For my capstone, I worked with Elliot Stevens, the UW English Department Librarian, on a collection development project aimed at purchasing new books that would be relevant and useful additions to the UW libraries. I first performed a ‘scan’ of both the UW English department and various other academic departments across the country, researching which topics and themes were commonly studied and comparing how the UW fits into the larger academic network.
Then, I began to search for books to purchase that would both support the key topics of interest to UW faculty and students, such as books about environmental and Indigenous studies, and further the development of underrepresented research areas without an established collection, such as books about the craft of creative writing. Ultimately, I was able to create a list of 72 books that were purchased and added to the UW library collections.
– Riley Hull
Scanning Orbis Cascade Alliance and Big 10 Academic Alliance
To begin the acquisitions research process, Riley surveyed both the interests of faculty and students in the UW Department of English and the Orbis Cascade Alliance, as well as the Big 10 Academic Alliance. This gave Riley a wide representation of interests both for academic institutions within UW’s geographic region and for those within the BTAA consortium of research institutions.
Among the Orbis Cascade Alliance member institutions, I noticed a strong interest in environmental humanities and ecocriticism, as well as a heavy American literature emphasis (with particular emphasis on rural America and Pacific Northwest Indigenous studies). For the BTAA institutions, I noticed a more significant presence of creative writing programs than among the Orbis Cascade Alliance members. Similarly, there was less of a focus on rhetoric, composition, and pedagogical studies, and more of a focus on literary studies and creative writing.
– Riley Hull
Armed with these statistics, Riley then made recommendations based on these findings to build out the UW Library’s collections, listing purchase suggestions for titles both from larger academic presses as well as from smaller presses, like the Kegedonce Press.
I really enjoyed working on this capstone and getting to spend an entire quarter dedicated to researching English departments and searching for books. Even as a University of Washington student studying English, I learned so much about our own English department and was able to see just how broad and far-reaching the interests of our faculty and students spread. Similarly, I found it very inspiring to really examine and learn about the incredible work being done across the United States at both the Orbis Cascade Alliance universities and the member universities of the BTAA. It reminded me how diverse and interdisciplinary the field of English and literary studies can be, and inspired me to continue pushing boundaries and thinking outside of the box in my own English studies.
– Riley Hull
Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Capstone
Aries Chen on Building a Digital Exhibition of Citation in Early Modern French Texts
During this past academic year, UW Textual Studies alum and current iSchool MLIS student, Aries Chen, completed a Capstone project that explored citation methods in French texts of the early modern period. Researching rare artifacts in UW Special Collections, Aries scanned, digitized, and compiled an exhibition tracking citation from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Read on to find out more about this exciting project, hear about Aries work with rare materials, and how this project brought together the skills of the TXTDS minor with Aries’ major area of study in the French language.
Researching Early Modern Works in UW Special Collections
To research for the project, Aries went to UW Special Collections, and worked with a number of artifacts, including historical works of botany, Les Essais by Michel de Montaigne, Les Provinciales by Blaise Pascale, and other selections spanning the histories of science and medicine, specimens from the libraries’ rare book holdings, and a few titles from its book arts collection.
“This project traces the reuse of pieces of information, examining how cited material is treated and how references to cited works are constructed. The majority of the research was conducted by looking at a source, finding a citation, and following that citation to the source.”
– Aries Chen
To record this trail of citation use, Aries utilized a KIC Click Mini overhead scanner in the UW Special Collections reading room, taking images of the works and processing them for display on the project website where the trail of cited material could be visualized.
Building a Digital Exhibition of Citation Practices
“My capstone looked at citation in printed texts, mostly from early modern France, to describe citation forms, the information that citation contains, and how citation evolved. The work I did for my capstone tied together concepts from courses I’d taken across Textual Studies, from website-building skills to utilizing the resources in Special Collections, and even beyond that to work I’d done for my major in French.”
“My work in the Textual Studies minor is what got me interested in library and information sciences in the first place. Every course I took in the minor encouraged students to engage in library resources, and my interest in libraries developed while making use of those resources. Also, the knowledge I picked up from coursework and research helped me show in my application that I was serious about wanting to study library sciences and that I had an idea of what I wanted out of an MLIS. I hope to work in instruction or academic librarianship, and I look forward to learning more about libraries in my program!”
– Aries Chen
Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Capstone
Like Aries’ work bringing the interests of the French major and the skills of the Textual Studies minor together, the Capstone project is designed to combine the scholarly interests of students in the program over a quarter-long independent research project under the advisement of a faculty member.
