration of this long-standing idea about print-based reading that has, in today’s world, been put in contrast to digital reading. As Dr. Turnovsky’s interview touches upon, historical analogues abound for our modern digital technologies and their public perception. This is something that Dr. Turnovsky’s scholarship explores and it is something he’s bringing to his work with the UW Textual Studies Program. 

In fall 2024, Dr. Turnovsky along with Dr. Richard Watts, taught the inaugural session of their course, TXTDS 221 – Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity in Historical Perspective. The course considered the implications of new generative AI tools on notions of human creativity, originality, and authorship—concepts that have always been shaped by the evolution of text technologies, including print. Like Dr. Turnovsky’s work in Reading Typographically, the course situated its questions surrounding AI in broad historical perspective, looking at writing tools, such as the printing press and keyboards, and technologies of automation, like spell-checkers, as it considered the ways AI and the conversations surrounding it both represent something new and simultaneously grow out of certain historical continuities.

This course is part of Dr. Turnovsky’s interest in the rhetoric surrounding modern technologies. Often, as he says, digitization rhetoric is invested in narratives of discontinuity, or breaks from the past. However, what his research and teaching investigate is the legitimacy of this perspective. Putting technologies like AI in historical perspective, Dr. Turnovsky considers their continuities with past technologies of reading and writing in order to explore how such prehistories shape our perception of emerging technologies and influence what they eventually become. 

During Autumn 2025, students interested in the prehistory of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies can sign up for the second session of TXTDS 221 – Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity in Historical Perspective, and can check out other TXTDS courses on offer for the AY2025-26 which explore the history, present, and future of texts. Don’t forget to explore our Textual Studies and Digital Humanities undergraduate minor, as well as the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies. Questions about the TXTDS program, upcoming courses, and all other inquiries can be directed to text@uw.edu.

For UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research, sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and X.

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.

For UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research, sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and X.

UW Textual Studies Alums Continue to Masters at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London

Join us in congratulating recent UW Textual Studies alums, Riley Hull and Jules Lockett, who have been accepted to the MA in the History of the Book program at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. We sat down with Riley and Jules to speak about their path through the TXTDS program, their route to the MA in the History of the Book, and their aspirations post-graduation. Read on to find out more!

English Majors and TXTDS Minors to attend MA Program at University of London

Riley Hull and Jules Lockett are majors in English and minors in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. Next year, they’re set to attend the MA Program in the History of the Book at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. This is a graduate program focused on all aspects of the making, distribution, and reading of books and other written media, such as newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, ephemera, digital texts, and more, from the clay of cuneiform tablets to the digital devices of today.

Pictured Above: Clay cuneiform tablet and repaired parchment. These substrates are important examples in the history of written media.

For both Riley and Jules, the draw of this specific program rests with the opportunities it offers within and beyond coursework. As part of the program’s modules, students have the chance to complete an internship in the London book trade or working with a library or museum. According to Jules, this opportunity forms a particular point of interest as she hopes to go on to complete a Masters in Library and Information Science upon graduation in pursuit of a career in special collections and archival librarianship. Riley has been accepted to the M.S. in Library Science program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will continue on to this program upon her completion of the MA in Book History.

For Riley, the internship is also a huge draw, but alongside this, the opportunities the program provides for tailoring the focus of study is also especially enticing. As Riley hopes to go on to further study or to a PhD program, the MA’s specialization opportunities in various geographies and periods of the book are particularly exciting. One of the MA’s course modules, The Book in the Industrial Age, suits one of Riley’s special research interests in the nineteenth-century book and print’s industrialization during the period. This module is dedicated to print’s post-handpress era from the mechanization of printing in the nineteenth century to the advent of the digital era.

Pictured Above: Charles Dickens’ Bleak House in serialized parts and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret in yellowback form are examples of industrialized formats of book production manufactured during the nineteenth-century.

Textual Studies Courses Prepare Graduates for Advanced Training in the History of the Book

Jules and Riley both credit their experiences in the UW Textual Studies program, undertaking the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, as a key in their successful applications and in their preparation for advanced study in the history of the book.

In fact, Riley credits TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing, with first sparking her interest in nineteenth-century British book history—an interest she hopes to explore and cultivate in the MA program. During the fall quarter of 2023, Riley was fascinated by a session that focused on printed books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representing the industrialization of printing technology and the changing format of the book throughout the period.

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Pictured Above: Stills from digital projects produced by Riley Hull and Jules Lockett during their TXTDS coursework. These projects received recognition from the Annual Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Academic Awards.

