Intermediate Horizons
Book History and Digital Humanities

Mark Vareschi (Edited by), Heather Wacha (Edited by)

9780299338145

Paperback / softback, published 6 February 2024

216 pages, 15 b&w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.272 kg

“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

“Offers something for every book historian, regardless of familiarity with or enthusiasm for digital integration. . . . As we continue to reflect on the intersections of bibliography and digital humanities, we must also reflect on what we want new technologies to do and why. Book historians have long been reflecting on technologies of the past, highlighting the disruptive nature of text. These same book historians also need to turn their heads towards the future. Intermediate Horizons represents a sharp glance in the right direction.”—The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

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.

• 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