Emily Backstrom on Applying Textual Transcription Methods to Interactive Media
Over this past academic year, UW Textual Studies student Emily Backstrom completed a Capstone project that experimented with text encoding to transcribe interactive media. Using XML and the Text Encoding Initiative guidelines, Emily transcribed video game scripts from Deltarune, a an episodic role-playing video game. Read on to find out more about this fascinating project!
Digital Project Uses XML to Encode Video Game Script
“My capstone is a TEI project dedicated to testing the limits of TEI and adapting it to a broader range of content— specifically a video game script. Using TEI to account for player input and choices while adding in notes that took on the role of stage directions shows how much supplementary text is needed to convey even a dialogue-heavy video game narrative and how much of the medium is based on experience. The portion of the game script encoded (excerpts from Deltarune) allows for an imagined full project where different aspects of the script, such as specific routes or character dialogue, can be queried using XPATH. This game in particular also has a distinction between the player and the player-controlled character, which added another layer to account for within the TEI.”
– Emily Backstrom
What is XML and TEI?
XML, or eXtensible Markup Language, is a markup language for storing and transporting data, and the Text Encoding Initiative is a set of standards for using this language to encode texts. Usually, XML and TEI are used in humanities contexts to digitize textual materials and visual elements. It serves an important preservation function, translating physical textual resources into digital forms that can be shared. However, Emily’s project explores its applications for an interactive medium:
“Archiving and encoding media is a method of preserving it, and games are often shockingly ephemeral despite their popularity. This project highlights the need for accessible emulation and availability of legacy software for out-of-circulation games.”
– Emily Backstrom
Text Encoding Interactive Media
Translating texts and other media into TEI always involves editorial considerations, like choosing what information to include and how to encode it. These decisions influence the way people eventually read and interact with texts once they’re digitized. Moving TEI into the space of interactive media highlighted this editorial practice and the considerations to be made when translating complicated media forms into storable data:
“The amount of supplemental text needed to make sense of a video game outside of its plain text has illuminated how the medium is only able to be experience directly with visuals and how diffcult it is to translate without inadvertently giving it some influence of my own.
Digital media at large comes with many challenges for retaining them in their intended form of experience, as well as translating them into machine readable text. As someone interested in archives, this is of importance to me and something I had in mind while creating this project.”
– Emily Backstrom
Congratulations to Emily on completing this exciting Capstone project, as well as the Textual Studies minor!
UW Textual Studies Alums Continue to MLIS Programs and MA in the History of the Book
Join us in congratulating recent UW Textual Studies alums, Aries Chen, Jules Lockett, Steven Haker, Emily Backstrom, Malika Brown, and Riley Hull who have been accepted to Master’s programs in Library and Information Sciences and the History of the Book. In this blog, we celebrate the achievement of these former TXTDS students, dig into the basics of an MLIS program, and cover Textual Studies courses that focus on libraries, archives, and their resources.
What is a Master’s of Library and Information Science?
The MLIS is an advanced program of study that is designed to prepare students for careers in a variety of organizations and fields. It focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to the collection, organization, storage, and dissemination of information in a variety of forms, including physical collections management, such as in libraries’ rare book holdings, and digital management, such as in data-driven information systems and the collection and preservation of digital materials. These are just a few examples of the wide range of fields and industries for which the MLIS is designed to prepare students. The degree path focuses on a broad approach to the information lifecycle, helping its students learn how information is gathered, organized, stored, searched and accessed across formats and within a range of institutional and communal settings.
TXTDS Minors Continue to Master’s Program at University of Washington and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Aries Chen, Emily Backstrom, and Steven Haker Begin MLIS at UW iSchool
TXTDS alums, Aries Chen, Emily Backstrom, and Steven Haker have begun their inaugural year in the MLIS program at the UW iSchool. Building upon their foundations in Textual Studies, which brings students in contact with library resources, humanities data science courses, and digitally-focused coursework, this program helps train students to pursue careers in librarianship, archives, data and information management, and more.
“My work in the Textual Studies minor is what got me interested in library and information sciences in the first place. Every course I took in the minor encouraged students to engage in library resources, and my interest in libraries developed while making use of those resources. Also, the knowledge I picked up from coursework and research helped me show in my application that I was serious about wanting to study library sciences and that I had an idea of what I wanted out of an MLIS. I hope to work in instruction or academic librarianship, and I look forward to learning more about libraries in my program!”
– Aries Chen, TXTDS ’25
Malika Brown Accepted to Maters in LIS at Simmons University
Jules was inspired to attend her current MA program after taking courses in the TXTDS minor and handling items in UW Special Collection as part of the TXTDS 402: Book Arts: Proseminar in Special Collections, Bibliography, and Letterpress Printing. These courses helped her find her interests in the broad study of the book, which she plans to integrate with her future coursework in library and information science, preparing for a future career in rare books librarianship.
Riley Hull Enrolled in MA Program in the History of the Book at the University of London
“My time in the TXTDS minor was the most unexpected but rewarding part of my time at the UW. It led me to connect with incredible professors and like-minded talented peers who have become close friends, while also introducing me to an entire academic world I didn’t previously know existed but am now endlessly fascinated by and invested in.”
– Riley Hull, TXTDS ’25
UW Textual Studies Courses in Libraries and Archives
The Textual Studies Program’s focus on hands-on and experiential learning translate to its course offerings, which include classes focused on library collections and archival studies, such as TXTDS 403: Archives, Data and Databases. A recent session of the course, “The Records Lifecycle and Archival Operations,” taught by TXTDS alum and archivist at Seattle’s National Archives, Eric Flores, concentrated on the archival process from the fundamentals of planning and organizing the preservation of historical documents to archives’ functions, constitution, and continued preservation in physical and digital environments. Another session, “Digital Methods for East Asian Studies,” taught by Professor Gian Rominger of the Department of Asian Languages & Literature, took a cross-disciplinary approach to archival science, applying its methodologies to research in East Asian studies. This course focused on the integration of digital methods in the analysis of textual sources written in Classical and Modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, offering students experience with digital tools and projects, such as corpus creation, OCR, text mining, and network analysis.
The first presenter was Suh Young Choi, a Masters student in Classics, whose work focused on designing instruction in computer science and programming for those working in humanities fields. Presenting on their “Computing with Classics” workshop series, Choi’s talk centered around the promotion of interdisciplinarity, digital literacy, and computational thinking for those working in Classics and other humanistic fields that incorporate digital methods or use digital tools in their research.
The Impacts of Gender on Language and Vocabulary in Tang Dynasty Poetry by Stephanie Liu
Stephanie Liu, a PhD Student in Chinese, presented on the influence gender has on the use of metaphorical language and emotional vocabulary in poetry of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) in China. Using a computational method to explore this question, Liu compared two sets of data that included over 650 poems from both female and male poets as they sought to uncover the influence of gender on distinct stylistic patterns. Ultimately, their research presented a challenge to male-centric literary narratives and argued for the value of integrating sociolinguistic methods into the study of classical Chinese literature.
Indigenizing Research Guides: A Toolkit by Ian Diedrich
Next, we heard from Ian Diedrich, a Master of Library and Information Sciences student, whose presentation showcased a collaboratively-made research guide and digital toolkit designed to highlight the importance of integrating Indigenous perspectives into contemporary information resources. Walking listeners through the basics of a research guide, its significance, and the process undertaken to develop their toolkit, Diedrich’s work explored effective ways to incorporate Indigenous knowledge systems and perspectives into library and information sciences scholarship through the adaptation of established library tools.
Profiling Poets from Spanish Sonnets by Alysa Meng
The next presenter was Alysa Meng, an Masters Student in Computer Science and Engineering, who spoke about how machine learning techniques (SVM, Bi-LSTM, BERT) can capture authorial metadata from Spanish sonnets. Their research analyzed specific poetic features and word embeddings in order to explore how computational models can reveal information about authorship, including the time period of their writing, their gender, and their region. They wrapped up their discussion with an examination of the biases within poetic data and AI models, reflecting both on cultural representations in Spanish literature and the limits of AI in textual studies.
Making Connections: How Textual Studies and the MA in French Studies Come Together by Madeleine Poole
Madeleine Poole, a Masters student in French Studies, presented on the connections between the research they’ve undertaken in their primary graduate program and their coursework in the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies. Ending with a reflection on the way in which the skills and learning goals of the TDS certificate translated into their French Studies Master’s Project, this student showcased how Textual Studies classes prepared them to work with primary and archival evidence and complimented their degree through its attention to hands-on coursework and interdisciplinary methodologies.
“Day In, Day Out: The First Five Years of On Kawara’s Today Series” by Nicolas Staley
Nicolas Staley, a PhD Student in Art History, presented on the Today series or Date Paintings from artist, On Kawara. As the name suggests, these paintings (which range in size from 8×10 inches to 61×89 inches) are a series of canvases, monochromatic in color, that depict a date inscribed in white. The works were produced in over 130 countries and span nearly five decades of the painter’s life. In their research, Staley approached these paintings from a data-analytical standpoint, presenting a new approach to the artist and his works. Uncovering hidden habits and patterns buried within this series, Staley analyzed the first 821 paintings completed from 1966 to 1970, and introduced new methodologies to studies of On Kawara and his work.
The Evergreen Radio Reading Service Archives: Periodicals and Literary Culture for the Blind and Print-Disabled by Alina Weseloh
Alina Weseloh, an Masters of Library and Information Sciences student, presented on their efforts to digitize the Evergreen Radio Reading Service (ERRS), which operated out of the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL) from 1973 to 2011. For 24 hours a day, this service read newspapers, ads, stories, and other resources to the blind and print-disabled community. Weseloh, alongside a team of other MLIS students, has worked to launch a digitization of the program’s records, which have been stored in WTBBL’s audio archive since the program’s end. In their presentation, they discussed accessibility in the context of periodical studies, the technology and copyright exemptions that made the ERRS possible, and their group’s initiative to preserve the program records as digital media.
The Jacob Lawrence Mapping Project by Kailani Wright
Next, we heard from Kailani Wright whose research focused on tracing the presence and legacy of American Artist, Jacob Lawrence across the University of Washington campus and the broader Seattle community. During the course of the presentation, Wright talked about how this project catalogs Lawrence’s public artworks at UW and collects oral histories from individuals who knew the artist, addressing interpretive and historical gaps in the scholarly record of Lawrence’s time and work in the Pacific Northwest.
Textual and Narrative Constructions in Campaign Modules for Dungeons & Dragons by Megan Piccirillo
Megan Piccirillo, a Masters of Library and Information Sciences student, presented on the narrative elements of the improvised story-telling game, Dungeons & Dragons. Exploring the intermodal textual construction of a third-party campaign module, Historica Arcanum: The City of Crescent, Piccirillo discussed its combination of ludic and narrative elements, arguing that it functions as a crafted text, containing space for player ownership and authorship.
Genji Mihara’s Diaries by Karino Wada
Karino Wada, a Museology Masters student in the UW iSchool, presented on a textual translation of Genji Mihara’s diaries, which Wada has been using to assist and provide quotes and context to a virtual exhibition video their undertaking during their internship at the Japanese Community and Cultural Center. Specifically, Wada discusses their examination of Genji Mihara diaries from his time at the Manzanar Internment camp and their process of finding and digitizing the materials.
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.
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 Typographicallyis 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.
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.
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
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.
“Looking forward to the MA program, I’m most excited about getting to study the history of the book in the heart of London, one of the epicenters of both publication and circulation. I’m so excited to join the scholarly community abroad, and I can’t wait to start studying the history of the book on an even more in-depth and specific level.”
– Riley Hull
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
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.
“My time in the TXTDS minor has been the most unexpected but rewarding part of my time at the UW. It has led me to connect with incredible professors and like-minded talented peers who have become close friends, while also introducing me to an entire academic world I didn’t previously know existed but am now endlessly fascinated by and invested in.”
– Riley Hull
For Jules, this course and session were also important in helping her find her own interests in the broader field of book studies. Seeing the technology of the book change over the period of print’s industrialization through the items in the Special Collections classroom—in binding practices, paper constitution, and its evolving physical form—Jules was inspired to think about how the book object responds to social, political, and historical shifts. She hopes to continue to research this process through the MA program and in her future studies in library science.
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.
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
16th 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 Paradiso canto 18, Dante sees the words, DILIGITE IUSTITIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM” — “Love justice you who rule the earth” (vv. 91-93) spelled out one letter at the time, and then the blessed souls move into the shape of an eagle. However, in the illustration, we see four different letters and the eagle compressed in the same image, as if the letters and the figure were formed at the same time, although for most of the illustrations the artist preferred to adhere more strictly to the narrative development of the text, as Matthew Collins pointed out in his recent The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s Commedia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2024).”
– Beatrice Arduini
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:
“A unique quality of the Marcolini edition is the bird’s-eye view or aerial perspective and the circular design of the Inferno illustrations. Another unprecedented choice is that the content of numerous cantos is in a few cases compressed into one woodcut, something unique in the printed illustrated tradition of the poem. The total number of the illustrations is, in fact, 87, and not 100, as the Comedia’s cantos.”
– Beatrice Arduini
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!
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.