During their time in the TXTDS minor program, both Riley and Jules were recognized for their outstanding work. Each academic year, the Annual Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Academic Awards celebrates the accomplishments of students enrolled in Textual Studies courses. In 2024, Riley, as part of a team including fellow students, Trisha Binwade and Tara Boyd, won First Place in the Undergraduate Award for “The Ladies’ Handbook of Fancy and Ornamental Work,” a TEI-XML edition of the 19^th-century handbook from UW’s Special Collections holdings. Jules, also as part of a team that included Sofia Posada and Nic Staley (an Art History graduate student in the Textual and Digital Studies certificate), won Honorable Mention for their work on the  “Jasper N. Bertram Papers,”  a TEI-XML edition of the 19^th and early-20^th century papers housed in UW’s Special Collections. Gaining both skills in bibliography and print culture studies, as well as digital approaches to the book, has been especially helpful, note Riley and Jules, as their future MA program spans a broad period of written production from the pre-print era of manuscripts to the digitized text formats of modern day.

TXTDS Students Blend English Studies and Book History

One of the exciting things about the MA in the History of the Book program for both Riley and Jules is that it is housed in the Institute of English Studies within the Institute of Advanced Study. As English majors themselves, and enrollees in the English Honors Program, this circumstance is ideal for the way in which it allows them to continue to pursue the intersection of their dual scholarly interests, something the interdisciplinarity of the Textual Studies undergraduate minor has encouraged from the start.

The undergraduate Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities pairs well with a variety of other majors and its courses allow students to specialize in their areas of interest, often blending the concerns of their major into the coursework of the minor. In fact, Textual Studies students come from a range of disciplinary affiliations including English, Applied Mathmatics, Anthropology, French, History, Linguistics, and many more!

Undergraduate Courses in Textual Study, Special Collections, and Digital Humanities

Congratulations to Riley Hull and Jules Lockett on completing the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities and on their acceptance to the MA in the History of the Book Program at the University of London! Many thanks to both for sharing their research interests and hopes for the upcoming program with the Textual Studies blog!

The Textual Studies program offers an array of courses at the undergraduate level that 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 students in UW Textual Studies, our upcoming courses, or the undergraduate minor program and its requirements, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu.

For UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research, sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and X.

Beatrice Arduini and Julie Tanaka on New Illustrated 1544 Dante Comedia Acquisition

This week on the blog, we’re detailing a recent Special Collections acquisition! Adding to the breadth and depth of UW Libraries’ rare books holdings, UW Special Collections has purchased a new item to add to its inventory of Italian works—a 1544 edition of Dante Alighieri’s “Comedia,” or the Divine Comedy. We talked with Beatrice Arduini, Associate Professor of Italian, and Julie Tanaka, Associate Dean of University Libraries for Distinctive Collections, to find out more about this volume’s place in UW’s Special Collections and in the publication history of this famous author. Read on to learn about this newly acquired rare work!

16^th Century Illustrated Edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy

One of the things that makes this Dante volume special is the illustrations that accompany the commentary. Housing 87 total woodcuts, this 1544 edition features Alessandro Vellutello’s commentary with an accompanying suite of pictures that speak to his interpretation of Dante’s text. This marks a significant moment in the printed history of Dante’s “Comedia” for the way in which its woodcuts are supposed to be read in concert with the text and, in particular, are intended to enhance the reader’s comprehension. For example, consider this illustration of Paradiso cando 18:

In the end, Alessandro Vellutello’s commentary did not become a huge success, never being printed in this format again, however his involvement in the design of these woodcuts remains noteworthy. Setting his project apart from previous illustrated editions of Dante’s work, the emphasis of Vellutello’s interpretive aim makes its woodcuts historically unique. 

Woodcut is a relief printing technique in which an image is carved into a block of wood that is then used to impress an image onto the surface of a page by means of ink and pressure. Featuring 87 total woodcuts, La Comedia di Dante Aligieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello, represents an important moment in the print history of Dante’s Divine Comedy and in the development of the scholarly treatment of this Italian writer.

Text and Image in Alessandro Vellutello’s La Comedia di Dante Aligieri

Vellutello’s illustrations were meant to not only reflect the commentary’s aims but help convey them in a non-linguistic manner, adding to the illustration of the text of the poem. This feature is especially important for the way the woodcuts function from a topographic and narrative perspective. This “hybrid” nature of the 1544 illustrations is, ultimately, the most significant feature of Vellutello’s project.

According to Beatrice Arduini, one of the most notable places Vellutello’s blending of text and image comes into play is in the interpretation of the topography of Dante’s inferno and in the illustration of the content of multiple cantos compressed into one woodcut. For example, the Inferno 25 illustration, pictured below, compresses elements of three/four cantos (the latter part of Inferno 24 and cantos 25-27) and two groups of sinners, the thieves of the seventh bolgia, and the fraudulent counselors of the eighth bolgia, or subcircle of circle 8:

Though scholars are certain of Vellutello’s personal investment in the conceptualization of the woodcut designs, the artist who actually carved the woodcuts remains unknown. However, some have suggested the name of Giovanni Britto. What is certain is that the woodcut’s appearance in this volume would go on to inspire a tradition of reprintings, later combined not only with Vellutello’s commentary but also Cristoforo Landino’s, first printed in 1481, in 1564, 1578, and 1596.

