{"id":55,"date":"2015-07-06T18:15:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T18:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/?p=55"},"modified":"2019-01-18T09:54:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T09:54:32","slug":"digital-textualities-and-the-history-of-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/digital-textualities-and-the-history-of-the-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting work from the final year module Digital Textualities and the History of the Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Digital<\/a>A rather different blog post from usual this time, as we team up with Dr. Stephen Kelly<\/a> from the School of English and some of his final year undergraduate students to showcase a selection of student projects from a new third year module – ENG 3178 \u201cDigital Textualities and the History of the Book\u201d \u2013 which ran for the first time last year.<\/p>\n

As Module Convenor Dr. Kelly explains,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book is arguably the most important technology in Western cultural history, but with the advent of hypertext, e-readers and tablets, the death of the book is being declared with greater frequency and urgency.<\/p>\n

The module introduced students to the emerging disciplines of book history and digital humanities by taking the historical development of the codex, the printed book, and electronic textuality as the basis for an assessment of the materiality of textual meaning. The module assessed alarmist critiques of digital culture and its impact on \u2018traditional\u2019 literacy practices and media by exploring the manner in which textuality has played a key role in the articulation and maintenance of cultural and political authority from the Middle Ages to the present.<\/p>\n

For assessment, students were invited to reflect creatively on the history and future of the book. Students spent six weeks working with materials held in Special Collections, as well as reading contemporary fiction that makes an explicit theme of the materiality of the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Display<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A selection of these student projects, together with relevant materials from Special Collections\u2019 holdings are currently exhibited in the display case on Floor One of the McClay Library, and are showcased below.<\/p>\n

\n

\"AMY<\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy Slack<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Amy\u2019s project wittily reproduces the formatting of a Pelican book, Penguin book\u2019s non-fiction imprint, which ran from 1937-1984.\u00a0 Amy interviewed local bookseller David Torrans of No Alibis<\/a>, as well as the manager at her local WH Smith in England, to produce a powerful defense of the continuing relevance of the bookshop to contemporary culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Peter Davidson\"Peter1\"<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s project\u00a0took inspiration from\u00a0the typographical experiments of works such as Danielewski\u2019s House of Leaves<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 In this project, material from the Jean Rhys novel Wide Sargasso Sea<\/i>, a sequel to Bronte\u2019s Jane Eyre<\/i>, contaminates Bronte\u2019s original novel to powerful effect.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Lindsay1\"<\/a><\/b>Lindsay Wilson<\/b><\/p>\n

Lindsay has expertly emulated the book-making techniques of medieval bookbinders, and has even produced an extraordinary frontispiece that mimics the elaborately illustrated Books of Hours<\/a> that proliferated across Europe from the fifteenth century.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Niall Devlin\"Niall1\"<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Niall\u2019s project, entitled Cicada<\/i>, is a \u2018book\u2019 bound in mirrors, comprised of chapters \u2018written\u2019 in QR code, braille, binary, waveforms, and audio files.\u00a0 Niall\u2019s project is influenced variously by writers such as William Burroughs<\/a> and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"India1\"<\/a>India Swann<\/b><\/p>\n

Creative writer India has produced a \u2018biblio-fiction\u2019 entitled Peter Ertin<\/i> (anagram\u00a0of \u2018interpreter\u2019), an extraordinary, Borgesian<\/a> \u2018book of books\u2019 from the origins of writing to the \u2018death\u2019 of the book in the form of an Amazon Kindle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emma McCorry \"Emma1\"<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Emma has made a playful edition of the medieval bibliophile\u2019s Richard de Bury\u2019s eulogy to the beauty of books, the Philobiblon<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Carrie<\/a><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carrie Honeyford<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/b>Carrie created a digital edition of a fitt of the Middle English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight<\/i><\/a>, using QR codes and hyperlinks for textual apparatus.\u00a0 Carrie\u2019s project plays with the skeumorphism of digital books and medieval codices.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Liam Cassidy\u00a0\"Liam<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

After teaching himself HTML, CSS and a touch of JavaScript in just two weeks (!) Liam produced a multimedia edition of Tony Harrison\u2019s poem \u2018Them & [uz]\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Rebecca<\/a><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rebecca Crawford<\/b><\/p>\n

