-
TXTDS 402/ART H 422 — Book Arts: Art History of the Book
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Juliet SperlingDescription: One of history’s most enduring artistic forms, books are containers of human experience, freezing in time decisions made by printers, illuminators, publishers, artists, owners, and readers. In twice-weekly discussion-based meetings framed by key issues that these objects provoke, we will consider questions including: when and why is a book considered a work of art? How have books historically related to other art genres in terms of production, reception, and display? In what ways, from medieval manuscripts to illustrated anatomical treatises to contemporary zines, have artists turned to the form of the book to negotiate fundamental social and cultural ideas and concerns? Looking closely at the physical book allows us to think about themes central to both art history and textual studies with unusual focus, including practices of collecting, the circulation and reception of print, taxonomies of knowledge, materiality, and embodied viewing. This course emphasizes close study of objects in University of Washington Libraries special collections and conversation with specialists including curators, collectors, and artists. Examples will be drawn primarily from American and European contexts, but students are encouraged to bring objects from their diverse areas of interest into seminar discussion and written work.
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor_________
-
TXTDS 403 – Archives, Data and Databases: The Records Lifecycle and Archival Operations
Credits: 5
GE: A&H, SSc
Instructor: Eric Flores, archivist, National Archives, SeattleDescription: The most common question I get as an archivist is, “what does an archivist actually do?” It is easy to imagine an archivist as someone that sits in a quiet room all day reading historical texts. The reality is that the preservation of history requires foresight, planning, a little chemistry, and a lot of organization. We take data in all its forms and manipulate it to make it discoverable to our patrons. The acceptance of a record into the archive all the way to presenting it in a stable condition is a long one. As we work through the archival process, we will hear from several professionals in the field as they discuss their areas of expertise. Throughout the class we will walk through that process while discussing the fundamental aspects of what constitutes an archive. Ultimately, by gaining a better understanding of the archival process and how archives function, we will become better researchers.
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor View in MyPlan_________
-
TXTDS 403 – Archives, Data, and Databases: Digital Methods for East Asian Studies
Offered jointly with ASIAN 498
Credits: 5
GE: A&H, SSc
Instructor: Professor Gian Duri RomingerDescription: This course focuses on digital methods for East Asian studies, primarily for textual sources written in Classical and Modern Chinese, and Japanese (and to a lesser extent Korean). It will offer a broad overview of the state of the field, of different methods, and of the management of digital projects. Additionally, this course will offer hands-on sessions with tools and projects, and discussion sections about directions for research in East Asian studies. Topics range from corpus creation and OCR to text mining and network analysis. No technical know-how required, but reading knowledge of one East Asian languages is recommended.
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor View in MyPlan_________
-
TXTDS 221 – Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity in Historical Perspective
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Instructor: Professor Geoffrey TurnovskyDescription: This course explores the implications of new generative AI tools on notions of human creativity and originality, and, at a more applied level, authorship and its multilingual corollary translation. Much of the debate around generative AI has to do with the extent to which AI applications have been or will be able to replicate human authorship or be mistaken for human expression. A major component of the course will be to situate this question in broad historical perspective. Conceptions of human creativity and authorship as well as theories of translation as “rewriting” have always been shaped by the evolution of technologies for recording, storing, classifying, retrieving, and processing text, starting with writing itself. Similarly, writing tools, through technologies for replicating texts at scale such as the printing press, tools for storing and classifying information (eg. codex-based reference works like rhyming dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries), and technologies of automation, some of which date from the eighteenth century and which in the form of ubiquitous tools like spell-checkers and auto-complete for writers and term banks and “translation memories” for translators, are also important parts of this history. In this respect, at the core of the course will be a reflection on interactions between humans and machines as the historical basis for notions of human originality and creative expression, whether as authorship or translation. This offers a framework for considering ways in which AI both represents something new and grows out of certain continuities, thereby demystifying AI and allowing for a more dispassionate assessment of its limitations and possibilities.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
View in MyPlan__________
-
GLITS 450 – The Prospects of World Literature: Reading the Other Narrating the Self
Offered jointly with MELC 496
Credits: 5
GE:
Instructor: Professor Selim KuruDescription: Join us in an exciting exploration of world literature’s intersection with contemporary society, while learning practical skills like academic writing and oral presentations for any student seeking a multifaceted understanding of literature’s role in shaping our world and ourselves, drawing interest from diverse disciplines such as History, Mathematics, and Informatics.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________ -
DXARTS 480 – Introduction to Data-Driven Arts
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Laura Luna Castillo
Description: In contemporary digital culture, diverse media can be understood as data – from text and images, to recorded sound and speech. Introduces tools for collecting, processing, and organizing archives of multimedia. Establishes a foundation for artistic experimentation with machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. Involves working creatively with data from text and images, recorded sound and speech.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
View in MyPlan
__________ -
ENGL 225 – Shakespeare
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and W
Professor Rhema HokamaDescription: Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor. Introduces Shakespeare’s career as dramatist, with study of representative comedies, tragedies, romances, and history plays.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
AFRAM 360 – Black Digital Studies Credits: 5
GE: SSc and DIV
Instructor: Professor LaShawnDa PittmanDescription: Bridges and intersects two interdisciplinary fields – black studies and digital humanities. Attention to knowledge production. Role of archives, collections, research centers, the black press, and digital technology. Ideas related to power, memory, resistance, perspective and respectability politics in storytelling and control of the vehicles used to do so.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
INFO 357 – The Record of Us All Credits: 5
GE: SSc and DIV
Instructor: Professor Joseph JanesDescription: Exploration of the human record, from oral cultures to the digital age: personal, identity, and family records; oral cultures; the development of writing, history, and evolution of books and scholarly communications; institutional records; and the Internet. Potential futures of the human record and implications for individuals, organizations, and societies.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor__________
-
SCAND 270 – Sagas of the Vikings Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Timothy BournsDescription: Celandic sagas and poetry about Vikings in the context of thirteenth-century society.
Course counts as an Elective Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor__________
-
TXTDS 503 – Introduction to Data Science: Applications in Library Science and Humanities Research Offered jointly with: LIS 572
Instructor: Professor Melanie WalshDescription: Textual archives and databases; their historical construction and role as mediators to the past, bringing light to and obscuring/reshaping the past. Digitization of archives and repositories. Transformation of historical texts into data, which can be searched, processed, and analyzed in new ways. Techniques for building, organizing, and analyzing archives and databases.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies.
__________
-
TXTDS 504 – Texts, Publics, and Publication Offered jointly with: ENGL 504
Instructor: Professor Anna PreusDescription: Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Digital editing and publishing. Digitization, transcription, text encoding, and web publication. Hosting, using a variety of platforms.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
.__________
-
LIS 539 – Metadata Design Online Asynchronous
Instructor: Professor Joseph TennisDescription: Covers application of and design principles around metadata schemas for collections of resources, incorporating issues of syntactic and semantic interoperability. Includes user needs assessment, selection and design workflows, and controlled vocabulary usage. Course framing includes coverage of ethical issues, project planning, decision-making, and future impact.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
.__________
-
LIS 598 – Archival Arrangement, Description, and Metadata Online Asynchronous
Instructor: Professor Joseph TennisDescription: This course will look specifically at the research and standard practice of describing archival records for catalogues and finding aids. It will address the differences between archival description and descriptive work done in LIS, introduce students to descriptive standards and best practices, and the basic technological context of contemporary description.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
.__________
-
TXTDS 401 B – Text Technologies: Textual Trails, Archival Legacies from Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
Offered jointly with SPAN 491
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Instructor: Professor Juan Pablo Rodríguez ArgenteDescription:The Iberian Peninsula has, throughout its history, been the stage for encounters and clashes of a long list of cultures, a province of empires, and the origin of empires. As a crossroads, it has also been a privileged setting for textual encounters, a unique stage for the production and storage of documents.
This course aims to trace the path of some episodes of this history. From the lush Caliphate of Cordoba to the cultural project of Alfonso X. From the establishment of the Archivo de Indias, where the first European movements in America are recorded, to the project of Hernando Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus, to build the largest library of his time.
Sometimes, the paths lead to the United States. How is it that we find extensive collections of parchment and medieval Iberian documents in its universities? Other times, the archives vanish in smoke or in the stomachs of rats and worms, reflecting the dire consequences of the Napoleonic occupation or collateral damage from the desamortización process undertaken in the 1800s with the intention of modernizing Spain.
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor__________
-
TXTDS 401 B – Middle East Illustrated: Verbal and Visual Storytelling in Graphic Novels
Offered jointly with MELC 286 and GLITS 314
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Instructor: Professor Selim KuruDescription:This course explores the powerful blend of verbal and visual expression in graphic novels and animations focused on the Middle East. Through close readings, discussions, and creative exercises, you’ll dive into how images and words interact to tell complex stories. We’ll examine diversity in the Middle East, a region divided by borders but rich in cultural variety, while considering how issues like Orientalism, stock imagery, and different ways of seeing shape our understanding. Along the way, you’ll learn about both the history and modern realities of Middle Eastern cultures. You’ll also develop skills in visual and verbal literacy—key tools in today’s media-driven world. While the focus is on graphic novels and animation, you’re encouraged to include films, video games, and anime in your projects and portfolios. Get ready to think creatively and critically as we explore the art of graphic novel: this particular way of storytelling!
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor__________
-
TXTDS 404 – Texts, Publics, and Publication
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Professor Geoffrey TurnovskyDescription:Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Digital editing and publishing. Digitization, transcription, text encoding, and web publication. Hosting, using a variety of platforms.
Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor__________
-
TXTDS 413 – Texts, Data, and Computation
Offered jointly with DXARTS 481
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and RSN
Instructor: Professor Laura Luna Castillo
Description: Understand, organize, analyze, interpret and visualize cultural and literary texts as data using computational methods and tools. Emphasizes techniques in text analysis and text mining, data visualization, network analysis, algorithmic reading, programming and database building.
View in MyPlan
__________ -
TXTDS 413 – Texts, Data, and Computation
Offered jointly with ENGL 413
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and RSN
Instructor: Professor Anna Preus
Description: Understand, organize, analyze, interpret and visualize cultural and literary texts as data using computational methods and tools. Emphasizes techniques in text analysis and text mining, data visualization, network analysis, algorithmic reading, programming and database building.
View in MyPlan
__________
-
TXTDS 222 – Topics in Human and Machine Translation
Offered jointly with FRENCH 222 Credits: 5
GE: SSc
Instructor: Professor Richard WattsDescription: Topics in the history and future of translation, emphasizing the role and implication of translation technologies, from dictionaries to artificial intelligence. Taught in English but focuses on materials from a range of different language traditions, depending on the instructor’s area of expertise. Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
TXTDS 267 – Data Science and the Humanities
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Gian Duri RomingerDescription: Applications of concepts and methods in data science to the study of the literary and cultural texts and to the study of language. Also explores humanistic perspectives on the role of data and data science in society. Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
ART H 400/ART H 520 – Topics in Art History and Criticism: Re-Reading American Photographs
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Juliet SperlingDescription: Photography was invented in Europe, but its history was written in the United States. Not long after its emergence in 1839, critics claimed photography as a particularly American medium whose development was intertwined with the growth of the nation itself. This seminar-style, discussion-based course surveys new scholarship working tountangle the history of US photography from these ideologies of nationalism, imperialism, and exceptionalism. Focusing on the medium’s first century (1839-1939), we will employ a range of new critical and methodological lenses to “re-read” some of photo history’s most iconic images. Discussions will center on themes including transnationalism, circulation, materiality, cross-cultural encounter and settler colonialism, movement, and migration. Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
ENGL 322 – Medieval and Early Modern Literatures of Encounter