“The illustrations are closely related to Vellutello’s commentary, an innovation in the printed illustrated editions of the poem, and strive to explain accurately the literal meaning of the text, just like Vellutello tries to do in his glosses. Examples can be found in images like these, where Vellutello graphically represents an explanation of the three angles (left image). They can also be seen in the woodcut where Vellutello provides a measurement line and explains in the commentary that readers are supposed to multiply it by 6 to visualize the unit of length, “braccia,” which he is using for his calculations (right image).”

– Beatrice Arduini

1544 Dante Edition Adds to UW Special Collections Rare Italian Books

According to Julie Tanaka, this 1544 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy is exciting because it is not one of the Dante editions most widely known. In this case, the draw of the volume is the way it presents an opportunity for scholars of Dante and those working on the history of the ‘Comedia’’s illustrations to view an artifact which changed the way illustration, text, and commentary spoke to one another. 

“The images in the 1544 Dante make this a significant edition. Vellutello has radically altered our understanding of hell’s landscape, describing its exact location, size, and shape. Coupled with Dante’s text and Vellutello’s commentary, the images allow readers to visualize all aspects of the descent through the nine circles of hell like travelling down a funnel.”

– Julie Tanaka

Vellutello provides the diameter and depth of each circle.

This 1544 Dante edition also has the opportunity to become an important object to the study and instruction of the history of the book, as well as in the technical and art history of printed illustration. In fact, while the Liber Cronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle; 1496) was the first relatively successful integration of text and image in printed books in Europe, the Vellutello’s 1544 “Comedia” images set a new precedent for the way in which image and text related, making it an important specimen in the history of text illustration. As such, the volume is a valuable addition to Special Collections holdings for the way it offers opportunities for teaching about the historical evolution and function of textual illustration, as well as for teaching about early printed works, early modern binding practices, and developments in the history of woodcut. 

“This edition provides so many opportunities for teaching and learning. For people interested in printing history and practices, the volume shows the addition of hand-stamped lines in the lower margin to correct the omission of lines 64-66 in Canto II of Purgatory (II.64-66, leaf V7 recto) in the original publication. The illustrations invite study for both studio art and art history students; the physical object invites textual studies students to examine paper, threads, leathers, and binding practices. Students of history can examine the role historical context played in Vellutello’s commentary in contrast to earlier commentaries. This work invites students of mathematics and engineering to study the structure of Hell. These are just a few of the possibilities.”

– Julie Tanaka

Textual Studies Courses in the History of the Book and Special Collections

The UW Textual Studies Program has a long history of collaborations with the UW Libraries and UW Special Collections in particular. Many of our courses utilize their holdings and feature visits to the Special Collections classroom for hands-on instruction. If you’ve ever wanted to explore the rare books and materials housed in the UW Libraries, check out TXTDS courses.

Stills from materials consulted during TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing from its first iteration in Fall 2023.

This spring, TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing will allow a small group of students interested in material books studies an opportunity to work in close quarters with all the UW Special Collections has to offer. Bringing together various faculty working in different periods, language traditions, and geographies, this course puts students in direct contact with rare and archival materials from the UW Libraries’ collections. Covering histories of the book, reading, and the technological process of printing, the proseminar’s sessions bring experts in various printed cultures together to create a crash course in the production, handling, evaluation, and study of these historical materials. 

Additionally, students in this class, which runs once a year as part of the Textual Studies Program course offerings, will get hands-on instruction in printing techniques, including letterpress printing with the help of Seattle-based letterpress printing nonprofit, Partners in Print. 

UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies Spring Printmaking Social Hour: Bookplates and Bookmarks

Want to try your own hand at printmaking and relief illustration? Stop by our spring quarter event, hosted in conjunction with UW Global Literary Studies–the upcoming Printmaking Social Hour: Bookplates and Bookmarks. After a successful Printmaking Social Hour in fall quarter, we’re bringing the presses out again to design, carve, and print linocut bookplates and bookmarks! A bookplate, also known as an ex libris, is a mark of book ownership that can be printed or pasted into a volume. For this session, we encourage you to BYOB—bring your own books, that is—so you can print your own personalized ex libris into its pages. You can also design a personalized printed bookmark or anything else you can dream up! 

Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 24! The event will take place from 3-5pm in the Husky Union Building, room 332!

You can find out more about this and other upcoming events, Textual Studies courses, the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, or the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies by contacting us at text@uw.edu. 

Be sure to also sign up for the TXTDS mailing list to keep up to date on all things TXTDS! And don’t forget to follow us on X and Instagram! 

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, 20^th 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!

Graduate Student Spotlight: Molly Porter on Creating a Digital Anthology of Seattle’s Regional Poetry

Along with its undergraduate minor, the UW Textual Studies Program offers opportunities for MA and PhD students enrolled in any program at the UW to earn a Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies. Designed for students researching cultural and literary materials, working in archival or digital formats, or for those considering careers in editing, publishing, libraries, or archives, this graduate certificate program helps students explore their interdisciplinary interests while building the skills necessary to work with a variety of textual and historical materials and media forms in both analog and digital environments. 

In this post series, we’ll be shining a light on some of the recent work of UW Textual Studies graduate students. For this inaugural feature, we talked with Molly Porter, PhD Candidate in English and alum of the UW Textual Studies graduate certificate program, about her work on a digital humanities project featuring poetry of the Puget Sound region, as well as how her time in Textual Studies has informed and enriched the research of her dissertation. In her own words, Molly describes her current research and its relationship to her Capstone project digitally anthologizing Seattle’s regional poetry.

The Poetic Signage of Seattle’s Public Lands

Hi there, I’m Molly Porter! In pursuing my Ph.D. in English, aided by the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies, I research what I consider to be an overlooked textuality in literary studies—poetry quoted on signage, such as in parks. I think that studying this tangible intersection of poetry and public lands is crucial for understanding how literature shapes place, and vice versa. It also sheds light on a key readership of poetry we miss out on in focusing exclusively on the traditional media of books (or the new digital media of Instagram poetry). 

While this isn’t the conventional domain of textual studies, my focus on the physicality of this poetic signage and their geographic placement in public lands has been instrumental in pushing me to think beyond the symbolic domain of poetry to consider poetry’s materiality–a consideration aided by my coursework in the Textual Studies graduate certificate program. For example, it was so rewarding to get to write with oak gall ink on parchment in a medieval romance class. In a digital media class, I enjoyed finding a Mountaineers poem about an alpine landscape pasted in a scrapbook alongside an inscribed piece of wood in the UW Libraries Special Collections and relished the challenge of considering how to translate this specimen’s tangibility and ecological significance into a digital environment, leading to my culminating Capstone project.

Digital Humanities Capstone on the Poetics of Seattle’s Bioregion

Textual Studies and the Ecological Archive

My subfield of ecocriticism focuses largely on how literature portrays or responds to the natural world, like in a novel’s description of a park. But a focus on textual studies encourages me to ask the reverse: how about considering more tangibly how “nature” portrays literature, as captured in an inspirational quote in a sign within a park? And what would it mean to consider how the natural world responds to a literary text? For example, we can see the material landscape portraying literature in this quotation inscribed onto the steps of the Mount Rainier National Park, but we can also see behind it the tangible way the “natural” world is roped-off and is shaped by the aesthetics of ecological preservation lauded by quotations like these.

The interdisciplinarity of my research has encouraged me to take a wide view of what counts as “textual evidence,” as I’ve moved outside the conventional archive of the library to the public lands populating our region. It’s important to remember how this landscape of Tahoma, while influenced by these poetic plaques, is also deeply shaped by oral stewardship traditions from local tribes one can miss out on in a hyperfocus on print-based textual evidence. Paying mind to the materiality of these texts–printed, inscribed, and spoken–helps me to draw out such signage’s varying historical scales from the local to the global and helps me to unearth the sometimes circuitous routes of their textual transmission that, occasionally, bring my outdoor wanderings back into the UW library’s archives.

Researching with UW Special Collections PNW Archives

After many internet rabbit holes, I found that this famous phrase’s first publication can actually be traced to a 1928 University of Washington Book Store chapbook “translation” of the Confucian classic “The Great Learning,” a first edition of which is housed in a specially-dedicated collection of the UW Libraries’ holdings on the Pacific Northwest. Begun in 1905, the collection comprises thousands of library materials and archival collections that document the people, history, and culture of this region. 

I had no idea our seemingly provincial region had such a key hand in carving out this piece of literary history until a close reading of this plaque prodded me to trace its origins. It turns out that Glenn Hughes, an early twentieth-century UW English professor and founder of our School of Drama, commissioned the chapbook publication which featured this phrase while here in Seattle. The phrase was written down in a footnote of the chapbook by Pound while in Italy, which he drew from a French translation of the work, which took its source material from an inscription on an ancient washtub in China.

In attending to this smorgasbord of textualities across the globe in research for my dissertation (which analyzes authors like Pound, Muir, and other writers quoted on local signage), I’m starting to trace the localized history of this phrase “make it new” to dig up eco-literary connections between the regional and the planetary, between the traditional indoor archive and the outside, public realm of inscribed literature in an exploration of the “where” of modernist innovation.

Graduate-Level Courses in Textual Study, Special Collections, and Digital Humanities

Congratulations to Molly Porter on completing the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies and many thanks for sharing this exciting research with the Textual Studies blog! The Textual Studies program offers an array of courses at the graduate level that 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 graduate students in UW Textual Studies, our upcoming courses, or the certificate program and its requirements, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu.

For UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research, sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and X.

Upcoming Classes in the Textual Studies Minor and Graduate Certificate Programs

The UW Textual Studies Program has unveiled new courses for Spring 2025! In this blog, we’ll give you all the details of these upcoming classes. From book arts to manuscripts, to Scandinavian mythology, there’s tons to explore in TXTDS courses. Read on to find out more about our spring quarter offerings. 

Courses in the Undergraduate Minor and Graduate Certificate in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities

The UW Textual Studies Program encompasses a wide range of courses in a variety of departments and subject fields. Covering topics such as book history, bibliography, digital humanities, print cultures and more, there is sure to be a Textual Studies course that fits your interests. 

The UW Textual Studies Program offers programs for both undergraduate and graduate students. The UW Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor is a 25-credit program in which students take courses from two distributions: the Core Courses and the Electives. They additionally complete a Capstone course, TXTDS 405, which can be taken in any quarter and is a culminating project conducted under the guidance of a faculty advisor or a librarian. 

The Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies is based on the completion of 16 total credits, including two classes from the Core Electives, one open elective chosen in consultation with the student’s TDS advisor, and a Capstone course, which connects the students primary program and graduate work with their work in TXTDS.  

For spring 2025, Textual Studies has introduced a series of new and returning classes that fit each of these requirements. Continue reading to find out more about the courses on offer. 

Spring 2025 TXTDS Core Courses

TXTDS 402 Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing

Have you ever wanted to learn about working in archives, handling historical materials, or the process of letterpress printing? This small seminar will allow students interested in the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor an opportunity to discover UW Libraries’ Special Collections and get hands-on experience with the historical and archival materials housed therein. Plus, students enrolled in the seminar will also learn about printing techniques, including instruction in letterpress printing with the help of Seattle-based letterpress printing non-profit, Partners in Print.

TXTDS 404/504 Texts, Publics, and Publication: Digital Editing and Publishing

Instructor: Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky

We’ll study the history of editorial and publication processes, from early print-shops to the impacts of digitization today. How does editing and publishing shape and reshape texts along with the publics that read them? How is digitization now impacting our writing, reading, archiving, and preservation practices? What is the future of publishing in the age of AI and social media? We’ll learn techniques in digital editing and publishing, including transcription (manual and automatic) and text encoding using the XML-based guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). We’ll learn to query and process TEI-encoded texts using XPath and XSLT, and we’ll explore web publishing, including an introduction to HTML and CSS, and other web publishing tools.

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of XML before. No prior experience with encoding or transcription is required or expected! You’ll be walked through the process step-by-step and will gain a host of new skills by the end of the quarter.

Spring 2025 TXTDS Electives

TXTDS 220 Making Manuscripts: Manuscript and Handwriting Technologies From Antiquity to Today

Instructor: Professor Beatrice Arduini

Quills, pens, pencils, vellum and paper: we forget in our digital age that the most enduring writing technologies have been the tools we use to write by hand. We still often sign, now with a stylus or our finger on a screen. In this course, students will explore the rich history of handwriting and manuscripts, from medieval manuscripts to handwriting today.

During the quarter, students enrolled in the course will also get to visit UW Special Collections and see rare manuscript fragments and books up close, some even dating back to the 12th century!

ENGL 322 Medieval and Early Modern Literatures of Encounter

Instructor: Professor Rhema Hokama

This course focuses on cultural encounters across medieval and early modern worlds. We will explore medieval and early modern travel writing and the dramatic and poetic responses to these tales of global travel–focusing especially on European travels to Asia and the Americas. In our readings of writers like William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Thomas More, John Donne, Luís de Camões, and Marco Polo, we’ll reflect on how European discourses about race, religion, and geopolitical power were shaped by the global exchange of goods and ideas. 

SCAND 330 Scandinavian Mythology

Instructor: Professor Timothy Bourns

During this course, students will have the chance to explore and study religious life in the pre-Christian North. You’ll explore various source materials, including the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, and will discuss historical, archeological, and folkloric evidence. 

MELC 211 Introduction to Myths of the Ancient Middle East

Instructor: Professor Kathryn Medill

Throughout this course, students will explore myths from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and Israel. How did the world come to be the way it is, and how did these myths shape ancient peoples’ views of themselves? How and why did ancient people use myths as part of their religious practices and daily lives? Why did some myths stay in circulation for over a thousand years? And how did ancient scribes edit and reframe myths over time to serve new purposes? No prerequisites. Final project instead of final exam.

ART H 400 Art History and Criticism: Haiti and Print Culture in the Age of Revolution

Instructor: Professor Jennifer Baez

This course considers printed material and ephemera that circulated in the Black Atlantic during the runup to and the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. Our goal is to trace how print media created affective networks. Each week centers different topoi leading to The Burning Plantation theme; that is, images produced to activate anxiety over the threat of revolt. Students will engage a variety of printed imagery including imperial cartography, portraits of revolutionary leaders, and depictions of the laboring Black body. Paired readings will highlight the role of print in forming readerships. The final project is a digital, student-led exhibition that reflects on Black Atlantic print culture and its circulation, manipulation, translation, and re-purposing.

This class is also open to those enrolled in the Textual and Digital Studies Graduate Certificate Program and satisfies one of the two required Core Elective courses.

UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies Printmaking Social Hour

If you are curious about any of these courses, be sure to stop by our upcoming Printmaking Social Hour, hosted jointly with UW Global Literary Studies. On Thursday, January 30th from 3:30pm to 5pm in HUB 337, you can come hear about these courses, make your own linocut prints, enjoy some snacks, and connect with people in the UW Textual Studies and UW Global Literary Studies programs.

If you would like more information about these upcoming spring quarter 2025 classes or the Textual Studies minor or graduate certificate programs, you can also email us at text@uw.edu.

Keep up with all things TXTDS, including news, projected courses, and upcoming events by signing up for our mailing list and by following us on Instagram and X. 

Cassidy Vierling Completes Capstone Project with Partners in Print

During the summer quarter, UW Textual Studies student Cassidy Vierling completed her culminating Capstone project as part of the requirements for the UW Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor. Working with Seattle-based letterpress printing non-profit, Partners in Print, Cassidy learned the ins and outs of letterpress printing, while researching and writing about the history and evolution of letterforms. In her own words, Cassidy describes her summer internship, reflects upon her work in contemporary letterpress, and describes what she learned through her research. Read on to find out more!

Letterpress Printing Internship with Partners in Print

My name is Cassidy, and I am a history major, currently minoring in Textual Studies and English. I am interested in literary history and printing history, which the Textual Studies minor allows me to learn about and explore in detail. For my Capstone this summer, I undertook an internship with Partners in Print, a non-profit printing company in Seattle born out of the School of Visual Concepts. As part of my internship I organized PiP’s wood type collection, helped run walk-up workshops at events where the public could print posters to take home, and assisted with logging volunteer information into their database. Interning at a printing company allowed me to learn more about the history of print and print technology, as well as take part in the letterpress printing scene as it exists in the modern world. 

Textual Studies Minor Researches the History of Letterforms

Inspired from my internship work handling and organizing moveable type, I wrote my Capstone paper on the history of letterforms, specifically analyzing significant technologies’ roles in determining the shape of letterforms. I studied how manuscript writing, moveable type, the typewriter, and the personal computer each created new sets of rules that constrained or expanded the art of letterform creation. In the end, I determined that the cultural and societal needs that accompany a technology do as much to shape the letterforms of that time or place as the technology itself does.

Capstone Opportunities in the UW Textual Studies Minor

The Capstone is the culminating project of the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. It is undertaken during any quarter of the academic year and is designed to bring together the minor’s learning goals with the skills gained during the course of the program. Working alongside a faculty member, a librarian, or with an organization in the form of an internship, students can explore their individual interests and build skills to support them in their future careers and studies. 

Congratulations to Cassidy on completing her Capstone project! To find out more about the Minor in Textual Study and Digital Humanities, Capstone requirements, and upcoming TXTDS courses, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu.

To keep up to date on all things TXTDS, sign up for our mailing list and be sure to follow us on Instagram and X.

Ayla Tanurhan Collaborates with UW Special Collections Exhibitions on Inclusive Design

Over the spring 2024 quarter, UW Textual Studies student Ayla Tanurhan completed the undergraduate Minor in Textual Study and Digital Humanities with a culminating Capstone project in collaboration with UW Special Collections Exhibitions. In her own words, Ayla describes her work on accessible and inclusive design for both physical and digital exhibits at the UW Libraries. Read on to find out more about Ayla’s Capstone project, her interests in access and inclusion, and her time in the UW Textual Studies Program. 

Inclusivity and Access in Cultural Institutions

Ayla Tanurhan (‘24) majored in Art History and Political Science and minored in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, additionally completing Interdisciplinary Honors and Art History Honors. She is particularly interested in cultural institutions, looking to increase access within these spaces through various means. As Henry Art Liaison at the Henry Art Gallery, she developed programs centered around rethinking the traditional museum experience. She also sat on the Accessibility Committee, supporting efforts to develop museum initiatives. In her future work, she hopes to continue to support cultural institutions in their efforts to provide opportunities for engagement for all. 

Capstone Project on Exhibition Accessibility in UW Special Collections

Working with support from Kat Lewis, Special Projects Curator in UW Special collections, I researched and developed a report regarding accessibility within exhibitions. As we were looking to expand accessibility within Special Collections Exhibitions, my research centered on various components including accessible design principles, digital humanities, and industry standards. This project sat at a niche intersection between the library and the museum, so I dove into both sectors, engaging with literature on accessibility in archives and accessibility in museums and exhibitions. Principles of Universal Design were also a key thread throughout my research, providing the grounding framework for the work we hoped to do within Digital Exhibitions. As stated within my report, it is imperative that we design these tools with Accessibility at the forefront, ensuring that our exhibitions are open for learning and engagement for all visitors and viewers. 