Rebecca created a \u2018<\/b>visual novel\u2019 and all the accompanying digital assets, produced on the Renpy<\/a> platform.\u00a0Like Liam, she too mastered the necessary programming in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Donna McCullagh<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Donna\"<\/a><\/b>Donna\u2019s project was a superb re-versioning of an important early work of American feminist literature, Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u2019s The Yellow Wallpaper<\/i><\/a>.<\/i> Influenced by Danielewski, the typography and layout in Donna\u2019s version work to emphasis the psychological collapse narrated in the short story.<\/p>\n

\"Word<\/a><\/p>\n

Other student projects included Keelin Stewart\u2019s<\/b> hand-made book, which recorded, in a witty and self-deprecating diary of its own production, the challenges she faced in emulating the production techniques of medieval book-binders<\/a>. The goal of Rebecca Barkley\u2019s <\/b>iBooks edition of Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Selfish Giant<\/i><\/a>, which used music, audio, and images, was to explore the potential of electronic literature to re-engage children in the pleasures of reading. Dervla McGaughey\u2019s<\/b> project, \u2018the rest of your life\u2019, explored the narrative potential of the Twine<\/a> platform for digital fiction. Robbie Montgomery<\/b> set himself the task of digitising the \u2018un-digitisable\u2019 \u2013 Anne Carson\u2019s Nox.\u00a0<\/i><\/a> In presenting only the text of Carson\u2019s poem, and in providing ekphrastic accounts of the many images Carson\u2019s accordion-book uses, Robbie\u2019s project produces a hauntingly stripped-down version of the work, which in many respects amplified the emotional energies of the book.<\/p>\n

As can be seen, the assessment elicited a fantastic range of responses from the students involved\u00a0 – incorporating the creation of digital editions, explorations of new technologies, and emulation of centuries-old book making techniques – with each project responding to the concerns of the module in innovative and diverse ways.<\/p>\n

\"Display<\/a>\"Carrie<\/a>\"Display<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The links below hint at some of the wealth of online resources and tools students made use of and responded to during the course of the module.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Blogs and Online Resources:<\/b><\/p>\n

Bibliofilia: http:\/\/bibliofila.tumblr.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Echoes from the Vault: https:\/\/standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In A Book: http:\/\/endinginabook.designwallah.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Introduction to Medieval Books: http:\/\/www.nottingham.ac.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

manuscriptsandspecialcollections\/researchguidance\/medievalbooks\/<\/a><\/p>\n

introduction.aspx <\/a><\/p>\n

Medieval Books – Erik Kwakkel\u2019s blog: http:\/\/medievalbooks.nl<\/a><\/p>\n

Monoskop: http:\/\/monoskop.org\/Monoskop<\/a><\/p>\n

On Books and Streets \u2013 An approach to Cultural History: https:\/\/<\/a><\/p>\n

abeautifulbook.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Quill: On Books Before Print: http:\/\/www.bookandbyte.org\/quill\/index.php<\/a><\/p>\n

Resources for the History of Books and Printing: http:\/\/www.english.upenn.edu\/~traister\/hbp.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sexy Codicology: http:\/\/sexycodicology.tumblr.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Tate – Transforming Artists\u2019 Books: http:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/about\/projects\/<\/a><\/p>\n

transforming-artist-books<\/a><\/p>\n

Text Technologies: http:\/\/historyoftexttechnologies.blogspot.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

Travelling Scriptorium at Yale: http:\/\/travelingscriptorium.library.yale.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

Tools:<\/b><\/p>\n

Atlas of Early Printing: http:\/\/atlas.lib.uiowa.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

BiblioType: http:\/\/craigmod.com\/bibliotype\/<\/a><\/p>\n

DIRT – Digital Research Tools: http:\/\/dirtdirectory.org<\/a><\/p>\n

InScribe – Palaeography training: http:\/\/www.history.ac.uk\/research-training\/<\/a><\/p>\n

courses\/online-palaeography<\/a><\/p>\n

OpenBooks: http:\/\/www.openbookmarks.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Sophie: http:\/\/sophie2.org\/trac\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rather different blog post from usual this time, as we team up with Dr. Stephen Kelly from the School<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,54],"tags":[7,10,18],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-rare-books","tag-books","tag-exhibitions","tag-students"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2015\/07\/Display-case-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8s7J-T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}