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.
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.
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.
Digital Storytelling Fellows is a technical workshop designed for graduate students and faculty who want to learn about digital scholarship.
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.
Digital Storytelling Fellows learn the ins and outs of podcasting, including how to layer audio files and combine different sounds.Participants also learn logistical techniques and communication strategies for common podcast forms, like interviews.
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:
Digital Storytelling Fellows learn about accessible strategies, such as transcripts and captioning, to help improve the usability of their digital stories.
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
Digital media projects can take many forms. Keep your eye out for OSC-sponsored events and workshops featuring digital scholarship.You can learn more about digital content creation and scholarship through UW Textual Studies Courses.
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!
Bonnie Ha on Collaborating with UW Special Collections for Online Exhibition of Historical Anatomy Books
Over the summer quarter, UW Textual Studies student Bonnie Ha completed her Capstone project and, with it, the undergraduate Minor in Textual Study and Digital Humanities. The Capstone is a culminating project, undertaken during any quarter of the academic year, that brings together the minor’s learning goals with the skills gained during the course of the program. In her own words, Bonnie describes her collaboration with UW Special Collections and her work researching and digitizing historical anatomy books. Read on to find out more!
Digital Project Documents Rare Materials in the History of Science
This summer I worked with Special Collections on an upcoming anatomy exhibit. The end-product of my capstone project was a website featuring anatomy illustrations from different texts spanning a date range from the mid 1700s to late 1900s. To start, I did background research on the history of anatomical drawings to get familiar with the subject and found some notable figures, including Henry Gray and John and Charles Bell. During the course of my research, I found that anatomical drawings of this period towed the line between being extremely accurate and having an artistic style of their own. This was interesting to me because the mixture of precision and style was something I had never thought about before when considering scientific illustration.
Since the exhibit was in the early stages of production at the time of my collaboration, I got to go into the basement of Special Collections to help select the texts that would later be digitized. One of the texts I selected caught my eye because I could see the grain lines of its paper and the signature marks for the book’s binding. Overall, the selection process was quite a neat experience for me, as I was surrounded by a bunch of old books and rare materials.
After picking the books that would go into the exhibition, I used a Bookeye Scanner, which is a special high-powered scanner designed for use in libraries, archives, and museums, to digitize the pages of the books to be put on the website. When building the website, we used WordPress, which was a bit of a technical hurdle for me to figure out at first. In the future, I hope to work in the museum space where I can use the skills I learned over the course of the Textual Studies minor and my work on this capstone project.
Digital Scans of Scientific Illustrations from UW Libraries’ Special Collections
Hello everyone! My name is Nikita Willeford Kastrinos and I’m very excited to join the UW Textual Studies Program as a Research Associate this academic year. I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and an alum of the UW Textual Studies graduate certificate program. In this blog, I’ll tell you a bit about myself and my research, as well as my role this year working with the program.
I specialize in British literature of the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with concentrations in book history, the environmental humanities, media and material cultural studies, and the digital humanities. I’m currently completing my dissertation, Of Form(es) and Form(ats): Ecologies of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Novel. This project narrates an ecological history of print in Britain by examining the developing genre of the novel. Moving from its emergence in the hand-press period to its mass production in the machine-press era, this work tracks the novel’s literary development as it coincides with the shift from pre- to post-industrialized print and the rise of extraction capitalism, offering new ways to think about the relationship between literature and the environment.
Early edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)An early abridged version of PamelaFirst paperback edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker (1901)
Most recently, UW Textual Studies support helped me to attend to Rare Book School at the University of Chicago for the inaugural session of “An Environmental History of the Book,” a course taught by Dr. Eric Slaughter (University of Chicago) focused on the way in which the natural world has shaped the book object and how book objects, in turn, shape our perceptions of nature and environment. From papyrus fragments to bookworm holes to arsenic-dyed bookcloth, we learned about the ecological origins and impacts of books and writing from antiquity to the present day.
A Papyrus fragment from antiquityA “toxic” book bound in arsenic-dyed bookclothBookworm holes in flax-based paperA stitched repair in parchment, made from animal skinA clay cuneiform tablet
This year as an Research Associate, I’m looking forward to contributing to the UW Textual Studies program by helping to reach new students and academic units who can join in and add to the interdisciplinary community of UW Textual Studies. I’m especially excited to work with programs within and outside the university, like the UW Humanities Data Lab, the UW Libraries, Open Scholarship Commons, and Special Collections, and the Seattle-based non-profit, Partners in Print, to help generate new possibilities for research collaboration with UW students completing their Textual Studies capstones.
But most of all, I’m gratified to be in a position to help encourage students in their own research trajectories, connecting them with classes and opportunities that can inspire them and enrich their time in the UW Textual Studies Program.
You’ll hear from me on the Textual Studies blog and our social media accounts where I’ll be sharing UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research. Don’t forget to sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and to follow us on Instagram and X to keep up-to-date on all things TXTDS.
If you have work to share or events to promote, I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me by email at nikitaw@uw.edu.