Universal Design Framework for Physical and Digital Exhibits

Through my research, we developed a framework for exhibitions centered on Universal Design. This is a strategy for creating spaces and environments which center accessibility for all. During the project, we took a twofold approach, in which we ideated initiatives for the physical exhibition space as well as produced a plan for the introduction and expansion of digital exhibitions. Within my role, I produced a research report, conducted a space survey, ideated physical and digital solutions, developed and edited checklists, and summarized our findings within a report. The emphasis on digital exhibitions allowed me to implement my learnings from my Textual Studies and Digital Humanities background. 

Digital Strategies for Accessible Collections

Digital Humanities is particularly useful in increasing Accessibility, and many institutions are introducing digital projects and tools as means through which audiences of all backgrounds can engage with cultural artifacts. In regards to digital exhibitions, much of this work relies heavily on digitizing projects, and we looked at OCR and HTA as technologies that could support this work. Alt text is another key component of this initiative, meaning that we need to ensure that there is ample metadata and collection data regarding artifacts in the exhibition. We were additionally hoping to bring interactive elements into the digital platform as well, so that all components of the physical exhibition space are also available in the digital space. Underlying all of this work is an important tenant, taken from the field of Universal Design. Our work within cultural institutions should always aim to encompass as many individuals as possible, continuously striving to design cultural experiences for all visitors rather than retroactively finding solutions.

Congratulations to Ayla on completing her Capstone project, as well as the Textual Studies minor! To find out more about the Minor in Textual Study and Digital Humanities, Capstone requirements, and upcoming TXTDS courses, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu. You can digital accessibility and inclusive design in our recent blog post, where we spoke to Elliott Stevens about his work on the UW Libraries Storytelling Fellows and his tips for accessible practices in digital scholarship. 

To keep up to date on all things TXTDS, sign up for our mailing list and be sure to follow us on Instagram and X.

Elliott Stevens on Digital Scholarship and Accessibility in Storytelling

Over the past four weeks, the University of Washington Libraries has hosted a program called Storytelling Fellows. Led by UW Textual Studies’ own Elliott Stevens (Research Commons and English Studies Librarian, UW Libraries), alongside Perry Yee, Kathryn Miller, Dylan Burns, and Jinny Sanders, this workshop helps students and faculty build the skills necessary to create and share a podcast episode. We sat down with Stevens to talk about the Storytelling Fellows Workshop and his interests in digital scholarship and accessibility. Read on to find out more!

What is Digital Storytelling Fellows?

Started in 2017, Stevens explains, the Digital Storytelling Fellows is a technical workshop designed for graduate students and faculty who want to learn about digital techniques for the creation of multimodal scholarship and composition. This fall, the 32 fellows enrolled in the program have focused on podcasting, a longstanding mode of digital scholarship, as they’ve worked through the production of a short podcast segment. Throughout this one-month workshop, participants gather for four synchronous meetings in which they learn about various tools, platforms, and strategies for developing and hosting a podcast while sharing their work in a collaborative space along the way. Between these meetings, fellows work on their digital creations and connect with the program’s instructors, who Stevens describes as coaches, cheering participants on and encouraging them to try new things while offering guidance and technical expertise. He sees this coaching approach as one of the unique benefits of the fellows program. Often, working with technology can involve hurdles and frustrations, but the coaches in this workshop focus on helping participants get through the ups and downs of tech-centric scholarship through their blend of support and technical knowledge.

UW Libraries Research Commons and Open Scholarship Commons Sponsored Digital Workshop

Digital Storytelling Fellows is supported by the UW Libraries Research Commons, Libraries Instructional Design, and the Open Scholarship Commons (OSC). The Research Commons and the OSC are two places on the UW campus where students, faculty, researchers, and instructors can connect across disciplines while doing technology-driven scholarship. This mission is echoed in the Digital Storytelling Fellows and its commitment to building an online community of interdisciplinary scholars, researchers, and students working on digital projects through their free, online workshop program.

Stevens and Perry Yee developed the program after realizing that, to their knowledge, there were no other free or low-cost workshops focused on digital scholarship methods that were totally online. For their inaugural session in 2017, the Fellows program focused on video creation and editing using the browser-based software WeVideo. After a successful launch, the Digital Storytelling Fellows took suggestions about what kind of scholarly modes participants would want next. They landed on podcasting after receiving much interest in the topic, as well as finding that podcasting was an underserved medium in this kind of free and online programming. 

The UW Libraries Podcast Workshop

There are four sessions throughout the workshop, Stevens tells us. The first meeting welcomes and introduces fellows to the program, getting them situated with Audacity, a digital audio recording and editing software, and setting them up with the tools they’ll need to complete the program. They also begin imagining an introduction for their podcasts, which leads them into the second session where they level-up in technical skills. In this second week, participants also listen to example podcasts and deconstruct them, learning how to layer audio files and build a world through the combination of different sounds. Session three is Stevens’ favorite: the draft workshop. During this week’s meeting, fellows bring whatever they’ve completed of their podcast, whether that be a full or partial script draft, raw recordings, or interview audio, and participate in a constructive feedback session that helps them to ascertain initial audience reactions. The fourth and final session is a reflection and a celebration for completing the workshop, where participants share their newly finished episodes, clips, or segments.