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and DIV
Instructor: Professor Rhema HokamaDescription: 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. Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
TXTDS 504 – Texts, Publics and Publication
Credits: 5
Instructor: Professor Geoffrey TurnovskyDescription: Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Digital editing and publishing. Digitization, transcription, text encoding, and web publication. Hosting, using a variety of platforms.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies__________
-
TXTDS 401 B – Text Technologies
Credits: 5
Instructor: Professor Juan Pablo Rodríguez ArgenteDescription: Historical, conceptual, theoretical, and critical perspectives on world texts from antiquity to the digital age. Manuscript circulation of texts in the Middle Ages and modern times; global histories of the rise and spread of print technologies; preservation, access, reuse, and recycling of text. Impacts of digitization and textual data on reading and on repositories and institutions, such as libraries.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies__________
-
TXTDS 413 – Texts, Data, and Computation
Offered jointly with DXARTS 481
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and RSN
Instructor: Professor Laura Luna Castillo
Description:Understand, organize, analyze, interpret and visualize cultural and literary texts as data using computational methods and tools. Emphasizes techniques in text analysis and text mining, data visualization, network analysis, algorithmic reading, programming and database building.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
View in MyPlan
__________
-
TXTDS 402 — Book Arts: Proseminar in Printing, Bibliography and Special Collections
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
For info and an add code, contact Professor Geoffrey TurnovskyDescription: This small seminar will offer students interested in the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor a chance to discover Special Collections and to get hands-on experience working with historical and archival materials as well as printing with a letterpress. The course will be limited to 12 students enrolled in the minor. Counts as a Core Course in the TXTDS minor and TDS Grad Certificate.
_________
-
Imperial TExt in Islamic TExture: Literature and Arts int he Ottoman Empire
Offered jointly with MELC 371/ MELC 571
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Selim KuruA course on the textual culture of the Ottoman dynastic elite, with references to other early modern Islamic imperial textual traditions. Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
__________
-
DXARTS 482 – Data-Driven Art
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Laura Luna Castillo
Description: Further develops skills and concepts required to make art, using machine learning and Big Data. Combines technical instruction in Python with discussion of ethical, aesthetic, and creative possibilities of data science. Topics include histories of data-driven art, technical applications using NLP, GANs, Classification Systems, Datasets, and hands-on systems-based art projects.
View in MyPlan
__________
-
TXTDS 501 – Text Technologies: Medieval Manuscripts
Offered jointly with ENGL 502
Credits: 5
Instructor: Professor Kate NorakoDescription: Historical, conceptual, theoretical, and critical perspectives on world texts from antiquity to the digital age. Manuscript circulation of texts in the Middle Ages and modern times; global histories of the rise and spread of print technologies; preservation, access, reuse, and recycling of text. Impacts of digitization and textual data on reading and on repositories and institutions, such as libraries.
Course counts as a core course in the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
__________
-
TXTDS 503 – Archives, Data, and Databases: Literary and Linguistic Inquiry Through the Lens of Indexing Languages
Offered jointly with ENGL 564
Credits: 5
Instructor: Professor Chris HolstrumDescription:This seminar will consider “indexing language”–or, the classification schemes, thesauri, and subject heading lists that catalogers and indexers use to organize information in libraries and other collections–as rich and complex texts in their own right. While indexing languages are created and maintained primarily as tools for classifying and organizing information, they can also be studied as living documents and cultural artifacts. Throughout the course, students will examine the way that indexers and catalogers represent works through indexing languages and will explore how such languages function as genres with specific rhetorical goals and detailed grammars, determining which works we find and how we view and interact with them.
Course counts as a core course in the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
__________
TXTDS 405: Capstone in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
Description: Capstone (culminating experience) for the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor. For more information on the capstone, check out the capstone information page.
Offered all quarters, including summer
Schedule for 2025-2026
Note that this is tentative and subject to change. Please reach out to text@uw.edu with any questions. Click to load imager in another window.