Old Books, New Technologies: Textual Studies’ Dawg Daze Event Recap
Last week, the UW Textual Studies Program welcomed new and returning students to our Dawg Daze event, “Old Books, New Technologies: UW Special Collections and the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities.” Held in the UW Libraries’ Special Collections, the event featured an overview of the minor program, a preview of upcoming Textual Studies courses from faculty, and insight from Textual Studies alums about their experience during the program and with their capstone projects.
If you didn’t get a chance to join us at Dawg Daze, don’t worry! We’re recapping the whole event and sharing some of the exciting items we viewed in Special Collections. Read on for more!
The Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
At the event, students got to hear about The Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. This interdisciplinary minor focuses on the study of the history, present, and future of texts from scrolls, manuscripts, and printed books to archival documents, digital texts, and textual data—some of which were on display during our time at Special Collections!
When pursuing the minor, students complete twenty-five credits, with at least two of the courses being from the Textual Studies Program core sequence, two courses from the Textual Studies Program’s approved electives, and a final capstone course. Now, if you’re thinking that a minor sounds like a ton of additional classes, not to worry! Many of the undergraduate students who spoke at Dawg Daze said there was quite a bit of crossover with their other degree requirements, making the completion of the minor quite manageable.
Interested students can email text@uw.edu with any questions about the minor, its requirements, or how to declare! You can also view upcoming courses and get more information about the capstone requirement on our website.
Courses in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
Students also got to hear from faculty teaching in the Textual Studies Program. One of the faculty members we heard from was Anna Preus, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and the Director of the UW Humanities Data Lab. Dr. Preus teaches courses in the digital and data humanities, two interdisciplinary fields that use digital technologies and data science techniques to pursue humanities questions.
For winter, Dr. Preus and Melanie Walsh, another faculty member in the UW Textual Studies Program and an Assistant Professor in the Information School, are planning a course on Artificial Intelligence, TXTDS 321: Text Reuse, AI, and the Art of Stealing. This course will explore the concept of “text reuse” throughout literary history, putting AI text generation technologies like ChatGPT in the context of a broader lineage of literary phenomena such as allusion, quotation, remix, parody, and plagiarism. The course will use both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze text similarity, such as close reading and computational approaches. This course will count toward the minor’s elective requirements.
In spring quarter, Beatrice Arduini, Associate Professor in the French & Italian Studies Department, will teach TXTDS 220: Making Manuscripts: Manuscript and Handwriting Technologies from Antiquity to Today. This course will cover the long history of script, asking questions about the origins and lineage of communication in handwritten form. Also in spring quarter, Kathryn Medill, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures will offer MELC 211: Introduction to Myths of the Ancient Middle East. Both of these courses will count toward the minor’s elective requirements.
The Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor Capstone
The TXTDS Capstone is a five-credit course (offered as TXTDS 405) that can be taken in any quarter. It is a sustained project or experience relevant to the goals of the Textual Studies Minor. During Dawg Daze, we heard from a few students who had recently completed their capstones who worked with the UW Libraries on exhibitions and completed internships with Partners in Print, a local non-profit that promotes letterpress printing. There are many options for students looking to complete their capstones. You might choose to do a traditional research paper, a digital or data-science driven project, or you might choose to undertake other kinds of work, like collaborating with faculty on research projects, or working with an organization like a library, a bookstore, or a publishing house.
Upcoming Courses in the UW Textual Studies Program
You will declare the Minor with your major advisor. But for other advising help, contact the advisors in Humanities Academic Services, who are eager to help students enrolled in programs in the Humanities. They offer student support and advising and can help you declare and negotiate the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. You can make an appointment or stop by the HAS center in Padleford Hall during their drop-in advising hours every Monday and Wednesday from 2:30pm to 4:00pm and every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30am to 11:00am.
Having trouble finding HAS? No worries. Check out their walk-through video.
UW Textual Studies Program Fall Events, Upcoming Courses, and Program Information
Welcome back, UW students! Here at UW Textual Studies, we’re gearing up for another academic year! We’re looking forward to welcoming new and returning students to our undergraduate and graduate programs, and are getting ready to host some fantastic events, including our upcoming Dawg Daze information session. Read on to find out more about what UW Textual Studies has to offer for the 2024-25 academic year.
The UW Textual Studies program offers two core programs: the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor and the Textual and Digital Studies grad certificate programs. The undergraduate minor focuses on the interdisciplinary study of the history, present, and future of texts. Instruction ranges widely, covering a broad array of subjects, periods, and objects in the long history of writing and communication. From scrolls to manuscripts, and printed books to eBooks, undergraduates can explore how texts have been written, published, read, circulated, and archived from antiquity to the present day.
The Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies is a 16-credit program that draws from a diverse range of courses covered under the broad heading of textual and digital studies. From the history of the book, to the digital and data humanities, to translation, editorial, and archival theory, the graduate certificate is designed to serve a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary community of graduate students whose work spans various periods, materials, and geographies. The certificate program is perfect for those undertaking research focused on cultural and literary materials, working in archival or digital formats, or those considering careers in editing, publishing, libraries, or archives.