Over the four weeks, fellows receive individual mentorship from the program’s four coaches and participate in small-group learning, with eight or so participants in each session. This group-based model allows for the development of a small, supportive community, with lots of space for check-ins and one-on-one feedback. In addition to the larger topics of each weekly session, participants can also ask individualized questions aimed at their particular projects. Overall, the Digital Storytelling Fellows gives students and faculty the opportunity to work with others doing similar digital scholarship, creating an infrastructure of support and interdisciplinary community, while helping them achieve their research goals through a defined set of deadlines.

Digital Accessibility, Podcasting, and the Importance of Inclusive Scholarship

While in the Digital Storytelling Fellows program, participants also learn about the importance of accessibility in digital scholarship and podcasting, which is a particular interest of Stevens who, in his work as the UW Libraries Research Commons Librarian, has taken an active role in prioritizing inclusive materials and researching the accessibility of digital tools after working with Hadi Rangin, an information technology accessibility specialist for Accessible Technology Services (ATS). 

When the Fellows program first ran in 2017, it focused on video creation and editing, but the organizers found that there was a prohibitive cost entailed in using accessible video editing software and realized that accessible podcasting technologies were much more freely available. Currently, they run the workshop using Audacity, which not only has inclusive features built into its software but also makes its accessible documentation available for users. In addition to the technology they use, Digital Storytelling Fellows also teaches podcasters to incorporate best practices for accessibility into their creations. During the workshop, they learn about strategies, like captioning and transcripts, that can help enrich their storytelling by making it user-friendly for all future audience members. 

Best Practices for Digital Media Creation and Design for Assistive Technology 

Part of Stevens’ work at UW Libraries also includes visiting classes to share what he’s learned about digital media creation and designing for assistive technology. There are seven questions he proposes creators ask to ensure they’re creating with accessibility in mind:

1. Are you using headings correctly? 

When designing digital projects, especially website content, you’ll typically include headings (h1, h2, h3, h4). These not only affect the design and layout of your pages, but give your content an organizational structure that can be used by screen reading technology to understand the layout and organization of your content. Making sure you use headings and that you nest them properly is just one simple way you can improve the usability of your digital content. 

2. Do your colors have enough contrast? 

One simple way to make your design user-friendly is to make sure you have enough contrast in your color scheme. Incorporating an accessibility checker, like Lighthouse, can run an analysis on your pages and determine if your contrast is high enough.

3. Do you have appropriate alternative text for your images and do you include captions? 

Alternative text or alt text describes images that appear in digitally-created content. This information, alongside image captions, can be extremely helpful for users employing screen readers so that your images can be visible through text-based means. Alt text, alongside captions, should describe the content in a straightforward manner that is concise and specific. It should also place the image in the context of its purpose on the web page and in relation to the other written content it compliments. 

4. Is your link text descriptive? 

It might be tempting to link out to content with phrasing like, “click here,” but link text should actually describe where and with what the link is connected. For example, if you wanted to link to upcoming UW Textual Studies Courses, you should place the link within the text that best describes it. 

5. Have you included captions and transcripts for your media projects? 

When creating in audio or video modes, or if you’re incorporating audio or video files into your content, you want to make sure that you also include captions and transcripts that accurately reflect the audio and video files so that users deploying assistive technologies can experience it accurately. 

6. Are your PDFs accessible? 

Sometimes, digital content includes images or PDFs with textual content. You’ll want to make sure that, no matter what format you’re sharing in, your content can be read with screen readers. There are various tools that you can use to make your PDFs usable with screen reading, but an easy way to test either your images or PDFs is to try highlighting text with your mouse. If you can, great! If not, your files probably aren’t accessible. Even if this first test goes smoothly, it’s always worth checking your files with software like Adobe that can not only help make sure all your text is readable, but that the content also has a structural organization to help ensure  a screen reader goes through the text in a logical order. 

7. Is your digital content designed for use without a mouse? 

Not all users use a mouse to navigate digital content. One way you can check if your content is navigable without the use of a mouse is to test if you can move around your site with just your keyboard using the tab, shift + tab, arrow keys, space bar, enter, and escape functions. If you can’t, you might need to think about the underlying structure of your site or, if you’ve used a content management platform, whether you might consider another digital content tool that attends to accessibility in its template design. 

Digital Scholarship at UW Libraries OSC and UW Textual Studies

If you’re interested in learning more about digital media projects, keep your eyes out for future Digital Storytelling Fellows sessions! You can also check out the UW Libraries OSC and sign up for their listserv to keep up to date on exciting upcoming events centered around digital scholarship and interdisciplinary research. 

And don’t forget to check out UW Textual Studies courses. Many of our classes, as well as the culminating Capstone project, offer opportunities for you to experiment with digital projects and technologies! Many thanks to Elliott Stevens for sharing his work on the Digital Storytelling Fellows and digital accessibility! 

For UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research, sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and X.