Intermediate Horizons: Book History and Digital Humanities
edited by Mark Vareschi and Heather Wacha
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022 Cloth: 978-0-299-33810-7 | eISBN: 978-0-299-33813-8 Library of Congress Classification AZ195.I58 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 001.30285
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK This innovative collection examines how book history and digital humanities (DH) practices are integrated through approach, access, and assessment. Eight essays by rising and senior scholars practicing in multiple fields—including librarians, literature scholars, digital humanists, and historians—consider and reimagine the interconnected futures and horizons at the intersections of texts, technology, and culture and argue for a return to a more representative and human study of the humanities.
Integrating intermedial practices and assessments, the editors and contributors explore issues surrounding the access to and materiality of digitized materials, and the challenge of balancing preservation of traditional archival materials with access. They offer an assessment in our present moment of the early visions of book history and DH projects. In revisiting these projects, they ask us to shift our thinking on the promises and perils of archival and creative work in different media. Taken together, this volume reconsiders the historical intersections of book history and DH and charts a path for future scholarship across disciplinary boundaries.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Mark Vareschi is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of Everywhere and Nowhere: Anonymity and Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain.
Heather Wacha is a former University of Wisconsin fellow and CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow and associate coordinator of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the coauthor of The Cartulary of the Abbey of Prémontré: A Dual Print and Digital Edition.
REVIEWS
“Book history and digital humanities are increasingly entangled, and it makes sense why: we cannot understand our digital moment without knowing the technologies and textual cultures that came before. Intermediate Horizons shows how these fields speak to each other, and why we need to pay attention.”—Whitney Trettien, University of Pennsylvania
“Intermediate Horizons offers a vital set of reports on the history and future of the book. Traversing the shared territory of the digital humanities and book-historical studies, the essays in this volume provide fresh perspectives on the wonderful complexities of media and mediation.”—Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia
“Impressively informative and thought-provoking throughout.”—Midwest Book Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Foreword: Intermediate Horizons
by Matthew Kirschenbaum
Introduction
by Mark Vareschi and Heather Wacha
Section I. Approach
1 Benjamin Franklin’s Postal Work
by Christy L. Pottroff
2 Linking Book History and the Digital Humanities via Museum Studies
by Jayme Yahr
Section II. Access
3 Material and Digital Traces in Patterns of Nature: Early Modern Botany Books and Seventeenth-Century Needlework
by Mary Learner
4 Opening the Book: The Utopian Dreams and Uncertain Future of Open Access Textbook Publishing
by Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright
5 Books of Ours: What Libraries Can Learn About Social Media from Books of Hours
by Alexandra Alvis
Section III. Assessment
6 Whose Books Are Online? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Online Text Collections
by Catherine A. Winters and Clayton P. Michaud
7 Electronic Versioning and Digital Editions
by Paul A. Broyles
8 Materialisms and the Cultural Turn in Digital Humanities
by Mattie Burkert
Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Intermediate Horizons: Book History and Digital Humanities
edited by Mark Vareschi and Heather Wacha
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022 Cloth: 978-0-299-33810-7 eISBN: 978-0-299-33813-8
This innovative collection examines how book history and digital humanities (DH) practices are integrated through approach, access, and assessment. Eight essays by rising and senior scholars practicing in multiple fields—including librarians, literature scholars, digital humanists, and historians—consider and reimagine the interconnected futures and horizons at the intersections of texts, technology, and culture and argue for a return to a more representative and human study of the humanities.
Integrating intermedial practices and assessments, the editors and contributors explore issues surrounding the access to and materiality of digitized materials, and the challenge of balancing preservation of traditional archival materials with access. They offer an assessment in our present moment of the early visions of book history and DH projects. In revisiting these projects, they ask us to shift our thinking on the promises and perils of archival and creative work in different media. Taken together, this volume reconsiders the historical intersections of book history and DH and charts a path for future scholarship across disciplinary boundaries.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Mark Vareschi is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of Everywhere and Nowhere: Anonymity and Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain.
Heather Wacha is a former University of Wisconsin fellow and CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow and associate coordinator of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the coauthor of The Cartulary of the Abbey of Prémontré: A Dual Print and Digital Edition.
REVIEWS
“Book history and digital humanities are increasingly entangled, and it makes sense why: we cannot understand our digital moment without knowing the technologies and textual cultures that came before. Intermediate Horizons shows how these fields speak to each other, and why we need to pay attention.”—Whitney Trettien, University of Pennsylvania
“Intermediate Horizons offers a vital set of reports on the history and future of the book. Traversing the shared territory of the digital humanities and book-historical studies, the essays in this volume provide fresh perspectives on the wonderful complexities of media and mediation.”—Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia
“Impressively informative and thought-provoking throughout.”—Midwest Book Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Foreword: Intermediate Horizons
by Matthew Kirschenbaum
Introduction
by Mark Vareschi and Heather Wacha
Section I. Approach
1 Benjamin Franklin’s Postal Work
by Christy L. Pottroff
2 Linking Book History and the Digital Humanities via Museum Studies
by Jayme Yahr
Section II. Access
3 Material and Digital Traces in Patterns of Nature: Early Modern Botany Books and Seventeenth-Century Needlework
by Mary Learner
4 Opening the Book: The Utopian Dreams and Uncertain Future of Open Access Textbook Publishing
by Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright
5 Books of Ours: What Libraries Can Learn About Social Media from Books of Hours
by Alexandra Alvis
Section III. Assessment
6 Whose Books Are Online? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Online Text Collections
by Catherine A. Winters and Clayton P. Michaud
7 Electronic Versioning and Digital Editions
by Paul A. Broyles
8 Materialisms and the Cultural Turn in Digital Humanities
by Mattie Burkert
Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE